SAWstudio on a MacBook

[thetaalpha970]

An identical post is over at Gearslutz, but I thought I would ask here:

After doing a fair amount of research, I have decided that SAWStudio is the right balance of sound quality and functionality for me. I have a MacBook with 2 gigs of RAM running Windows XP through Parallels, and I'm wondering if I have enough power and connectivity to run SAW effectively...Parallels doesn't support firewire, so:

(some things to consider)
USB, or optical? Do I need to install any audio drivers? Is this setup powerful enough to run sample libraries and DSP heavy plugins (UAD, PSP, etc.)?

Any general advice is greatly appreciated, and if anyone has any experience doing anything similar, please feel free to share your experience.

Thank you,

Dave

[AudioAstronomer]

My pimped out macbook pro arrives monday. I have the sole intention of running saw on it. I will let you know :D


So you know, it works awesome with bootcamp. One of the most pleasing experiences i've had with saw was on a macbook through bootcamp. I will have paralells and my own mac soon to try out.

I intend it to be my ONLY computer. OS X for everything but saw. And an XP install (paralells or bootcamp, whichever works best) for audio. I have high hopes considering i've done very close to this recently.

[cedric]

please let us know, what audio AD/DA interface you run.
'cause apperently parallels (and possibly bootcamp) doesn't recognize anything firewire.

my new quest is to record in protools (only to make my associates happy :p ), and mix in saw.

[thetaalpha970]

Robert,

It's Monday and I'm dying to know how the SAW is running on your MacBook Pro!

Dave

[AudioAstronomer]

Sorry, gotta give me some time to try it out. Typing this on my new macbook pro now (in osx).

As it stands, os X is awesome. Never wanna touch kde or windows again, beautifully functional. But anyways...

Paralells is no good for saw imo. It seems to have some asio problems and in general it's no good for anything but ... yeah. Everything it runs well on windows, already has a better option mac-wise.

Via bootcamp is fantastic though. Took me some fooling to get it working, then i found out my xp pro cd is sp1a which was the culprit. Duh, read directions first! From then on i was extremely impressed. My macbook has a 100gb sata 7200 drive in it and it performed very well. Running sample projects was well over half the cpu usage of my hardcore desktop, which was insane. Some instances were less, some more. On average cpu usage was halved.

Via bootcamp is a very good alternative but requires you purchase windows XP seperately. The cost is well worth it though considering how well it runs, the apple systems are certainly among the better laptops commercially available.


I will be running saw on this macbook pro and only on this system from here on out so if i run into any issues i'll certainly post them, but as it stands im extremely happy.

p.s. front row and dashboard are freaking awesome :D

[thetaalpha970]

Yes, OSX is awesome.

Please describe in detail what problems you've having. I have Windows XP sp2 so everything is ok along those lines. With parallels, you mentioned driver issues briefly, but have you experienced any driver issues with bootcamp?

What front end are you using and what are your connectivity options? (optical, USB, Firewire?)

Thank you,

Dave

[AudioAstronomer]

Paralells simply did not work. Audio did not output properly and there were window glitches.

Bootcamp worked great with a motu 896 (fw) and edirol ua-1000 (usb). No problems at all.

working like a charm, very happy.

[Neal Starrett]

Thats all very good news Robert. I may be going this way shortly. Would it be possible to take a spdif out from an AD box and input to the Mac spdif? Would this induce any noticable latency? I have read that some guys are starting to do this with their Macbooks with different daws. I only really need 2 analog tracks at one time. I also have a 320 gig ext FW drive (Mybook-NTSF format). Would I need to reformat this for the Mac?

[Mark Stebbeds]

I also have a 320 gig ext FW drive (Mybook-NTSF format). Would I need to reformat this for the Mac?


OS X can read, but not write to NTFS.

Robert will probably have a better answer, but if you are going to booting to both, I would recommend formating your drives for the Mac.

Mark

[AudioAstronomer]

Actually, there is limited ntfs support for write but it is NOT recommended to try.

You should reformat your drives to the journaled Os X system or fat32 at the very least (for almost any platform compatibility).

So far im very happy as I've mentioned before. Saw is working fantastic, this has to be by far the nicest system ive ran sawstudio on yet.. even compared to some of the monster amd dual systems ive used recently.

1 week and not a single crash of any kind whatsoever in windows or OS X. Ive always had magnificent uptimes with my systems, but there were always crashes at least once or twice a day... remarkably smooth thus far.

[Mark Stebbeds]

You should reformat your drives to the journaled Os X system or fat32 at the very least (for almost any platform compatibility).



FWIW, I have had fewer problems with Mac formatted drives, and using MacDrive on the PC to read/write them.

The Mac can read FAT32 OK, but the problems seem to stem from copying files back and forth across the two formats.

Mark

[Neal Starrett]

Thanks Mark and Robert. Sorry for the delay. My condo is being remodeled so I do not have internet access so much latley. Anyways, I have no experience at all on the Macs so this may confuse me for a short while. I will most likley get the Macbook Pro in a few months if all reports are good and will better understand it then. I'm also thinking of the plugins I use and their compatibility. Wizzoverb, Waves, NI, Spectrasonics,,,,ect. I am thinking that this would not be an issue since I would be using bootcomp. Am I correct on this? One more thing Robert, I have my own XP. SP1 (Ithink, not 2 though). Does it allow you to install the SP's latter. Thought I read that the XP install must be on 1 CD.

[thetaalpha970]

Neal,

You are correct. The plugins you already use on your native windows pc will act the same on the xp install of bootcamp. However, you must have SP2 of windows XP in order to have a problem free XP installation on the Macbooks.
Apple is very clear about this on their support site.

Dave

[Neal Starrett]

Thanks Dave, so, then I will need to purshase XP w/SP2 as opposed to updating the XP I have now? Correct? or can I just update? sorry for the confusion:confused:

[AudioAstronomer]

OS X is so extremely userfriendly it's unbeleivable.

I thought id be confused to death (as I was with 10.2) but so far everything is stupid simple and any advanced things i wanna toy with are there for the picking :)

[thetaalpha970]

Neal, you must have a bona-fide copy of xp with sp2. I can provide this upon request. No need to pay for something you already have just because its not "updated." I'm sure we can work something out.

Robert, yes...yes it is.:cool: I wish Bob would just make SAWStudio for mac. It would be the best sounding audio engine for the entire OS and would provide another incentive for all the Pro Fools users out there who love their G5s...not to change what this thread is really about, ,though.:rolleyes:

Dave

[UpTilDawn]

Dave, seriously?
You can't simply do a Windows update or update to SP2 from disc?
You have to actually purchase a new copy of XP with SP2 preinstalled?
What's the difference?

DanT

[AudioAstronomer]

I beleive you can get a new copy from microsoft for 5$...

This is also one of the times I'd just say go on bittorrent and get a copy of it and use your LEGIT serial to install it. What's a user to do when they purchase their software to be told later they cant use it because the company didnt make it right in the first place?

[Veit Kenner]

Thanks Dave, so, then I will need to purshase XP w/SP2 as opposed to updating the XP I have now? Correct? or can I just update?
Neal,

you can use your XP CD to create an installation CD that includes SP2 and it is legal to do it. The process is called "slipstreaming" and stands for integrating the files of the SP2 into the CD.

There are several places on the net that explain this well. One I just looked up is http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp

Veit

[Pedro Itriago]

Has there been a way to do slipstreaming of winme using an xp computer?

[Neal Starrett]

Neal, you must have a bona-fide copy of xp with sp2. I can provide this upon request. No need to pay for something you already have just because its not "updated." I'm sure we can work something out.

Thanks Dave, I appreciate the offer. When the time arrives I may be in touch. I think the slipstreaming that Veit mentioned (thanks Veit) will work or I'll grab a torrent liked Robert mention. We shall see.

[Veit Kenner]

Has there been a way to do slipstreaming of winme using an xp computer?
Pedro,

are you in "funny mode" again?

Veit

[Pedro Itriago]

Actually, no. Call me crazy, but ME it's working great in my non audio machine & my son's PC. I wanted to do a slipstream of it but I'm not clear it will work out.

[Veit Kenner]

Actually, no. Call me crazy, but ME it's working great in my non audio machine & my son's PC. I wanted to do a slipstream of it but I'm not clear it will work out. Ok, I get it :-)

ME and W2K/XP are completely different OSs. ME is a late ancestor of Windows95 while W2K is based on the code of WinNT. These are two different members of the Windows family that have not much in common - apart form some visual stuff.

"Slipstreaming" is the process of integrating the files of a service pack into an original installation CD of XP (and then to create a new CD afterwards). It's not something like an update from ME to XP.

I also assume the license thing is very different. For an update from ME to XP you have to pay to buy a new license at special conditions. A service pack, though, is part of Microsoft's support and is being distributed for free (via download or updates).

I hope this helps :-)

Veit

[Pedro Itriago]

I think I did not explain myself.

ME does not have slipstremaing possibilities. So if you want to add the updates and service packs to old ME cd's (that someone already owns), you cannot do it in ME since it lacks the command for that purpose.

My question was, could you use w2k or xp (go to command console and make the slipstreaming) to slipstream a ME cd with its service packs & hot fixes?

In other words, create an ME directory, dumping ME on it, create a service pack directory, put the service pack(s) on it and do the slipstream?

[UpTilDawn]

To update ME, not to upgrade ME to XP.... correct?

[Veit Kenner]

I think I did not explain myself.

ME does not have slipstremaing possibilities. So if you want to add the updates and service packs to old ME cd's (that someone already owns), you cannot do it in ME since it lacks the command for that purpose.

My question was, could you use w2k or xp (go to command console and make the slipstreaming) to slipstream a ME cd with its service packs & hot fixes?

In other words, create an ME directory, dumping ME on it, create a service pack directory, put the service pack(s) on it and do the slipstream? N O W I got it :-)

You don't want to go from ME to XP but work in XP to create a slipstreamed CD for ME :-o

Honestly, I don't know. I read about the slipstreaming method about one year ago and always only in context with W2K or XP. There was never a mention of the elder Windows versions. You could check MS' knowledgebase or do a Google groups search to see of there is a mention of that. Or you could go to one of the slipstreaming tutorials and look in the "See also ..." section of the links to find it mentioned. But I doubt it is possible.

Veit