Garage band (imac) vs CUbase le 4 agony

T

trkdrmr

Guest
Ok so far, I am not impressed. I am really cranked about this.

I have been pouring over documentation of the Steinberg cu base le 4. It's not shaking hands with my presonus firebase studio. I am downloading about 200 megs worth of updates (at a pathetic 7kbps trickle) from the site. This software has been bang-your-head-on-the-wall frustrating. Perhaps it hates vista, and these patches won't help.

This is my last day of screwing with it. If the downloads don't help, this PC will be replaced *immediately* by a IMAC with garage band.

Anyone using garage band?

I just want to be able to record my kit digitally (1 terabyte external drive :) ) and maybe add video capability later.
 
I dont have much to say about garageband other then Ive had a good experience using it.

I only record a track from my MPC(sampler) into my girlfriends Macbook pro using garage band, everything was very fluent and the workflow was nice, very smooth overall and the quality of the recording was great.
 
I don't post much of my playing here, but what I do is through my Garage Band program.
I have two mics and a small mixer, with a USB out right to the Mac.
 
It's the end of an era for me. No more screwing around with PC multimedia.

I saw a demo of garage band, and it was intuitive, and effortless!

I purchased a 2.66 ghz IMAC and a 1 terabyte external drive (LACIE).

I am going to bump the mac up to 4gb.

I should be recording (when I get time) either tomorrow or Wednesday.

My new Trick side snare should be in this week as well.
 
It's the end of an era for me. No more screwing around with PC multimedia.

I saw a demo of garage band, and it was intuitive, and effortless!

I purchased a 2.66 ghz IMAC and a 1 terabyte external drive (LACIE).

I am going to bump the mac up to 4gb.

I should be recording (when I get time) either tomorrow or Wednesday.

My new Trick side snare should be in this week as well.

Nice! Great decision, to buy the Mac. After using a PC since I was 4, I finally saved up enough to get a Macbook Pro when I was 13. It is basically the best computer ever. From hardware, to software, to everything in between, everything is smooth and effortless. Soon, you'll be using PCs and saying "how did I ever live with this?" I promise.
 
I just ordered a 4gb sodimm module. Apple wanted $300 plus shipping, I found one from a reputable dealer for $57.00

I have dabbled with mac in the past, and the reasons/ excuses I used before not to buy one:

1) Gaming-- well, I don't PC game anymore. I have a PS/3 on my bigscreen.

2) Software reinvestment: well, there are enough free things out there like "Open office" that will work like MS office. And ivideo blows away windoze movie mangler.

A few of my friends have macs in various forms, so that helps.

I will still have my dual core AMD pc upstairs and the imac in my drumroom.

I am looking forward to pain-free multimedia.
 
What can I say? A wise decision. I've had my iMac for 2 years now and it's been nothing but a great computer. I bumped up the RAM to 2Gb (for £27 from ORCA) and run Logic Pro 8 as my main DAW. It's excellent. Logic 8 was a deal for me (student discount means £120) and is a great piece of software - but Garageband is not to be sniffed at for a free application.
 
What can I say? A wise decision. I've had my iMac for 2 years now and it's been nothing but a great computer. I bumped up the RAM to 2Gb (for £27 from ORCA) and run Logic Pro 8 as my main DAW. It's excellent. Logic 8 was a deal for me (student discount means £120) and is a great piece of software - but Garageband is not to be sniffed at for a free application.

Now I have an alternative software to go to if I outgrow garage band! There were not many alternatives on the pc that I could afford. They all cost $500+, and then you add specific hardware. I could drop a couple grand on just getting the software alone!

Not only did cubase not want to talk to the presonus input (firewire) but it was an insane "big brother" application. There was a long, multistep process to download a specific license, and give them your life's story to activate, and then another process to register from a "software license vault". Then there was a nearly 300mb download of patches only available from the steinberg site, and fed at a ludicrous dial-up like speed of 7kbps.

I am just glad that CRAPbase LE came with the purchase of my presonus firebase studio. The store offered a $249 upgrade (which I passed on, and very glad I did.)

I am going to my drumroom to make space on my table for the imac.
 
You can buy memory at OWC.com Other World Computing. About 1/3 of the Apple price.
I've done it for my laptop and my iMac
 
You can buy memory at OWC.com Other World Computing. About 1/3 of the Apple price.
I've done it for my laptop and my iMac

Cool! I have saved the link, thanks!

Now maybe I need to look at an eventual source for software....
 
Now I have an alternative software to go to if I outgrow garage band! There were not many alternatives on the pc that I could afford. They all cost $500+, and then you add specific hardware. I could drop a couple grand on just getting the software alone!

Not only did cubase not want to talk to the presonus input (firewire) but it was an insane "big brother" application. There was a long, multistep process to download a specific license, and give them your life's story to activate, and then another process to register from a "software license vault". Then there was a nearly 300mb download of patches only available from the steinberg site, and fed at a ludicrous dial-up like speed of 7kbps.

I am just glad that CRAPbase LE came with the purchase of my presonus firebase studio. The store offered a $249 upgrade (which I passed on, and very glad I did.)

I am going to my drumroom to make space on my table for the imac.

Not sure how much Logic 8 is in US Dollars without the student discount; but the price is still much less than Cubase and most of the industry rivals. It's a great bit of software and whilst the install is huge (46 Gb) it's well worth the three hours it takes. The copy protection is simple as well, it is JUST a serial number. The other DAW's I've seen are all generally very good, but Logic wins on the price and ease of use. It's just as powerful as the others as well really (with the possible exception of Pro Tools with regards to audio editing, but that's a pain in the backside). So - it's all good!

EDIT: I just looked it up and Logic Studio 8 is $500. But there is Logic Express, which is the equivalent of Cubase LE for Logic. Although with a much improved functionality. That runs to $200 directly from Apple. I used the previous version (Logic Express 7) and that was a good bit of software. I just wanted the extra power of the professional version seeing as this is for my degree.
 
Not sure how much Logic 8 is in US Dollars without the student discount; but the price is still much less than Cubase and most of the industry rivals. It's a great bit of software and whilst the install is huge (46 Gb) it's well worth the three hours it takes. The copy protection is simple as well, it is JUST a serial number. The other DAW's I've seen are all generally very good, but Logic wins on the price and ease of use. It's just as powerful as the others as well really (with the possible exception of Pro Tools with regards to audio editing, but that's a pain in the backside). So - it's all good!

It seems to be about $449. Even if it was the same price as cubase, I'd go for it instead, because now I have that option. I also enjoy that I am no longer fighting the evil forces of the vista code, or cruel, user-resistant apps like cubase.

I *should* be able to squeeze 46 GB install somewhere on either my 500gb internal or 1 terabyte external drive.

Of course you know, this means I will have to try to work my digicam (firewire) into the equation.

My ultimate goal is primarily to get at least decent quality audio, and eventually...video. I promise that If I ever put anything on you tube, I will edit out the awkward moments of climbing onto the throne and preparing to play.
 
I'm not sure how the external drive will deal with it. For me, I had to install onto my main system drive (my 120Gb internal) but if your 1Tb is a FireWire drive, it might be entirely different. They can be used as boot drives. Never having tried it though, I wouldn't know. Either way you have much better storage options than I do.
 
I'm not sure how the external drive will deal with it. For me, I had to install onto my main system drive (my 120Gb internal) but if your 1Tb is a FireWire drive, it might be entirely different. They can be used as boot drives. Never having tried it though, I wouldn't know. Either way you have much better storage options than I do.

Yep, the Lacie is either usb or firewire. (It was on sale for $199.)
hd_2bignetwork.jpg

2big-Quadra_drives.jpg


LaCie 2big Quadra
2-BAY RAID I USB I FireWire 400 & 800 I eSATA
1TB
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11140
 
FireWire is more likely to accept the install. USB external drives won't, which is what my problem is. On the other hand, I don't need massive internal storage anyway and I tend to use my external drive for most of my projects and back up on my music department server. Comes in handy!
 
FireWire is more likely to accept the install. USB external drives won't, which is what my problem is. On the other hand, I don't need massive internal storage anyway and I tend to use my external drive for most of my projects and back up on my music department server. Comes in handy!

Yep. Ironically, the imac is also almost as small as a laptop, given it's slim form factor.

I could not pass up $199 for that lacie. I may never fill it, but there is 3x the space I have ever had on a system (the most before being 320gb).

I was more concerned with proper amounts of ram. The imac ships with 1gb, which on a mac seems to work *ok.* 4gb will rock, it would be like 16gb on a pc, thanks to app bloat.
 
Well 1Gb always did me well until I put Logic on here. Then on the advice of a technician I put the extra gig in. I did actually have a major software conflict on here that stopped Logic from working to start with (never got to the bottom of it) and actually installed my system again from scratch - but even that was relatively painless. Backed up my user files to my external drive, put the disks in and followed instructions. No problems at all and now my system is nice and clean. Result.
 
Well 1Gb always did me well until I put Logic on here. Then on the advice of a technician I put the extra gig in. I did actually have a major software conflict on here that stopped Logic from working to start with (never got to the bottom of it) and actually installed my system again from scratch - but even that was relatively painless. Backed up my user files to my external drive, put the disks in and followed instructions. No problems at all and now my system is nice and clean. Result.

Good! I am not attempting anything until I ensure the OS is up to date, as is the rest of the software. I am probably going to be at least 6 months away from going to something heavy duty like Logic.

I also want to get Sony vegas software for the video work.

Incidentally, vista ran like a slug uphill until I got at least 4gb.
 
Were you running Vista in 64-bit? There's a little scandal going on at the moment whereby Vista will only recognise 3Gb of RAM in 32-bit. Which is more than a little ridiculous given the amount of system resources it consumes. Roll on Windows 7...
 
Were you running Vista in 64-bit? There's a little scandal going on at the moment whereby Vista will only recognise 3Gb of RAM in 32-bit. Which is more than a little ridiculous given the amount of system resources it consumes. Roll on Windows 7...

I did after a while. It's recognizing all of it now. It DIDN'T on my older machine's initial install. (Circa vista's release) After a few gigs of patches, I could see 4gb register.

If this pc I am on now (upstairs) ever needed to be replaced, it would likely lose it's job to a macbook pro.

Note that apple builds on os/x, and as good as it was when it started, I know it's better now. My friends swear by it. This will be windows 3rd major reincarnation since os/x started.
 
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