I didn't find much improvement with a firewire drive.
Thats why its for sale and i'm going to fit an internal.
The main thing that bugged me was when I took the ibook away with me and used Tracktion on the internal when I got back and plugged the FW back in the projects page would be empty forcing me to open files by hand everytime....too much hassle.
Just a warning...I cant be arsed trying to figure a work round.
Attention Mac users:
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- KVRist
- 123 posts since 14 Oct, 2004 from Derbyshire U.K.
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- KVRer
- 8 posts since 17 Oct, 2003 from Newcastle, UK
I have just bought an i-book 12" 1.33 with 1 gig of ram, I managed 11 tracks.
The system is very stable except t2 doesn't like it when you use the clever trackpad scrolling thing.
Cheers
The system is very stable except t2 doesn't like it when you use the clever trackpad scrolling thing.
Cheers
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- KVRer
- 8 posts since 17 Oct, 2003 from Newcastle, UK
I have just bought an i-book 12" 1.33 with 1 gig of ram, I managed 11 tracks.
The system is very stable except t2 doesn't like it when you use the clever trackpad scrolling thing.
Cheers
The system is very stable except t2 doesn't like it when you use the clever trackpad scrolling thing.
Cheers
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- KVRist
- 54 posts since 30 Jun, 2004 from Seattle Area
Just picked up a PowerMac G5 2.7GHz DP. It's got 1.5GB RAM, and the stock internal 7200 RPM 250GB drive. Just testing quickly here, without trying to optimize at all really, and lots of other apps are running at the same time as T2 (latest) -- I was able to play 37 copies of the track before it started red-lining on the 38th. If I don't mind looking at the red CPU meter, 40+ tracks played back with no noticeable audio artifacts, and the machine was still responsive enough to click around the UI. Test was done with built-in audio, as my other interfaces are packed up at the moment.
I also have a PowerBook G4 17", 1.3GHz with 1GB RAM, which I'll do a test with a little later, after unpacking from the weekend gigs. (That's my mobile tracking rig.)
As for the external FireWire drive thing, I think it'll only make a real difference if you're using a FW800 drive. However, the difference will probably be marginal, since this particular test is much harder on the CPU than anything else. My guess is that you won't see the difference in this project.
Where faster drives makes a really big difference is when you're using few CPU-based effects and lots of tracks (or samplers that stream direct from disk, as the ones from NativeInstruments do with their DFD plug-in). You'll also probably find that USB 2.0 drives perform better than FW400 drives do, since the interface itself is about 20% faster.
This is assuming, of course, that your audio hardware is on a different interface. If you have USB 2.0 audio IO, then you might be better off with a FW drive, even though the USB 2.0 interface is a little faster than the FW400.
I also have a PowerBook G4 17", 1.3GHz with 1GB RAM, which I'll do a test with a little later, after unpacking from the weekend gigs. (That's my mobile tracking rig.)
As for the external FireWire drive thing, I think it'll only make a real difference if you're using a FW800 drive. However, the difference will probably be marginal, since this particular test is much harder on the CPU than anything else. My guess is that you won't see the difference in this project.
Where faster drives makes a really big difference is when you're using few CPU-based effects and lots of tracks (or samplers that stream direct from disk, as the ones from NativeInstruments do with their DFD plug-in). You'll also probably find that USB 2.0 drives perform better than FW400 drives do, since the interface itself is about 20% faster.
This is assuming, of course, that your audio hardware is on a different interface. If you have USB 2.0 audio IO, then you might be better off with a FW drive, even though the USB 2.0 interface is a little faster than the FW400.
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- KVRAF
- 1721 posts since 15 Aug, 2003 from Indianapolis
This test is pretty much all about the cpu. The hard drive is really not doing much in this test.polaris20 wrote: I find it odd that the external FW drive doesn't help the issue. That's weirdness.
If you want to gauge hard drive performance, make another test with only audio tracks, no fx.
The trouble with this, though, is that all the tracks will have to be unique. You can't just copy and paste tracks within tracktion. You could go to the location where the one audio track is and make actual copies of the audio with different names, and then import them into the project. This would give you a truer read of hard drive performance, but is decidedly a PITA.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 1122 posts since 12 Mar, 2005
Impressive performance from the duellie! Nice computer.jsavin wrote:Just picked up a PowerMac G5 2.7GHz DP. It's got 1.5GB RAM, and the stock internal 7200 RPM 250GB drive. Just testing quickly here, without trying to optimize at all really, and lots of other apps are running at the same time as T2 (latest) -- I was able to play 37 copies of the track before it started red-lining on the 38th. If I don't mind looking at the red CPU meter, 40+ tracks played back with no noticeable audio artifacts, and the machine was still responsive enough to click around the UI. Test was done with built-in audio, as my other interfaces are packed up at the moment.
I also have a PowerBook G4 17", 1.3GHz with 1GB RAM, which I'll do a test with a little later, after unpacking from the weekend gigs. (That's my mobile tracking rig.)
As for the external FireWire drive thing, I think it'll only make a real difference if you're using a FW800 drive. However, the difference will probably be marginal, since this particular test is much harder on the CPU than anything else. My guess is that you won't see the difference in this project.
Where faster drives makes a really big difference is when you're using few CPU-based effects and lots of tracks (or samplers that stream direct from disk, as the ones from NativeInstruments do with their DFD plug-in). You'll also probably find that USB 2.0 drives perform better than FW400 drives do, since the interface itself is about 20% faster.
This is assuming, of course, that your audio hardware is on a different interface. If you have USB 2.0 audio IO, then you might be better off with a FW drive, even though the USB 2.0 interface is a little faster than the FW400.
As for the USB2 v. FW400, running tests using the same drive (has both interfaces) in Sandra 2005, the USB2 was slower than FW.
The consensus seems to be that FW has lower protocol overhead than USB2 does, thereby making up the difference.
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- KVRist
- 54 posts since 30 Jun, 2004 from Seattle Area
So how much difference do people see? I'm a little surprised, but maybe I shouldn't be, since the advertised throughput numbers are coming from marketing materials more than from real-world testing. There's probably also some variation between different operating systems. I'd be curious to know if results on Mac and Windows are similar or different, between FW400 and USB2.polaris20 wrote:... The consensus seems to be that FW has lower protocol overhead than USB2 does, thereby making up the difference.
Also, if I had to guess before seeing the numbers, the difference is probably small, and a faster drive is going to have a much bigger effect than which interface it's connected to, for most uses.
Off topic: One other note about the G5 2.7DP, I had just figured out how to stream video from my Series 1 TiVo to my Mac, and the PowerBook, nice as it is, could barely handle it while doing other things. The G5 on the other hand, harrdly even notices. (The processor overhead in this case is demuxing, desccrambling and decoding MPEG1 streams at about 3-5Mbps.)
I'm very impressed with this machine, and expect to be much more productive, especially after I get my third display working. (I've become very spoiled with screen real estate of late.)
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- KVRist
- 336 posts since 9 Apr, 2003 from Tragorden
Just ordered a toneport for my laptop. Will post opinion when/if it arrives.larsby wrote:Also, if you get a iBook, you wont get a line in on the soundcard. I made that mistake, gonna go get a toneport, if they get good reviews!