Mac experts please

[LaloGS]

We are looking into getting a new Mac Pro quad specifically for a program called Finale, which will be used to compose classical music scores for the full orchestra (lots of RAM 8GB to start, but up to 16GB eventually). We've been told that RAM is more important than speed for the Finale application.

My questions are these: the Quad version of the Mac Pro comes with 2-2.66GHz Intel processors, but can be upgraded to 3.0s. Any idea if the 2.66s will be sufficient to work with? Can the 2.66 Intel processors be upgraded at a later date if necessary? Or will we be stuck with the 2.66s permanently?

Also, many Finale users tend to have 3-750GB HDs installed in the tower, but none have been able to tell us why they need this much storage space when they have a 16x optical R/W Superdrive for storing finished scores and music on CDs. Any ideas about why these 3-750GB HDs might be necessary?

Any help will be appreciated.

 

[trawler69]

From brief research it would seem that you may be overestimating system requirements. With these progs that use sampled sounds, the more ram you have the more sounds / instruments you can have. They say a G4 processor or above is adequate so a Mac pro Quad could probably extrapolate the universe back to the big bang in the space of a semi quaver. I would guess the reason for the large hard drives is to store the raw wav data from all the instruments before mixing it down to the finished item. Don't quote me on that though I only did brief research and based it on other stuff I know.

 

[keys]

Hello,

You should find the quad Mac to be a great computer. My recommendation would be to not necessarily worry about the 2.66 - 3.00 jump but to add more memory for your computer when using finale. You don't need the large hard drives for the finished scores as the scores themselves are very small. You can see this by going to the makemusic website and downloading scores that others have created. Where you will need the drive space is for the garritan personal orchestra and any other instruments you purchase at a later date. There are some instrument samples that take up large amounts of room and getting this space up front will make this a smart purchase. For example, EastWest sound is releasing their new piano samples in a couple of weeks and each piano takes up 60 gb.. 240 gb total. This is enormous. The newer program use Direct From Disc (DFD) to read the instruments as you play them on a MIDI keyboard instead of loading it all into RAM but having more RAM will definitely lower the burden on your CPUs. This is why I would suggest adding memory if you have the budget. Although this is definitely something you can do at a later time. I have not purchased the new Intel Quad Mac as of yet because we just purchased PowerPc Quads one year ago.. so waiting until Leopard releases etc before changing anything up. but the Quads are awesome machines and can handle pretty much anything you throw at them.

 

[prfplum]

If you are looking into buying ram and hard drives, the MacPro has made it extrordinarily easy to install them yourself. I would suggest ordering from OtherWorldComputing.com not from Apple (just get the minimum RAM and HD from them (you'll end up pulling out the drive anyway - or get 1 big one from them and a pair from OWC) - a 750GB Seagate perpendicular HD is $250 and 8GB (in 2GB modules is $900) You'd probably be best off buying one 500 for system and stuff and then RAIDing 2 500's together for storing your instruments that requrire fast hard-drive speeds. (The Seagate 7200 perpendiculars at 500GB are $150, and work great)

 

[LaloGS]

Thanks everybody these are all very helpful answers to my ignorant questions.

Would you believe I've been on Macs since they wee called Lisa, but the technology has swept past me since I retired. It moves like lightning.

 

[andysayshi]

Finale 2007 for Macintosh®

G4 or higher recommended. OS 10.3.9 and higher.
CD or DVD-ROM drive.
800x600 minimum monitor resolution.
Minimum 256MB RAM (1GB or more recommended for optional use of Garritan sounds / Kontakt Player: more RAM = more available sounds).
200MB hard drive space required for software and user manual. An additional 800MB is required for all Garritan sounds.

Personally I'd email the company with questions before buying all that RAM. The current ceiling of accessible RAM per application in Mac OS is 3GB, so unless Finale uses some kind of background processing to get past that, it can't use more than 3GB. I have a brand new Mac Pro 2.66Ghx Quad with 4GB RAM and it is fantastically fast. 4 or 5GB is a nice way to provide your main application with 3GB and still have some overhead for OS and additional applications.

The advantage of installing multiple drives, apart from capacity, is speed. I have 3x750GB drives striped in a RAID 0 configuration (they appear as one 2.1 Terabyte drive) which are capable of around 150 megabytes per second of sustained read/write access. That's huge, more than Finale will ever need.

As mentioned above, installing the drives is incredibly easy. The Mac Pro cases are the best engineered cases I've ever used.

 

[keys]

I agree.. dropping that kind of money on RAM probably isn't necessary. It is such an easy thing to add later if you need it and cheaper to get from resellers such as Crucial.

I have run every possible thing i can throw at the machine on 4 GB of RAM including Motion, Final Cut Studio, and Compressor at the same time. It handles load very well and Finale should not pose a challenge. I currently run Finale on a PC so I haven't tested on the MAC but it is not a resource hog until you begin using many Garritan Personal Orchestra samples.

Just an fyi.. if you had not noticed, the Garritan included with Finale is not the full version. Just so that you are aware. It has many of the orchestral instruments of the full version but not all.

 

[_AJ_]

We are looking into getting a new Mac Pro quad specifically for a program called Finale, which will be used to compose classical music scores for the full orchestra (lots of RAM 8GB to start, but up to 16GB eventually). We've been told that RAM is more important than speed for the Finale application.

My questions are these: the Quad version of the Mac Pro comes with 2-2.66GHz Intel processors, but can be upgraded to 3.0s. Any idea if the 2.66s will be sufficient to work with?

Yes is should be heaps

Can the 2.66 Intel processors be upgraded at a later date if necessary? Or will we be stuck with the 2.66s permanently?

Yes it should be easy to upgrade a mac pro just like a pc but the amount of upgradability comes down to the motherboard and chipset compatability

Also, many Finale users tend to have 3-750GB HDs installed in the tower, but none have been able to tell us why they need this much storage space when they have a 16x optical R/W Superdrive for storing finished scores and music on CDs. Any ideas about why these 3-750GB HDs might be necessary?

Any help will be appreciated.

probably for a back up cd's and dvd's will eventually not work or break so you can backup everything you do to the computer on 2 hard drives to be certain but its up to you

 

[LaloGS]

Thanks much people. We are working long distance and since we live in Colombia South America, many of your suggestions are most welcome, since there appears to be some sort of caveat against selling some of the hardware outside the US.

We are limited to a Quad with the 2.66 Processors. HDs shouldn't be a problem.
Best,
Gary

 

[goodboy]

Can the 2.66 Intel processors be upgraded at a later date if necessary? Or will we be stuck with the 2.66s permanently?

Yes it should be easy to upgrade a mac pro just like a pc but the amount of upgradability comes down to the motherboard and chipset compatability

While you can technically upgrade the proccessors in a Quad (slightly out of date link), doing so will almost surely violate your warranty. Also, such an upgrade is far more involved than simply installing ram or a new HD.

We are limited to a Quad with the 2.66 Processors.

That took care of that.

 

[andysayshi]

^ bw92116 is dead right. Personally, I'd get a 2.66Ghz Quad, 5GB RAM and 2x750GB Hard drives, striped as a 1.5TB RAID. If money is no object, add a third 750GB drive. As I mentioned above, Finale's only system-heavy requirement is SPEED of drive access, in order to read multiple sample streams in realtime - thus the 3 drives. It's not particularly about capacity.

This system is more than adequate for Finale. You have the option to add more RAM and HD in the future if required. Forget the possibility of upgrading the CPU - by the time you need to there will be faster machines available.

 

[LaloGS]

Thanks Andy and everyone else that has taken the time to respond.
You've answered my question I was going to ask about the RAID.

Regarding what Finale says about requirements, they really only talk about minimums, because that way they can sell more product. After being in contact with several Finale users they are recommending lots of ram and at least 3 if not 4 750 HDs.

I guess the Raid hardware links the HDs into one segmented HD. Yes?

 

[keys]

Actually, Finale is a little more than just a music sequencer for editing music. Although notating music is its primary purpose, its has the ability to play back your music using vst plugins of virtual instruments and this can be very demanding on your computer's resources as previously noted. This is the reason for your readings of many users having large hard drives and larger need of RAM. The virtual instruments can be very demanding on a system. If you intend to listen to your created works being played back as you create them on your computer then you will want to consider this as well. You will want to know what requirements the virtual instruments you are buying will require as well. For instance, I have the Bosendorfer 290 installed for my piano and the Garritan full version installed for the orchestra.. the 2 running simultaneously can use a lot of resources and tax the system quite heavily. However, simply loading Finale and using its generic instrument samples will not use very much of your computer's resources.

 

[thermodynamics]

Unless you're running a bunch of the latest, greatest features of Finale or a bunch of virtual instruments, a machine from the mid-90's will do more than fine. I started working with Finale on a 486 with many of the fundamental, basic tools that are still in use today. The 486 with 8MB RAM did more than fine.

Again, figuring out what you're going to use this machine for is probably the most important. If you need the latest, greatest features, you need something with lots of power. If you're just using it for its notation features, a G4 will do just fine.

 

[LaloGS]

OK, this is the configuration we are getting prices on right now:

Mac Pro Quad
2— 2.66 Intel Processors
8 GB RAM memory in 4—2GB chips plus the one 2GB chip the Quad is shipped with.
1—250 GB HD (shipped with)
3 750 GB HDs
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB graphics card
1 Quad Raid to tie the 4 HDs together as if they are one HD.
20" Apple Cinema flat screen display
1—16x Super Drive
key board & mighty mouse
Running OS X Tiger with a free upgrade to Leopard when it is available.

Additionally, we will purchase a small Laser printer to print the scores, and a Bose Computer system for better sound quality on the playback.

What do you think? Anything else we might find useful using Finale to compose for a full Symphony orchestra?

Since we are in Colombia South America and the US dollar is so weak right now, we ought to be able to save at least a 3rd of the US price on this equipment.

 

[andysayshi]

Sounds great, but two points:

1 Quad Raid to tie the 4 HDs together as if they are one HD.

Not sure if you're talking about a hardware RAID controller here, or something. The MacPro has everything you need internally to stripe using RAID0.

Note that in a RAID, all the drives must be same size (or you'll lose lots of their capacity). So if you buy 3x750GB drives you'll stripe them as 1 drive, leaving the 250GB drive seperate for a system/OS drive. That's how I'd do it.

a Bose Computer system for better sound quality on the playback

Don't go cheap on audio equipment if you want great sound. Bose make many different systems these days for many budgets - if you're spending all this cash on gear, expect to spend 1 or 2 thousand on a really good monitoring system.

True audiophiles sneer at Bose because of it's poor sonic accuracy (though personally I like Bose gear). For truly accurate audio monitoring there are better options.