you can easily use a minimac as a node....

it's not officially supported but it works fine

tried it with my powerbook and two mini's

it takes about five minutes to setup and totally transparent to use....

if you add the node app as a startup item you don't even need mouse and keyboard.... just turn it on and use it as extra power.....

Thanks for that info but I saw on the apple discussion boards and most people didn't see much of a difference with using anything other than the G5. How much of a difference should I expect if I used one mac mini? 10%, 20%? (Please tell me in percentage).

Also, do you actually save some tracks on mac mini or just use the processing power? I am just a little confused as to how it works.

on my 1.5 powerbook i got about 110% more power from each 1.42 mini....

(i measured how many notes i could play on an instrument)

so with 2 mini's i had approx. 3 times the power...

this is probably because they don't have to handle anything other than the node app...

and it works by just pressing the node button on a track.... the processing moves to the node..... peace of cake...... i love apple 8-)

Cool, I have a Powerbook and a mini, Now I just need to upgrade from Express to the Pro version.

Oh Santa Please! Puleez!

:roll: 8-) 8)

WOW! I should expect to at least double the processing power then. That's awesome! I must get a mac mini now. :-)

I have one more question, do I have to worry about RAM/Hard drive speed of the Mac mini?

i would put a gig in it.....

the ones i tried had a gig each....

swanmusic wrote:

Oh and the OS is what a pleasure!

:D :D :D

and yupp, everything above a gig of ram will do good.
it's always nicer to have a fast HD, but it will push the price up, so get what you can afford... if you can get / afford a fast HD for the mini, you can even use him as a 2nd audio HD...thingy.

But do you store anything on the harddrive of mac mini? If not, I wouldn't like to get another hard drive.

I noticed a major difference when I opened a couple of applications at the same time with out any problems. I was amazed to see that. I could in fact play different music pieces made in different programs like Logic, Reason, Garageband etc at the same time and there wasn't even a smallest glitch.

Sounds like you had a *really* crappy PC if it couldn't even open 2 apps simultaneously. This is by no means indicative of PCs in general.

I can easily run Photoshop and Nuendo at the same time while watching an MPG on my second monitor. I routinely work with multiple Adobe and Macromedia applications open at the same time, no sweat. For my money it's frustrating to hear people speak about garbage PCs vs. Macs, which seems mostly to the case. Decent grade PCs run multiple apps with ease and have for many years now.

8-)

swanmusic wrote: But do you store anything on the harddrive of mac mini? If not, I wouldn't like to get another hard drive.

if you run it as a node it won't matter what hd is in it..... AFAIK

Calgary wrote:

I noticed a major difference when I opened a couple of applications at the same time with out any problems. I was amazed to see that. I could in fact play different music pieces made in different programs like Logic, Reason, Garageband etc at the same time and there wasn't even a smallest glitch.

Sounds like you had a *really* crappy PC if it couldn't even open 2 apps simultaneously. This is by no means indicative of PCs in general.

I can easily run Photoshop and Nuendo at the same time while watching an MPG on my second monitor. I routinely work with multiple Adobe and Macromedia applications open at the same time, no sweat. For my money it's frustrating to hear people speak about garbage PCs vs. Macs, which seems mostly to the case. Decent grade PCs run multiple apps with ease and have for many years now.

8-)

that's my understanding too....

Calgary, I have one of the fastest PCs with 3.2GHz processor and 2 Gig of Corsair RAM with all the quality components. I didn't have that much to complain but when it comes to a situation when you run out of memory/resources, PCs tend to just hang and I have experienced that alot. With macs, since they are known to do better memory/resources management (because of the best OS!!!), you hardly see them freezing. That's what I meant by what I said.

I like the OS, how easy it is to use and also how cool (intuitive) everything looks. I made my research, converted all my samples that use and choose the applications that I use the most for Mac OS (plug-ins and stuff) and then made the switch. I don't see myself switching back to PCs again.