Studio recording

[Monk7]

Hello, I'm working on building a recording studio and am wanting to build the best hackintosh I can that can do recording and live stuff so I need it to be reliable. I'm using Pro Tools 9 with two 003's, Reason 5, Ableton Live and I'm sure others if I find something I want to play with but I have to run snow leopard on it and I'm not in any hurry so I would like to see if I could use the new ive bridge with it though I know at the moment it isn't compatible. I was also interested in using a SSD if it would help with latency. I don't really know what I'm doing and I know you guys are the experts so any help I can get to build this would be great!!! Thank you so much!!! - Steven

 

[BoomR]

Is there some compelling reason that you don't want to go to Lion? I'm running PT10 (plus latest versions of Logic and Digital Performer) on my Lion system right now with absolutely no issues. (my signature below shows the core components) Snow Leopard install process IMHO is not nearly as easy as using Lion + UniBeast + MultiBeast.

I have Mackie Onyx-i FW mixer, plus Apogee Symphony I/O and Symphony 64 card. No problems with either of these interfaces. If you're using 2 @ 003's, make sure that you either a) get a motherboard whose Firewire chipset is TI, or 2) do a search of the board for Syba Firewire (I have a good post on it). It's a pretty widely used PCIe FW card with both 400/800, and uses TI chipset. You **do not** want to use FW on any mobo that is VIA chipset.

Gigabyte seems to be the most widely-recommended motherboard brand - GA builds tend to go the most smooth. I would recommend this board (it's not the cheapest motherboard, but the on-board FW is TI chipset):

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... kwCjCECjCE

 

[Monk7]

Cool thanks! I like the fact I can have 32gb of ram! As for the Snow Leo I have a couple programs that don't work on lion so I just wanted to make sure I could use everything I wanted but just wanted to make it the best I can for when I do make the switch. So do you think I should just go with the pro build that's on the site but use said motherboard? Is their a big difference in performance with lion?

 

[BoomR]

I think that would be a good blending of what you need in a mobo, plus sticking with some of the recommended build components. BTW, that motherboard is *definitely* in the DSDT database, so I think that build should go pretty smoothly.

The reason I questioned the need for SL was because my experience has been that there are a few more steps and or little "quirks" about a SL build vs. Lion build. Plus, if I recall, the latest version of SL (10.6.8) is not fully supported - you have to stick with 10.6.7. Do a search of the SL support areas just to be sure.

 

[denmanjum]

I'm using Snow Leopard 10.6.8 for audio production and everything works fine.

 

[BoomR]

I'm using Snow Leopard 10.6.8 for audio production and everything works fine.

I stand corrected, then

 

[Monk7]

Cool thank you guys for your help!

 

[Monk7]

I was wanting to ask... Is a SSD worth getting? If so should I just get a 60gb for the os?

 

[BoomR]

The build, as well as boot time is ÜBER fast with a SSD... I'll never do a build again without my boot drive being SSD....