Thanks for the reply, Ben! You say 'not fast enough', but the loops are basically a 'load once' item once they are chosen and become part of a project, or instrument, right? Therefore the speed (or lack thereof) of the network is only apparent during the loading of the project, correct? What other kinds of 'problems' that you reference do you think I might run into?
Of course, if something is being streamed in real-time then that's another story and the reason why I posted the question in the first place--to be doubly sure I understand how loops are used in the Logic environment (I'm old SVP power-user, so my 'user-paradigm' of sequencing is a bit old...I'm otherwise a MIDI-head just getting into plugins and soft instruments and such).
The only thing in my previous experience analogous to Apple loops was using Samplecell cards to load samples triggered in the sequencer. I'm assuming Apple loops are used similarly but I have this nagging suspicion that I may not have the whole story? Apple loops seem more flexible than the old 'load-n-trigger' paradigm. If there is a scenario where Apple loops are repeatedly accessed in real-time by a project containing them, then that's what I want to know about...what kind of performance overhead am I looking at?
The reason I'm interested in off-loading them is simply to maximize project space on my fast internal drive (see my user-details) but at the same time my processing power is (obviously) limited on a Mac-mini so I want to get a good sense of where the overhead can reside and where the tradeoffs can be made. External hd's aren't really an option because my one FW port is being used for an Ensemble, and while I *could* daisy-chain a drive on that bus, I would prefer not to add to the bus-traffic in that way. Hence, the desire to keep my project space as big as possible.
Parenthetically, I'd be interested to know how well additional Mac-minis could be integrated as Logic nodes, as that would be a way to mitigate processing overhead on my (measly) 2-core system...but I love the small Macmini footprint and silence of operation! Are folks out there actively (and successfully) doing that?
