Comments on: MacBook Pro Revision: Big Santa Rosa Performance Boost, 4GB RAM Option, More

By: dean

dean — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:25:26 +0000

can i use macbook for creating music? i mean which one is the best, macbook or macbook pro? or can i just buy macbook but with another tools for making music?

By: jens

jens — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:35:24 +0000

thanks for the answer.
i also tested logic which performs much much better.
there are still ome questions to the audioperformance of this laptop. it has the agere firewire controller which is officially said to be not compatible with firewire audiointerfaces from motu and rme (fortunately i have a multiface and the pciexpress is announced for december) and as i already said the performance in live.
hmm hope these issues can be fixed with firm/driverupdates.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 02:48:57 +0000

jens,
You may want to try some other tests… it depends on how multi-threaded the host and instruments are, whether they’re able to take advantage of the two cores. In one-core performance, the Core 2 Duo is definitely better than Pentium M, but not as dramatically so.

And yes, the PC Card thing I know is an issue. Expect more ExpressCard audio soon.

By: jens

jens — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:29:22 +0000

hi
i just got the mbp 2,4 ghz but to be honest i am very disappointed.
using the built in sound (cant plug my hammerfal dsp because of missing pcmcia slot) the number of voices i can get using very cpu intensive plugins did not increase dramaticaly to my former notebook (1,8 ghz pentium mobile) under live (minimonsta: 8 to 12 voices whereas someone on kvr told me that he got 64 voices out of his macbook 2,33 which has a different chipset and audiocontroller). could somebody here tell me about the performance of his mbp ?

By: Francois13e

Francois13e — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 19:15:53 +0000

Got my MBP 15″ yesterday.
SO HAPPY with it !
blasts other apple laptops i hang out with:
my PB G4 1ghz (now i squint at its display)
my friends’s PB G4 1.67’s display, as well as his MBP CD 2.16 ghz’s.
speed equals my PM dual 1.8 G5 4GB RAM.

GO FOR IT !
Now is the right time !

By: Create Digital Motion » Updated MacBook Pro Performance Preview: Better Displays, Faster Visualist Apps, Better 3D

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 16:08:38 +0000

[...] For more on the music and CPU side of this, see our sister site, Create Digital Music: MacBook Pro Revision: Big Santa Rosa Performance Boost, 4GB RAM Option, More [...]

By: tricil

tricil — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 21:51:43 +0000

i got a c2d 2.33ghz MBP in april out of necessity (my dell inspiron was literally stolen out of my house… bad day [we have a security system now])

i’ve gotta say, as my first OSX machine, i’m sooooo pleased with the stability, ease of use, and processing power.

cliche or not, i’ve gone mac and i’m not going back (if i need windows, i’ll install it on here!)

By: EJ

EJ — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:27:46 +0000

Wow, thanks for the detail, Peter - and I thought the Mac/PC debate was slowly winding to a halt. I like PCs for a lot of things, but gapping and the resulting system hacking have become the bane of my digital existence - Core Audio IS a huge selling point for musicians.

By: bliss

bliss — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:24:43 +0000

dead_red_eyes, I wasn’t thinking that it was terribly important for you to upgrade your computer, but you listed enough features that you would like to have that I thought to give the suggestion to eBay it. Anyway, how I arrived at the price point had largely to do with the GPU which, while not being terribly important for audio, does represent the $500-$600 difference in value of the current Macbook Pro lineup and the lineup your laptop represents. That GPU is sick! No question about that. And if you like fragging online from time to time like I do, upgrading suddenly makes more sense. It would be like shelling out $500-$600 for a top of the line gaming video card upgrade.

Anyway, people placing their orders now for the new Apple laptops have bushels to be excited about! ;)

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:47:33 +0000

Oh, yeah, I agree EJ:

Core stability.

Simple, elegant tools.

Focusing on music. :)

That goes well beyond the OS decision …