Rockin it Old School...need help!!!!

Ok, after having a father who has worked on macs since the first mac classic, this is my first foray into the mac "world". I've been a musician for several years and am really needing to get myself up to speed on music editing on the mac. Here's what I have to work with:

G4 533mHz power pc with 246mb RAM

I just purchased this piece last night from a guy selling used computers...got it for about $200. It's in pretty good condition and boots with no problem.

Here's my issue, I need serious help deciding what is the best path to go. While a CPU upgrade may be a possibility for the near future, really I'm just trying to get my feet wet. I mean, I'm starting with nearly NO experience or knowledge whatsoever.

He replaced the hard drive, so I lost the OS as well...which doesn't bother me, but that factors into the equation. I'll need to replace the OS and then get some software to begin learning so that I too can become a guru and help out the little guy some day.

Here's the hardware I currently have...I picked this up to run on windows but never really did much with it, but hopefully that will help someone send me in the right direction:

M-Audio MobilePre USB interface

I also have an Alesis QS7 which is MIDI-enabled (something else I know little about)

Ableton Live Lite 4 (I believe)


Alright all you "know-it-all's"...help a poor guy out!!

BigBadMadMan said:

I've been a musician for several years and am really needing to get myself up to speed on music editing on the mac. Here's what I have to work with:

G4 533mHz power pc with 246mb RAM

I just purchased this piece last night from a guy selling used computers...got it for about $200.
I need serious help deciding what is the best path to go. While a CPU upgrade may be a possibility for the near future, really I'm just trying to get my feet wet. .................

Click to expand...

Honestly... and I will give it to you straight... you are going to need more than just a processor upgrade.
You will need RAM... at least 2 GB for Music Editing/recording.
You will need the OS... at least 10.4 for it to be compatible with most music software.
You will need the actual software itself.

In all likelihood, your $200 investment will balloon quite a bit before you actually have a decent and viable machine for music editing.

$200 was a good price for that computer, but that computer is not really so hot for editing, even with upgrades.

Ok, I understand. I guess I should have clarified that I know (and plan to) max out the memory. Being that it's the DA 533 machine, I can only expand to 1.5gb. However, that should be sufficient to run something like garageband or logic 7, right? I've done a bit of research and have concluded that that, along w/ tiger, should at least get me in the ballpark, shouldn't it? There's a CPU upgrade to take me up to 1.5gHz for about $250.

Point being, since I,m starting out completely green, will this be enough to cut my teeth on? I realize it's not a quad-core running logic 8 or anything but that would be overkill since I have no clue what I'm doing yet. I'll probably have to upgrade to a usb card that supports 2.0 to sufficiently power that mobilepre as well.

I'm not an expert on Mac audio combo's, but I've been using my own DAW for quite a few years on PC. Made the switch to a Mac Pro and a M2 box with Protools LE about a year ago.

I have 3 gigs on the machine and it never even burps! What will use up your CPU capacity are the plugins. Certain ones are more intensive than others.

I have a Waves bundle, and they can be notorious (depending on who's telling the story) for using up CPU.

Otherwise, I find the M2 box (USB2) and PT LE to be a very good reasonably priced combo deal. You will need to alter settings to optimize for recording or playback depending on the project, but thats easily done within PT's.

Good luck!