MacOS

[lazybassplayer]

Being a college student and interested in getting into recording, I noticed that I can buy logic 7 express for $150, which is awesome. My computer is a year old G4 with 1.2 Ghz and 768 MBs of RAM. If I bought an external firewire hard drive and installed logic on that and did all of my music recording on that drive, would Logic run fairly smoothly? Or do I need a more powerful processor?

[Lancaster]

You should have no problems with Logic Express on that machine, though a little more RAM would be helpful.

However, install and run Logic on your internal drive and use the Firewire drive for storing the audio files only.

[lazybassplayer]

Do you have any suggestions for a hard drive (about 120-160 gigs)? I've heard about a lot of them being unreliable...

Also, I was thinking of getting an audio interface (for my bass), a MIDI controller, and a mic or two...do you have any suggestions for any of those as well? I was thinking about the Korg Kontrol 49 and the M-Audio Mobile-Pre.

I want to keep it as inexpensive as possible but without buying crap components because as soon as I get a real job I don't want to upgrade EVERYTHING...

[sevensinner]

You might want to check out the Alesis Photon X25, it has built in mic preamps and an audio I/O as well as a 25-key MIDI keyboard and a bunch of knobs to boot. And its $199.

Basically if you can run Garageband 2.x (iLife '05) you should be able to run Logic Express just fine - it all depends on how many tracks you need and whether you want to use software instruments and plugins/effects.

As for hard drives, personally I like the external Seagates because they're quiet and have 5-year warranties (instead of 3-years)

[Rimmer]

Originally posted by lazybassplayer
Do you have any suggestions for a hard drive (about 120-160 gigs)? I've heard about a lot of them being unreliable...

Also, I was thinking of getting an audio interface (for my bass), a MIDI controller, and a mic or two...do you have any suggestions for any of those as well? I was thinking about the Korg Kontrol 49 and the M-Audio Mobile-Pre.

I want to keep it as inexpensive as possible but without buying crap components because as soon as I get a real job I don't want to upgrade EVERYTHING...

Still recommending the US122 as a very reliable OSX USB interface with decent enough 24bit convertors. Solid enough to chuck in a bag and survive as well..

Rimmer

[DonK]

I occasionally run Logic 7 Pro on my PowerBook 1.5ghz G4 w/ 512mb of RAM and it does okay. It doesn't compare to running on my dual 2ghz PM with 4gb of RAM, but it does okay. You should be okay on you iBook, a little more RAM wouldn't be a bad idea.

[andershoeg]

you can definately run Logic on that machine! I have the same ibook, though I have changed the internal hard drive to a 5400 rpm, with the same amount of ram. I use Logic Pro 7. I recently recorded (up to 25 tracks, audio, 24bit, 44,1khz) our latest demo on it, and it worked just fine. However, if you have the internal hd that came with the ibook, then it is probably a good idea to use a faster external one. Btw, used a Motu 828mkII interface.
Mixed our demo on my powermac. The ibook is a fine machine, but when it comes to heavy plugin-loads it cannot handle it. But if you are just getting into recording, you probably won't use huge amounts of plugins right away.
Hope this can help you a bit. Anymore questions, feel free to ask
B.R. andershoeg