iMac 17" for recording

[ironh]

I'm upgrading from Bondi Blue iMac and looking for success stories or horror stories regarding the iMac 17" system. I may need to record multipe tracks at a time and I'm wondering what additional gear or software to consider purchasing for my needs.

[cmchamp]

Use an external firewire drive for recording. What software do you presently have, and is it OSX capable?

[ironh]

I'm currently using Cakewalk Metro and I know it's not OS X compatible. Software is another consideration. I'm thinking about DP4 or one of the Emagic programs and a MOTU 828 or 896. I also have a Roland 840GX which I'd like to find some use for like synchronizing it to the computer and that will require an interface that has synchronization functions. My current iMac is 233mghz and that's pretty slow by today's standards so that's the first purchase I'm looking to make.

[mightypudge]

Wait for OS X software and go for it. I've used an Mbox/Pro Tools 6 setup on a new 17" iMac 1 GHz with no problems and a pretty high track count. I imagine running DP4 would be fine too.

[ironh]

Thanks Andrew. What, if any, external hard-drive are you using?

[mightypudge]

Originally posted by ironh
Thanks Andrew. What, if any, external hard-drive are you using?

On the iMac my friend runs a FireWire drive that he built with a WD Caviar ATA133 hard drive built into a Granite shell.

Myself, I use a G4 AGP with two internal ATA133 hard drives connected to a Sonnet Tempo ATA133 PCI card.

[ironh]

I most certainly will get a new computer, iMac, Powermac G4, or Powerbook G4. After reading many articles online, still haven't figured out if I can record more than two tracks similtaneously with the iMac or Powerbook. I'm under the impression that an additional card is necessary and slots are not available on iMacs and powerbooks (maybe I'm wrong). To record similtaneous tracs do I have to have a Powermac G4?

Secondly, what is AGP and ATA and is that what comes installed in any of the new apple computers?

Excuse me for not being all that savy! I used to engineer at an analog(tape) studio and on my current set-up, I've recorded only one stereo track at a time on computer. I want to get beyond that with my next computer.

[cmchamp]

You are correct in thinking that the iMac and PowerBook won't offer expandability of PCI slots as a tower would. With FireWire devices such as the MOTU 828 or 896 you'll be able to get 8 tracks at once, or add up to three of those together for up to 24 at once via firewire.
AGP stands for Advanced Graphics Port, Apple Graphics Protocol, I don't know really, it's just the PCI slot used for graphics that runs at 4x the speed of the rest of the PCI bus.
ATA is the standard hard drive interface for almost all computers now.
Check out Apple's site, come back with more questions.