Posts Tagged ‘Hardware’
Monday, March 9th, 2009
Before a few days I bought Parallels 4.0 for my Mac 10.4 (Tiger) which is running on an Intel Core Duo Mac Mini. Since I have a windows box running for mastering, paying taxes and for internet browsing for my wife I suddenly had to exchange data from one computer to another. You should also know that I own a few external harddisks. My 2Big triple from Lacie is one of those, a perfectly nice Raid controller with 2 disks in a decent box.
For several reasons I had to format this one in NTFS and most of you know that this is a total game over for my Mac. Mac cannot access this format safely. There are other options to access NTFS from a Mac, for example Paragons software, but really, I don’t trust those geek software in that case too much. Hej, this is my data! My music! My life!
Then I came to Parallels Desktop, a Virtual Machine Player (and Creator) which is known as well integrated into the mac enviroment. And yes, it really is! I was never so surprised by any kind of software like I was here. Parallels makes you feel 100% integrated on both sides! With Tiger I cannot use all features, for example this Bootcamp stuff, which allows to play with your VM on a native speed level. However, for me it’s enough to see my windows apps looking like mac apps and that I can drag and drop between Finder and Win Explorer as I want.
Back to NTFS. I plugged in my NTFS drive but couldn’t create any folder on it nor could I copy a file. After some curses I figured out that I have mounted my 2Big Triple as a Network Storage, not as a local harddisk. Of course as a network harddisk I would need write access within mac, so I had to mount this drive directly to Parallels. This is easy under normal cirstumances. You can do this on the right bottom of the Parallels window, or, if running in coherance mode, from the menu bar “devices”. Simply choose one of the devices which you want to plug directly to your Windows.
I did so, but failed. The reason is beeing shown in the Device Manager of Windows. My USB Hub didn’t get any driver. I double clicked that b**** and told it to update the drive. No problem for windows since everything was prepared on the update site. After the install I had a locally plugged Harddisk – and know I can access to my NTFS harddisk from my Mac, ah, Windows, damn Macdows without any problems.
Great stuff, that Parallels. I will track this software for sure.
Tags: Hardware, OS X, Software
Posted in Audio Soft- and Hardware | No Comments »
Thursday, December 18th, 2008
Lately I posted about the pros of upgrading to GarageBand 4. However, I told you that at least for me there are no reasons for upgrading. In the same post I thought that about upgrading to Logic 8 instead of using Logic Express 7.x. Problem here is that I would have to upgrade to a newer Mac, since my Mac Mini just have 1 Gig of RAM.
As i thought a little more, I remembered of my performance issues with GarageBand, as my compositions grew and used lots more of EXS instruments. Now I am sure that performance issues come from unsufficient memory. 1 Gig of RAM is too less for more than 6 software instruments, esspecially there are EQ tunings on em.
This issues and of course my thoughts about an upgrade to Logic 8 brought me to this post, where the guys explained in detail how to open the Mac Mini and upgrading the RAM.
Well, I did so and succeded 
The post above is excellent written. Upgrading is really easy, just do it. Just one thing is to remember: if you have an Intel Core Duo you CANNOT have more RAM than 2 Gigs. You have to use 2x 1 Gig of 667 Mhz SODIMM (= notebook ram!). If you use more RAM, the screen will stay black and won’t even hear the chime.
Just the Intel Core 2 Duo seems to support more than 2 Gig. Officially it is said by Apple that a Mac Mini supports 3 Gigs. In fact I heard about people using more than 3 gigs with success. Just take a look at the performance benchmark.
So, please check out which mac you have. You can do this easily in the System Profiler (click the apple – about this mac icon).
I own now more RAM and yes, my Logic is working much better. I have nearly no performance issues anymore. I really would like to have a trial version of Logic 8, but unfortunatly Apple isn’t offering such a thing. Bad luck. I guess I will stick with Logic 7 a bit longer and enjoy my new RAM.
Tags: Hardware, Mac Mini, OS X
Posted in Audio Soft- and Hardware | No Comments »
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
Before a few days i tried to install my Roland TD-20 Drum module at my mac. The TD-20 should take MIDI data, play, and the mac should recieve 8 tracks of wonderful audio files. This way I have everything seperated for a mix.
When I tried that, i figured out the very first time when GarageBand is not enough. GarageBand cannot use the MIDI out slot of anything – it’s simply not possible. After a while I realized that I have other problems with that sequencer, like: export MIDI from GarageBand.
Altough I like the GUI of GarageBand more, I had to switch again to Logic 7, which I bought before long time (and for expensive money, altough it was used!). It didn’t want that software cause it was ugly, complicated and well, oversized for my needs. It seems that I am now an adult haha.
However, connecting the TD-20 to my Phonic Firewire card was quite easy.
I started the Logic Setup Assistant. Here i could tell Logic where my MIDI Device is connected. Nearly all enviroment work will be done by Logic no. As soon as I understood the I have to connect an Instrument port to the little “Drums mapped” icon at the enviroments window (APPLE-8), I just had to make sure that the track, which uses that instrument has chosen the correct MIDI-channel. In my case, the TD-20 uses channel 10.
I am now more into MIDI than i was before weeks, and everything was going well for me now. I got some other surprises by Logic now and altough it’s ugly, I think I’ll stay with it for a while. I mean, why should I not use my hardware modules? I understand more and more now, and meanwhile it’s something like…. hu… love?
When switching back to Logic, i didn’t find my GarageBand Instruments anywhere. I get ravenous, i had installed them on my external drive. However, i found it as Instrument / Insert / Channel Strip – no worries here. My article about “moving the garageband instruments” still work for logic
Tags: Hardware, Logic, MIDI, Software, TD-20
Posted in Audio Soft- and Hardware | No Comments »
Monday, November 19th, 2007
Wow. Couldn’t believe it: i ordered everything and just one day later my stuff arrived! Thanks Thomann Musichouse, that was really great. Anyway, i started on friday to install everything… and then pain began. I dropped in my Terratec Phase 88, and say what, my Mac didn’t recognize it. This was the start of a horrible weekend… sometime the Phase 88 appeared. When i installed the software which came with the hardware, it dissappeared. Driverupdates didn’t work. I tried to upgrade the firmware (in the rare cases the fucking hardware appeared), but this ended with a strange errormessage. After that it never appeared again. I thought it could be my OS X 10.4.x installation, cause i recognized sometime that the move from PPC to Intel platform brought problems to me. So my LD still used PPC platform, while everything used Intel.
However, i made a backup of everything, hoped the best, and started to reinstall OS X. I dropped in the Phase 88- and see, it appeared. My Microphone In didn’t work and i couldn’t hear anything when working with Logic Express, so i gave the drivers a try again (and the firmware), cause i thought everything is fine with that new OS X. I started to install the firmware (latest, from terratec website) and- it failed! And: Phase 88 disappeared again!!
GWAR! What’s that *ยง$!”? Did the Terratec people EVER test their hardware on a Mac? This is unbelievable! I contacted Thoman this morning i told em i want a PHONIC FIREFLY 808, which is a bit more expensive, but maybe lots better for that fukking piece of shit, which they call Soundcard. I really hope this will result in everything working. I am really – well, lets say dissapointed – and if this doesn’t work, i will buy a simple and small soundcard without support for my TD-20 drums. They have to be recorded about MIDI, then. Well, this is future; i really hope my send-back-card from thoman arrive tomorror or latest at wednesday and maybe at saturday i have the new stuff at home.
Tags: Hardware, OS X
Posted in Audio Soft- and Hardware | No Comments »
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