Is an '07 Mac Pro worth it at this point in time?

Instead of buying a 5-year old Mac Pro, I would buy a Mac Mini Server for $1000. It has a 2Ghz quad core processor and 2 hard drives, firewire and the new Thunderbolt port. You can expand the RAM to 16 gig. Check out the specs. If you plan on keeping it a long time, it makes sense to buy a new machine.

lifenoise wrote:

.... You can expand the RAM to 16 gig. Check out the specs.....

SIXTEEN Gig?! Not eight?! 😮

Officially it's 8 gig but you can expand to 16 gig with OWC memory chips. I'm using them in both my Macs.

And if you need any further encouragement, I've been using a new Mac Mini Server for the last two or three months and I can't tell you how pleased I am with it - there have been quite a few problems reported here and elsewhere with Logic 9 running on Lion and I can honestly say I haven't had a single one.

Mesa23 wrote:

Aren't we all going to be installing Mountain Lion in a few months anyway?

Well, I wouldn't jump the gun like that exactly - my setup is functioning in a pretty solid way at the moment, which is exactly what I want it to do, so I won't update for the sake of it.

After upgrading my computer from a G5, I had a problem with my interface (Presonus Firebox, which was quite good) and got an Apogee One (the intention being to use it as a temporary measure) and there is a distinct difference - Apogee have had a long term experience with designing stuff for Macs, anyway, so if you're thinking about recording drum kits or ensembles of instruments, the Apogee Ensemble looks alright to me. The One is enough for me since I'm finally creating music on my own, so I have to do one thing at a time anyway.

MOTU have had a similar relationship with Macs, I haven't had any personal experience - there's plenty of stuff out there that's decent, but I'd look for some kind of quality rather than a host of features and then work with what you've got..

I understand what you mean, but the ordinary Minis have dual core i5 or i7 processors as opposed to the quad core processing of the server version - I can't afford to keep updating my hardware that often, so I figure the preferable option is to go for the higher processing power and the two built in hard drives are ideal for using in this situation. If there is any drawback to the Minis, replacing the hard drives isn't straightforward like on the G5 or Mac Pros, but there's a fair chance it won't happen during the five years or so usage I expect to get out of it before replacing it.

If you buy a new MMS, you don't have to run the Server setup part of the OS , so there are no problems there.

There's some further information in this thread, if you haven't seen it -

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3639546?tstart=0

It is recomended to record audio to a second drive for optimum performance with Logic or any DAW. If you buy an external drive you'll incur an extra expense and have to use a port on the Mini that you may need for something else. Also, the drive in the Mini is 5400 rpm. It's not really fast enough for recording audio. The MMS has dual 7200 rpm drives. Add in the quad core processor and it's the only way to go, in my opinion. Save up a little extra money and spend it on the MMS. It's the best value in the long run.

In the two HD scenario, where would be the best place to keep sample based instrumants, like Native instruments and Spectrasonics stuff?

Depends on where youre going to record the audio.. If youre going to use the second HD for your audio drive, I would get an external HD and use that for the instruments, especially seeing how big some of those sample libraries are. If youre not concerned about storage space, just put em on the first HD with the Mac OS. Its really just a matter of storage space, your RAM is where the performance is concerned when using those instruments, so get as much of that as you can too.

In a two drive system I partition a large system drive and use the 1st partition (fastest) for sample instruments and the second partition for the OS, the 2nd drive is used for audio only.

The Logic behind this decision: Keeps the system drive small enough that I can do complete "drive image" backups to the audio drive.

lifenoise wrote:

Also, the drive in the Mini is 5400 rpm. It's not really fast enough for recording audio.

If it was an audio only drive, a 5400 will do a remakable number of tracks... of course, faster is better!

I still use an old Acer laptop for live recording, it records anywhere between 8 to 12 44.1/24-bit tracks without a glitch.. and that's to a 5400RPM drive with the OS on it.