Posts by Vacant_Theory

Been a while since I was here on the board.
But for all those who helped me out with optimizing my workspace, a little bow of appreciation, you haven't got the slightest idea of how much you guys helped me with your insights.
As a matter of fact it took me back to the big love I felt while writing music.
I play way more, I experiment more,...
Bought the Spl crimson, added an ssd... and it's almost flawless to record now.

Oh btw, the change of audio interface, does that change anything in the workload towards the cpu or am I completely wrong here?
'cause that's together with the SSD the first thing that will be changed, and I would be glad to know if I am going the right route with the SPL crimson.

Quote from db9091

I had tools from OWC and was able to get all this from Amazon (some from OWC through them):

1) This was for backup (and I split the drive in 2 for a DATA regular file/folder backup and the other for a Bootable backup:
1.0TB Toshiba Aquarius 5400RPM 9.5mm SuperSlim SATA Notebook Drive with 8MB Data $64.99
Sold by : Other World Computing

2) I just saw this is $245, my mis-stated price was an SSD I was thinking about for my PC since this upgrade worked so well for Mac:
480GB Mercury Electra 3G SSD 2.5" Serial-ATA 7mm 3Gb-s Solid State Drive. $274.00
Sold by : Other World Computing

3) OWC Data Doubler Optical Bay Hard Drive-SSD Mounting Solution for select Apple L $35.00
Sold by : Other World Computing

4) Aluminum External USB DVD+RW,-RW Super Drive for Apple--MacBook Air, Pro, iMac, Mini $40 (I chose this over the $25 one because it had more features and said it was seemless. Glad I'm looking up ACTUAL Prices, my memory sucks!)

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seriously, thanks a lot for the elaborate posts of information you guys keep sending my way!

Quote from db9091

I did this with my Mid-2009 Macbook Pro and it's VERY fast now:

Replace my main hard drive with a 480GB SSD drive (cost $220 on Amazon)
Converted my Optical Drive to an Internal Hard Drive slot and moved my 750GB 7200 drive there as a DATA drive. This is cheap.
Purchased an external Optical Drive for $25 on Amazon for use with Disc installs.

Then I reinstalled everything from scratch to do separation properly. All music apps install on the SSD, as do most VI's. Large VI's like Omnisphere, Superior Drummer packs and my WAV files (or aif if you use native Logic) go onto the DATA drive. This is the "drive separation" others her talk about.

It's a completely new computer. The 8GB RAM is fine. But if you can upgrade, that never hurts. The speed of an all SSD drive almost negates a RAM upgrade for your needs.

You SHOULD look into an external backup. I bought a 1TB external drive ($100), split it and keep a DATA backup and a full bootable backup using Carbon Copy Cloner. Test the bootable backup via USB. You don't need to swap the hard drive to test it.

Last thing: Get your optical drive at OWC (Other World Computing) and you can look up ALL these changes there on their install tutorial videos. Awesome help, and awesome prices. They also sell a tool kit, sometimes combined with a hard drive or optical drive to handle all the little screws you need to take out.

Be patient and careful, but otherwise this is not hard stuff to install.

The SSD will be the MAIN change in speed, not RAM. You will thank me after doing this and give your computer a few more years of usage.

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Oh this looks exactly like the right road to take!

Quote from Janne

What is Your I/O buffer size in the Preferences -> Audio settings?
Try to increase this value, the lower it is, the more load Logic put on your CPU.
Low values here are only necessary when You are playing sounds generated by the computer, i.e. playing thru a software amp sim or playing a synth using a midi keyboard.

It's running at 128 now, should be decent enough, no?

Quote from endlessnameless

[deleted[ Actually ignore what I wrote before - those specs you have look good - I think there is a problem elsewhere.

Where are your drum samples being stored? I have BFD on an external USB3 interface and it eliminated glitching. I think superior drummer streams a lot of samples from the HD which could be causing a bottleneck.

They are on the internal HD so that could be a big error from my side since I didn't have the latency problems before.
I used to track with the logic pro drum sounds and later on in the mixing process I added the superior drummer.
But I got a bit used to hearing the big drum sounds while recording and it definitely gets me more "into the zone" while tracking some heavier stuff.

Quote from sambrox

It's definitely the hard disk. Don't forget that as well as streaming the recorded audio, it's also streaming the drum samples and all the while OSX is trying to do its house keeping. 16 GB RAM would be recommended if you plan on installing orchestral software, as well as an extra external HDD to stream the whole lot off.

Cheers,
Sam

ps just saw you wrote 17 inch Macbook Pro : isn't it quite old? As far as I recall, they were discontinued some years back. It might be that the hardware is struggling with Yosemite..?

Yeah, I really need to get myself a ssd so it seems, the more I read about it the more it seems the right decision.
Well, the 17" isn't actually that old, the casing is from early 2011 but they installed a new motherboard somewhere late 2013, due to the fact the previous one died.
So the CPU is actually from a later model.
But on the other hand I saw a decline in performance after I installed Yosemite, but when I monitor everything I see a huge use of RAM in shrill contrast to what it used to do when the machine ran under snow leopard.

Hi there,

I need some serious help with upgrading my recording setup.
First I'll give you some insight in the things I use at the moment , then all the things I want to upgrade and then I would be quite thankful if someone could help me out and pointing out where I'm going wrong with my train of thought.

Computer Specs:

Early Macbook pro 17"
2,3 GHz Intel Core i7 quad core
8GB RAM
7200rpm 500 Hard-drive disk
Running OSX Yosemite

Audio Interface:
Apogee One

DAW:
Logic Pro

So, the problems at this moment.
I do a lot of quad tracking on my guitars, add some bass and rely fully on Superior drummer for drums.
All goes well until I get to the point I want to lay down guitar solos and the vocals on top of the songs...
CPU use goes nuts, and latency becomes unbearable, but did not even start on adding some effects within my DAW.

so that comes down to 4 tracks of guitar, 1 track of Bass, 1 track of drums...and already pushing my system to its limits????

What I plan to do on getting rid of the aforementioned hustle:
Get a SPL crimson interface instead of the apogee ONE (will this help with the latency problems?)
Upgrade my RAM to 16GB (Does this affect latency at all?)
Replace my harddrive with a SSD 512GB (I rely fully on the internal hard drive, maybe that's something I do wrong as well?)

Or should I even consider going the 2nd hand MACpro desktop route with more CPU cores and massive RAM capacity?

Will these upgrades make an enormous difference or am I just dreaming wildly?
The big plan is to implement orchestral software etc in the whole equation of producing my own album, so I need much more power on tap!!!!

Quote from viabcroce

Desume... Is that a combination of assume and deduce?

...Exactly!

... Itanglish I desume...

Quote from Vacant_Theory

What did you ask? My eyes and ears are scorched by the kemper (my dog helped me type this)

PLEASE SUPPLY YOUR DOG'S EMAIL ADDRESS

:D[/quote]

here you go:
[email protected]

Quote from viabcroce

Welcome

Shall I desume you're satisfied with your purchase?

what did you ask? My eyes and ears are scorched by the kemper (my dog helped me type this)

Belgian,31 years old, loves bonecrushing guitar-sounds and out of this world cleans.

I've got my Kemper for a month now, I was holding out for a while until I was fully devoured by this piece I guess.
All the things I can think of now are...huuuuuuuhwoooow?!

I've spent ages and money on modellers ,on boutique amps and pedals... and now I ended up with this strange machine called the Kemper.
FINALLY something that inspires,sounds fantastic and so on.
Now I am able to build all those rigs that where haunting my dreams, and the ones I had? I just make them better now... insane.
It's simply unbelievable how much more time I spent now on actually playing my guitar, I fell in love with playing guitar all over again.

All the things I loved about valves is in here, all the things about modellers is in here, even the mics and speakers are exactly what I needed to sculpt all those tones I was looking for... Best invention for guitar players EVER!!!

Big thumbs up for SINMIX and THE AMP FACTORY also, products of these two combined gets me pretty much all I need.

Keep those profiles with HEIL mics coming!!!