I have both a dual 2.0 G5 and a 1.2 powerbook for remote recording, running DP.
While the powerbook does an adequate job or recording multitracks, it is nowhere near what I need for mixing. If i had to choose, I'd choose the tower, no question about it. Its nice to have both, though. The powerbook gives me the freedom of going out and do location recording, then bringing them home to the G5 to mix.

hi,

welcome to RO

to start of, if you decide on a G4 or any mac i highly recomend let your hands of cubase, or go for a PC laptop / tower instead, if you want to stick to cubase, cubase performes badly (very) on a mac, if mac then run logic or DP, logic express is very good if you are on a budget... i have recently used it (i am a logic diehard user!!!) and was amazed of how much it delievers for 300 pounds (UK) compared to 700 logic pro...
(and it has all the plugs and instruments to keep you going for a while!)

secondly a laptop has the atvantage of space and portability for say field recording... disatvantage is that you can't expand that much in terms of harddrives, extra memory is more expensive, UAD- cards are not around as firewires, and so on... and mac-wise g5s are much faster then g4 books, however if you do say need an average of 24 to 32 tracks and a 'normal' amount of plugs... not tons of reverbs and the like... then you are fine with any powerbook or even ibook above 1ghz clockspeed and 1gb of ram (i used once logic express at a friends place on an very old g4 (single CPU) with about 24tracks a good amount of plugs an some midi instruments and got away with it!, but the CPU was at his utterly limit!) you would need (recomended!) an external harddrive / firewire 7200rpm for audio and an interface, there you have the choice of a multiple I/O one or a simple two I/O and maybee hook up a mixer to merge your signals external like mics, keys, guitar... blah blah
i would probably go for a motu or fireface and do the mixing in the DAW...

hope it helps, it's helpfull if you can state your purpose and needs a bit more to give you a more specific answer... like what type of recording / music.. lots of mics or just a guitar or lots of midi, do you have already say an outbord mixer and the like...

cheers
a.

maybee you want a midi keyboard as well via usb...

a tower is certainly more powerfull, but big bulky and not to be moved around, so this choice is yours...

I use PC as my platform with Cubase SX3. I am considering a mac purchase due to their proliferation in the business - I use macs at work and am not totally convinced by them but appreciate that they are taking over the recording world and that PC is no longer the de facto product for recording and mixing.

I am waiting with anticipation for Apple's next generation of computers using Intel chips. Right now I would consider buying a G5 twin processor powermac - they do a great job on sequencing, recording and mixing and Logic (which I envy) is Mac only now. The only worry would be that Apple are soon going to feature Intel chips in their Macs.

I wouldn't buy a Powerbook though until the next generation - the G4 chip was innovative in it's time but lags way behind the G5 and PC based chips such as the latest version of the Intel P4 and Centrino chips and the AMD 64. The G5 will not feature in a notebook, they will skip over to the Intel chips.

I run Cubase on my Dell P4 3.2 GHZ laptop with 1GB ddr and it totally outperforms by a country mile my friend's Powerbook g4 1.5Ghz with 1GB ram on almost everything, including Cubase. I mean, the PowerBook isn't awful or anything, but it's satisfactory rather than good for this purpose.

Cubase on Mac

Cubase IS terrible on mac. I'm a Pro Tools fan personally, I'm running a DIGI 001 on a dual processor G4 (867). But if you don't have the money for Pro Tools I would suggest Logic Express as well. It's cheaper than Cubase and is 10 times the program.

66

Many people agree with you about Cubase performance on the Mac - I have seen some posts that suggest the SX3.+ versions run better than previous versions on Mac and especially Nuendo 3 and above are now more stable on Mac. I don't know this from experience though before anyone flames me on this :)

My friend had a G5 dual processor set up with Logic and I like his set up a lot but being a PC user no longer have the option to use Logic, so I stick with Cubase for all it's faults and I really have grown to like Cubase SX. I find it to perform well and is very stable on PC.

Another thumbs down for SX on the Mac, from my experience as a former SX owner. I was able to get 40%-60% more instances of virtual synths and effects using logic7 and DP4.

8)

Im sorry...I was called into the reserve and never got a chance to answer this. Now that I am enlisted for a few months, Im not gonna have the time I originally thougt. Fuk! That means I need to get my studio together ASAP and have it waiting when I return home.
Is ebay a good place to get a G4? What parameters does it need to have? Thanx alot for the help guys

Check out Powermax in portland Or. (no sales tax)they are an autorized reseller, that also carries a selection of used boxes.

I bought my mini and DV camcorder from them.

http://

8)

I got out of the AF reserves when Daddy Bush started deploying.
:wink:

Ok guys...Im bak in town for a while and reviving this thread now that things have slowed down in the GUlf. So, I heard that G4's are better for the money at this point in time...like instead of getting a brand new g5, I might as well get a beefed up G4. Im gonna find some listings on ebay and post the links here just to be sure Im getting the computer with the right parameters.
I just want to get this studio runnin now that I have time to pull things together. Hope yall are still listening.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Apple-PowerMac-G4-Dual-1-4Ghz-1024MB-120HD-SuperDriv_W0QQitemZ5822406845QQcategoryZ51035QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/G4-Powermac-Dual-Processor-1-42-GHz-with-warranty_W0QQitemZ5822879103QQcategoryZ14912QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Apple-PowerMac-G4-Dual-1-42-apple-20-cinema-display_W0QQitemZ5822510884QQcategoryZ51035QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Here are a few I just pulled out...I think I might stick with the 1.42GHZ just so I dont get hit too hard with the technology glitch in a few years. My budget for a computer is around $1500....