Apple's new Macs look fantastic — this is a lovely new G4 — but their introduction caused chaos for Mac‑ based musicians, who were used to connecting music, MIDI and audio hardware via a series of interfaces that the new Macs abolished completely. Fortunately, solutions to most of the problems have now been found.
In the final instalment of this series, Paul White looks at computers, as well as offering some advice on planning a system that allows for future expansion. This is the last article in a three‑part series.
As I'm sure you already know, computers play a bigger and more important part in music recording than we could ever have imagined even a decade ago, so it makes sense to dedicate at least a part of this series to them. Unlike microphones and compressors, which can last a lifetime, computers are somewhat more ephemeral. Firstly, they evolve very quickly, meaning that giving lasting advice on what software and hardware add‑ons to buy, as I have done in other parts of this series, is difficult (one reason why this month's final part is in a slightly different format to the others). Keeping track of developments for the Windows/PC platform is particularly complex (because more manufacturers build PC‑compatible components and peripherals than for Macs), which is partly why Martin Walker gets to write a PC Musician column every month in SOS! For Martin's most recent advice on assembling a PC‑based audio recording system, check out the PC Musician feature in SOS January 2000.
Secondly, computers can occasionally undergo a complete metamorphosis that throws your carefully conceived purchasing or upgrading plans into turmoil. The last such major upheaval was when Mac users woke one morning to discover that their beige buddies had been superseded by gaily coloured translucent super‑computers with USB (Universal Serial bus) and FireWire sockets where the ADB (Apple Desktop bus), serial and SCSI ports used to be. The floppy drive had also vanished. Initially, this looked like fantastically bad news for Mac‑based musicians, who were big users of serial‑port MIDI interfaces, hardware ADB dongles, SCSI recording or backup drives, and software with floppy‑based copy protection. Many people assumed that the safest course of action was to refrain from buying a new‑style Mac at all. However, since the transformation in Macs occurred, processors have become faster still, and the G4 machines have been released, which are several times more powerful than the last generation of beige G3s. Furthermore, thanks to the work of third‑party companies, most of the music‑related gear that used to work with beige Macs now has a modern equivalent for transluscent ones (or, in a few cases, the original old‑style gear can now be made to work with the new Macs, with the aid of third‑party interfaces).
So, if you're a beige Mac user looking to upgrade to a translucent one, there are a few things to be aware of, and these apply equally if you're buying a new‑style G3 or G4 from scratch, so you don't go unwittingly buying old‑style peripherals without forewarning! We're currently planning an in‑depth SOS article aimed at people in this position, but in the meantime, I've just moved from a beige G3 to a charcoal G4 myself, so I'm in a position to share some information I've gathered on the differences between the old and new‑style way of setting up a Mac for music. Incidentally, many of the changes that have occurred on the Mac are also happening to PCs (albeit gradually), so much of the following information either already applies to prospective PC purchasers/upgraders, or will shortly.
SCSI
Old serial‑port MIDI interfaces can still be used with the new G3s and G4s with the aid of Griffin's gPort or GeeThree's Stealth card. These fit into the bay normally taken up by a new Mac's internal modem. You have to give up the modem, but in return you get one old‑style serial port, to which you can connect your MIDI interface.
One issue that already affects PC musicians, and now Mac‑based ones too, is the lack of built‑in SCSI. Fortunately, you may find that you actually don't need it. The EIDE drives fitted as standard to new computers are reasonably fast, and although they're nowhere as fast as Ultra SCSI, they can give you upwards of 16 tracks of digital audio playback without complaining. Macs also feature an empty drive bay that can take a second EIDE drive, so working on the principle that a separate audio drive is always a good idea, I dropped a reputable‑brand 10Gb drive into my own G4. It cost me around £80 from a computer fair — hardly a luxury upgrade. Having formatted the new drive in the usual way, all went swimmingly well, so I can recommend this as a simple, cost‑effective upgrade. Having a second hard drive also allows you to back up important material to the other drive.
Currently (as you can read in Paul Wiffen's ongoing series on mLAN — see page 150), the future promises great things for FireWire as a possible means of moving digital audio around, and thus as a replacement for SCSI (amongst many other things). However, most of the popular MIDI + Audio sequencing software has yet to provide FireWire support. I've also heard that most current FireWire drives are not really up to the task, which may be part of the reason support is so long in coming. Having said that, unless something new comes along quickly and we skip a generation of hard drive interfaces, buying a computer with a FireWire port would seem to offer a degree of 'future‑proofing'.
As of today, though, SCSI is still the most reliable way of hooking up a drive where you need a lot of audio tracks, and that means fitting a PCI SCSI interface card — which in turn means using up one of the three available PCI slots on a modern Mac (PC users who want SCSI are used to this approach already, although they tend to get more PCI slots to play with). One of the other slots will no doubt be home to your choice of audio card, so that leaves only one spare slot for future expansion or for a second monitor card. There are external PCI expander chassis for users with more complex systems, such as those made by Magma (see the News pages in last month's SOS), but they add considerably to the basic cost of the computer.
SCSI is also useful for backing up files to external CD‑ROM burners, hard drives or removable media, but if you also have an older Mac equipped with Ethernet, you can network the two machines and transfer files that way. I still have a beige G3, and as I don't have either a SCSI card for my G4 or a USB CD‑ROM burner, I move finished work to the old G3 prior to CD‑burning via Ethernet. It's slow compared to SCSI, but it's still fast enough for most backup purposes.
Adb Dongles, Floppy‑Disk Copy‑Protection & MIDI Interfaces
When it comes to hardware dongles that were designed to work with the now‑obsolete Apple Desktop Bus, the best option is to contact the software distributor and they will probably be able to exchange your existing dongle for a USB version for a nominal charge. Sadly, this is a problem if you want to use the software on two different Macs, one beige and one translucent, but as yet there are no dual‑format dongles I'm aware of.
For floppy‑disk copy‑protection, the only option is to buy an external USB floppy drive and then visit the Pace website at www.paceap.com where you can download a file that will enable your drive to work with their copy‑protection system. Without this file, the master disk won't authorise your hard drive. The Pace copy protection system is used by much leading music software, including most of the VST plug‑ins that still use floppy‑based protection, but I can't guarantee that all types of disk‑based copy‑protection systems will work on a G4 fitted with an external floppy drive. Because of this uncertainty, a lot of manufacturers are moving over to the master CD‑ROM system, where you're asked to re‑insert the CD‑ROM installer disc at random intervals.
I've not had too much trouble with USB myself, other than my G4 refusing to shut down when a TEAC floppy drive is connected to it, but the mainstream Mac magazines are less kind; they claim USB stands for 'Unstable, Suddenly Breaks' or something similar. Part of the problem is that USB devices often take power directly from the USB port, so if you have more than a couple of devices connected — which you might well, as a musician: think dongles, floppy drive for PACE copy‑protection, mice, new‑style MIDI interfaces, and so on — you may find that more current is being demanded than a single USB port can supply. The way around this is to buy a powered USB hub, a kind of MIDI Thru/distribution box for USB, but even there I'm told that some work better than others. I've yet to invest in my first USB hub, so I'll let you know how I get on some other time.
That leaves the MIDI interface. Though you can now buy USB MIDI interfaces, there are still some worries about the reliability of the timing of USB‑based MIDI devices. Steinberg and Emagic now produce sophisticated USB interfaces that work with their own sequencer software to sidestep USB timing problems, but if you're upgrading and still have an older serial‑port interface, such as one of the countless MOTU MIDI Expresses or MTPs out there, you'll be happy to know that they work perfectly well in conjunction with GeeThree's Stealth card and the Griffin gPort, both third‑party adaptors that replace the internal modem card on a G4 Mac, and provide one old‑fashioned serial modem/printer port to which you can attach your old‑style interface. Of course, you lose your internal modem, so if you must access the Internet with your studio computer, you'll need to buy an external USB modem. There are other serial adaptors that fit into PCI slots, but there are really too few slots on Macs to fritter away like this. You can also buy USB‑to‑serial adaptors, but my guess is that these were designed to be used with printers, not MIDI, and the timing may well be imprecise.
Changing Computers
Whether you favour a Mac or a PC, you also need to have the right reasons for upgrading. With the latest generation of G4 and PIII computers, the number of audio tracks you can record or play back simultaneously is more likely to be limited by the speed of your hard drives and SCSI interface than by the computer itself. Switching from EIDE drives to SCSI will make a much greater difference to your track count than changing computers — unless you have quite an old model.
As I've been explaining in the parallel feature we've been running on building a desktop studio (which also finishes this month — see page 118), a more powerful music computer scores heavily in its ability to run more processing and virtual instrument plug‑ins, and as virtual instruments become more advanced, having enough power to use them fully becomes more important. As a rule, the more voices you play at once, the more processing power is required.
There are few virtual synths that would persuade me to abandon my hardware instruments entirely, but software samplers are an entirely different matter, and have made a real difference to the way I work. A few weeks ago I tried Emagic's EXS24, and immediately I fell in love with the thing and sold my hardware sampler. You can store all your favourite samples on your computer's hard drive, they load in seconds rather than minutes, and multitimbral operation is as simple as opening a new sampler for each part. Parameter editing is just like using any other soft synth with on‑screen knobs, and you don't have to worry about memory restrictions, as most systems use the computer's own RAM. If you want to use longer samples, you just add more memory — and at computer RAM prices, not sampler RAM prices.
Other virtual samplers offer similar benefits and, because the samples are being played from RAM, there's no disk‑access penalty that might affect your audio track count. Samplers also tend to use less processing power than virtual synths, but this may increase if resonant filters are used. Considering that a 450MHz G4 Mac costs less than a mid‑range sampler fitted with a sensible amount of memory, buying a top‑of‑the‑range computer is a very cost‑effective upgrade for anyone with a computer‑based studio. As I've said before on many occasions, computers offer extraordinary value in terms of what they can do for the money, so it makes no sense at all to buy anything other than the very best you can afford. Either buy a Mac G4 or get a Pentium III system that's been designed specifically for music applications. If you buy a fast general‑purpose PC that isn't optimised for audio work, just to save a couple of hundred pounds, you could end up with a whole bag of problems that have no easy solutions.
Integrate Where Possible
Music software from the major manufacturers tends to be pretty good most of the time, but it's impossible for anyone to test every possible permutation of hardware and software. That may be one reason why Macs tend to give less trouble than PCs, because while Macs are more or less standard (ie. one G4 will behave much like another) PCs may be built by any one of thousands of companies using a whole range of different parts.
In many cases, you can smooth the way ahead by buying pieces of software and hardware that are designed to work together. For example, most music software includes support for MOTU MIDI interfaces, making these a pretty safe bet, but if you're an Emagic Logic user, like me, then buying one of their Unitor interfaces also makes a lot of sense, especially on computers with USB, as the drivers are built into Logic itself. Using a third‑party interface on a USB Mac very often means you have to run OMS to make it work.
The same argument applies to your choice of audio interface. I plugged in my Emagic Audiowerk8 card and it just worked — there were no drivers to install, and no parameters to reconfigure. If you do have a problem, at least you aren't faced with two or more companies, each trying to blame the other, and by buying integrated components, you know that they have been tested together.
The same reasoning was behind my choice of the Emagic virtual sampler — there are other choices, some of which are more sophisticated — but for me the total integration with Logic wins the argument.
Naturally the same advice applies if you're a Steinberg or MOTU user — you know that their MIDI and audio interfaces are going to work alongside their software, as are their virtual instrument and effect plug‑ins. Unless you have a really good reason to choose an alternative component, I'd recommend you choose the integrated approach wherever possible. The less time you spend fiddling with your equipment, the more time you have to make music!
Upgrade Yourself!
My final point is that it's no good getting lots of new gear if you don't know how to use it effectively, so make sure you upgrade yourself as well as your studio. This means reading new manuals to find out what new powers your software has acquired in its latest update. If you have Internet access, check out some of the user groups relating to the gear you have, as you can often pick up good tips as well as solutions to specific problems. Also allow yourself time to experiment between musical projects, as that's the way you learn new techniques. Very often, ideas I try out during experimental sessions become part of some new piece of music, so nothing is ever really wasted. And most important of all, have fun and keep your eye on the music, not on the equipment. There are some upgrades we want and some we need. The real trick is in telling which is which.
Planning For Future Expansion
Whatever system you have, try to visualise your future requirements and leave yourself enough leeway to expand your system to accommodate those needs. Accept that you'll need to change your computer every couple of years if you want to stay ahead of the game, but otherwise try to make as much as you can a one‑off purchase. For example, buy good‑quality microphones — even if they cost a little more than bargain‑basement models, good mics will last a lifetime. The same applies to analogue outboard processors such as compressors or voice channels. No matter how big your system gets, you'll always be able to find a use for them, so spend your money on something that you won't become dissatisfied with.
If you're using a reverb plug‑in at the moment, consider getting a hardware reverb unit at some future date, as good software reverb gobbles up computer processing capacity and seldom comes close to the quality of dedicated hardware. This means you need some way to connect it, and in a desktop studio this requires an audio interface with enough physical ins and outs to configure some of them as effects sends and returns.
The other universal rule is that mixers never have enough channels, so always try to buy a mixer with at least eight more inputs than you think you'll need. Alternatively, consider a separate analogue submixer. In my own studio, all the MIDI modules go to a Mackie LM3204 line mixer which in turn feeds the stereo input of a Yamaha 03D. This arrangement works fine, as the levels of most MIDI parts can be automated via the sequencer rather than the mixer. Just a little thought can prevent you from painting yourself into a corner. There's more detail on the subjects covered in these last two paragraphs in the desktop studios article this month (see page 118).