iMac Vs nMac Pro for Music Work

[fastlanephil]

For music production is the iMac a better choice for many smaller studio and home studio users?

Lets’ start with the iMac. A 27” i5 iMac with 16 GB of memory, 3 TB Fusion Drive and the 4GB GPU runs $2699.00. You purchase two of these and you’ll have a master-slave DAW using VE Pro 5 ($270)over ethernet.

Total price. about $5400.

The quad core Mac Pro is $2900. You’ll add two TB Displays for an additional $2000. Then you’ll add some external storage for at least $800 to equal what the two iMacs offer. I'm leaving out back up storage for now.

Total Price $5700.

If your software can take advantage of the Mac Pro dual GPUs it looks like a a pretty good horse race between these two configurations. But as far as I know there is very little audio software that does tap the GPU.Apple’s Logic X will but that is probably mostly for audio recording with some effects.

So for right now and the near future those two iMac’s together will probably kick but on a Mac Pro. And you have two computers for greater flexibility.

I’ll still wait for some reviews and tests of the Mac Pro to make my decision though.

 

[propower]

You would probably have to convince me first that you need two imacs
Spec wise there is not enough difference between a quad nMP and top imac that makes 2 imacs needed...

But I will play a bit -
For music work - Avid HD Native - I chose a 3.5GHz, i7, 27" imac with 256G SSD (The 3.4G i5 would be 90% as fast on just about everything). I don't do spinning drives and for a sample intensive environment (I mostly do live acoustic instruments - light VI work) I would heavily suggest investing in Thunderbolt Raid - no matter where you end up this will be a core component. The 4G video card looks like a waaste for this but it is small delta $$

If you REALLY need a slave machine - now pretty much any modern mac will do that . MacMini - imac (21.5" would work great) - 2009 or newer MacPro even.

i5 Mac Mini + $300 27" hdmi ips monitor + same imac as mine would be in the $3500 range...

 

[iBug2]

For music production is the iMac a better choice for many smaller studio and home studio users?

Lets’ start with the iMac. A 27” i5 iMac with 16 GB of memory, 3 TB Fusion Drive and the 4GB GPU runs $2699.00. You purchase two of these and you’ll have a master-slave DAW using VE Pro 5 ($270)over ethernet.

Total price. about $5400.

The quad core Mac Pro is $2900. You’ll add two TB Displays for an additional $2000. Then you’ll add some external storage for at least $800 to equal what the two iMacs offer. I'm leaving out back up storage for now.

Total Price $5700.

If your software can take advantage of the Mac Pro dual GPUs it looks like a a pretty good horse race between these two configurations. But as far as I know there is very little audio software that does tap the GPU.Apple’s Logic X will but that is probably mostly for audio recording with some effects.

So for right now and the near future those two iMac’s together will probably kick but on a Mac Pro. And you have two computers for greater flexibility.

I’ll still wait for some reviews and tests of the Mac Pro to make my decision though.

Well, I enjoy playing with Logic as an amateur composer and I always wanted to try VSL MIR, which is a spatial modeling tool for virtual orchestras. And since the introduction they always recommended at least an 8 core with 16 threads, which I didn't have. And I'll never have with an iMac either. I'm sure everything still works but the recommended config for such a software is above the iMac for now.

 

[fastlanephil]

You would probably have to convince me first that you need two imacs
.

I really don't need two Macs but would like two 27" displays. I am using a 27" display and aI have 22 " HP display that can be rotated. My post was more of a general comparison.

f you REALLY need a slave machine - now pretty much any modern mac will do that . MacMini - imac (21.5" would work great) - 2009 or newer MacPro even.

I do already have a 2011 27" i5 iMac. I just returned a 2.6 i7 fusion drive Mac Mini to Apple because it was crashing with the Vienna Ensemble software but that's a side story. My idea is to use my current iMac as the slave where my large collection of samples resides. That avoids going through all the authorizations on a different machine.

True, the two iMacs would probably be overkill right now but probably not later.

The 4G video card looks like a waaste for this but it is small delta $$

That's pretty much just a little insurance in case OPENCL can tap them someday.

I compose mostly orchestral and hybrid pop/experimental/orchestral music. The better libraries can be real resource hogs especially as you build up large track counts.

Really, two iMac's is a fairly modest setup compared to some of I've seen.