Anybody own an iMac?

Bill Llewellyn · Post by **Bill Llewellyn** » 6 Mar 2003 7:23 am

It won't be too long (maybe a year?) before it'll make sense to upgrade from my 1994 Performa 6115 (Powermac 6100) to a new Mac. I use my Mac for MIDI sequencing and digital audio recording and the new one will need to be well suited to that use, too. Does anyone here own an iMac (particularly the new one with the swivel-mounted LCD screen) and use it for home studio music and audio purposes?

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Bill L | Steel page | My music | Steelers' birthdays | Over 50?

Chris Bauer · Post by **Chris Bauer** » 6 Mar 2003 5:28 pm

My wife owns one and I LOVE it! For music puposes, though, remember that you'll have no way to upgrade it internally as far as sound cards, extra drives, etc. As long as your willing to do all that externally, though, it's an amazing little machine and, with the prices now down on the 17 inch screen models, I can't see how you'd go wrong.

Because of how much I loved working on my wife's machine, I just got a Power Mac. I love it too but, I gotta say, the iMac design kinda won my heart...

Bill Llewellyn · Post by **Bill Llewellyn** » 7 Mar 2003 7:51 am

Yeah, the new iMac is a lovely little machine. And it isn't all too expensive. Digital audio can be demanding, though, particularly in disk space, and I wonder if the iMac can suffice. Also, the built-in A/D and D/A converters may not be quite good enough, so room for a sound card would be good. Another need I forgot to mention is video--I want to be able to convert my family videos from Hi-8 tapes to DVD on whichever new computer I buy, and I don't know if the iMac has the horsepower and storage to do a good job of this. A G4 tower may be a safer bet (I don't really need the small form factor if the iMac). Hmmmm.....

Chris Bauer · Post by **Chris Bauer** » 7 Mar 2003 12:42 pm

There was a nice review in Sound on Sound a few months back on using the iMac for music. It was, overall, pretty complimentary. On the other hand, the horse power (and expandability) of the Power Mac is tough to beat. All the more with the dual processor models.

As far as storage, etc., I'd suspect you'd want to get external drives. Horsepower needs will depend on your usage but, even the humble looking iMac is pretty powerful these days![This message was edited by Chris Bauer on 07 March 2003 at 12:44 PM.]

Jerry Gleason · Post by **Jerry Gleason** » 7 Mar 2003 3:38 pm

I use a 17" iMac at work for digital video, and it works fine for that. For audio, it's built-in capabilities will suffice. The 16 bit converters are okay, but for serious audio work, I'd recommend a firewire interface like the MOTU 828 or something similar. For video, the Superdrive is fine for burning DVD's, but you'll probably want a firewire external hard drive if you're going to do much with video, since an uncompressed DV stream goes in at somthing like 200 MB per minute. The included software, iMovie and iDVD are ok for basic editing and burning. IMovie can work the transport controls on a digital camcorder, which is handy. Mpeg compression for DVD prep and burning takes a very long time. There is no multi-track audio recording software included.

All in all, a good value for the money, IMO

David L. Donald · Post by **David L. Donald** » 8 Mar 2003 4:04 pm

I adore the iMac, but I need my expansion chassis and lots of cards, 350 gig of drives, cd burners and DLT tape backup.
Plus I edit video a bit and needed twin processors.

Still the iMac is really sweet, with a external box of drives and a USB audio interface it can do quite a bit; for all but the true power abusers. And they know who they are.[This message was edited by David L. Donald on 13 March 2003 at 01:35 PM.]