iMac and Logic Pro 8

macrumors regular

Hey all
I may soon be buying a Mac desktop. I would love to have a MacPro but don't have that kind of money at the moment.

So basically is anyone out there using an iMac with Logic Pro 8 without it stalling the system constantly (it can be very heavy duty on the system especially with lots of audio units working).
Is it worth going the iMac route or holding out for a while until I can someday afford a Mac Pro.

macrumors newbie

You should be fine with an iMac. But that does depend on how many and what kind of plug-ins and tracks you will be using.

I'm using a 24" 2.4 with 2gigs of ram with LP8, and have never run into slow downs. My sessions can run anywhere from 10 to 30 or more tracks running lots of comps, verbs, delays and EQs. The demo sessions run just fine too, and they are pretty big sessions. I've messed with the Roots full mix, and it ran smooth.

Before I came to Logic and the Mac, I was on a Windows machine with Pro Tools LE. Logic is SO much more efficient than PT LE to be sure.

Disclaimer: I haven't tested a MBP and iMac side by side with LP8, so take the following with a grain of salt...

As far as iMac vs. MBpro, they are pretty much the same from what I understand. The iMac is just a laptop in an iMac case for the most part. I'd bet the new MBP's will be quicker than the Alu iMac because they are Penryn machines though. With that said, comparing a MBP and iMac with the same specs, they should be neck and neck.

I will say, even though I'm VERY happy with the iMac and LP8, I'll be getting a Mac Pro as soon as $$$ allows. With 8 cores, I won't need an upgrade for a very long time. On my Windows machine I was running a quad core and I don't think I could have bogged that thing down with a session unless I purposely tried by inserting tons of CPU hungry plugs. As it was, it could run over 250 Digi reverbs while simultaniously recording on 48 + tracks.

If you like, I can run some tests with the iMac and LP8 to se how far it can be pushed. Let me know how many tracks and how many/which plug-ins to use, and I'll post the results.

macrumors member

i'm pretty much interested in the same way. am going to buy an imac (2.8) to work with my music, though not lp, but cubase 4 (i suppose it's quite similar). i usually run plugins such as the arturia family, or the native instruments one and for fx, mostly waves and the like.
i'd like to know:

how many midi instrument channels
how many fx plugins
how many tracks in general

macrumors newbie

i'm pretty much interested in the same way. am going to buy an imac (2.8) to work with my music, though not lp, but cubase 4 (i suppose it's quite similar). i usually run plugins such as the arturia family, or the native instruments one and for fx, mostly waves and the like.
i'd like to know:

how many midi instrument channels
how many fx plugins
how many tracks in general

it can take til it explode

thx, K.xxx

Click to expand...

It's hard to say how many plug-ins because they all use different amounts of CPU, but I can tell you you'll be able to run lots of Verbs, delays, compressors and EQ's. At least the stuff that comes with Logic 8. Even Space Designer and Delay Designer are pretty efficient.

For the hell of it, I just did a test. I inserted a stereo track and on it inserted Space Designer, Delay Designer, a Linear Phase EQ, compressor and chorus. (all stock Logic plug-ins). I duplicated that track until I had 27 stereo tracks. I then imported the same wav file to each track. (a :60 commercial) The CPU was at 85 to 87%, but things weren't sluggish at all and played just fine. I had the audio engine set at 128 samples and 44.1k/16bit.

Of course this isn't really a 'real world' test, but it does give you some idea of what kind of power the iMac will give you with Logic.

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