Leaving Amiga - Need PC emulation / music recording advice.

[Wolfeman]

If you're a musician, I would go with the Mac and OSX. I've been an electronic musician since the 80s and the Macintosh has been at the center of the studio to this very day. You can find a G4 tower for the same you would pay for a 1Ghz PC and it will blow the PC away.

I would not try to emulate any other system for audio, you should check out the native programs, as I'm positive you'll find something that can do what you need, possibly even Garage Band which often comes bundled with OSX on Mac G4 systems sold used. For an audio interface you can use the built in stereo audio which is very high quality or you can go pro with a PCI expansion or a Firewire device.

My advice is to stay away from any audio or hd peripherals that only support USB as Firewire on the Mac is much faster and stable and USB on the Mac, even 2.0 is like 50% slower on a Mac than it is on a PC.

I'd also stay away from digidesign hardware and software as they are very slow to upgrade software support for their hardware and very often you find yourself stuck with an older OS just to be able to use the hardware. Unless you have thousands of dollars for a full blown pro-tools rig, just stay away from their entry level stuff, they don't support it adequately in my opinion.

M-Audio makes some very inexpensive but nicely made peripherals. I have a USB MIDI controller by M-Audio and a Tascam 8ch firewire for audio in and out and I paid less than $300 total for both on my G5. I have an older G4 with a MOTU 2408 that I got very cheaply and that works very nicely.

good luck with it, whatever you decide.

[Wolfeman]

@bloodline: Well, dude, you're obviously no Mac fan, and that's fine, there are PC people and Mac people but if you look at benchmark tests between G4s and 1Ghz era PC processors, the mac wins every time. I have never run Logic, always Digital Performer [just plain "Performer" before that] and it has always been a terrific system. I can run a full 24 tracks on a G4 AGP 500Mhz with few hiccups. Of course it was maxed out to a full 2GB of ram  

As for garage band, no way is that "pro" but in terms of what it can do out of the box and for damn near free, it's pretty good software. I don't use it though. I actually use "Reason" for soft synths/sampling.

I have not checked out the FA series stuff, right now I'm trying to find an inexpensive Tascam DAW controller for cheap on ebay. I've been seeing the US-2400 for as low as $600... hmmmm

@Wilse: The usb on a mac for some reason is bloody slow. ever try to hook up a usb hard drive or disc burner?  omg it's awful. let alone a usb flash drive, it always takes twice as long to copy files and even on my dual processor G5.

For MIDI it's fine and even some audio interfaces but for my money and time the firewire is faster and more reliable.

[Wolfeman]

@wilse: it's not horsefeathers at all, but it seems you're not experiencing the problems most of us have or you're not noticing them.

Are you saying you're using your external HD for your audio workspace?  how many tracks do you record and playback at once? Have you not noticed how slow copying files to and from any usb drive is when compared to firewire or pc usb? I simply can't believe you wouldn't notice the slowness.  What mac do you have again? is it PPC or Intel?  perhaps that is the answer?

[Wolfeman]

wow, I was looking on google for some first hand advice and setup directions for doing amiga music through emulation and there just really isn't much out there:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&q=amiga+emulation+music+bars+pipes&btnG=Search

My guess is that due to the lack of info, that it isn't a popular choice but that doesn't mean it can't be done. My experience with it starts and ends with gaming.

hey, maybe you can break new ground and figure out how to do it for others to follow.

@bloodline:  you mentioned you "did a bit of work in UAE with OctaMED", can you elaborate on how you set that up and made it work? was there any external midi triggering involved?

[Wolfeman]

man, there are a lot of opinionated mo-fos in this thread [on this forum?]

@wilse
Mac USB is slower, you can google various benchmark tests, that's just a fact. argue it all you want. I'm extremely happy for you if it doesn't haunt you or bother you, seriously, but PLEASE spare me the down-the-nose "addytude" regarding your belief of the phenomenon. It is not hogwash, horsefeathers, or otherwise delusional. Firewire is more stable and allows for a  lot less latency, especially if you run a 24+ track system like I do where I am recording entire bands live and 16+ tracks recording in at once is the norm. case closed

@bloodline:
I did read that you used macs but your initial reply to me was rather... umm... well, let's just put it behind us and never speak of it again.

you guys are awesome, seriously, I love people who are as passionate about their music and their gadgets as I am.

cheers