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keeverw wrote:So I got the MacBook Pro and I am really loving it.



edit:
A thought just occurred to me. Maybe this is a limitation of VGA. Would I have more options if I bought a MDP to DVI adapter? Or even HDMI?

Yes VGA will get you terrible resolution.

What mac book pro do you have?

I have recently bought a MacBook Pro retina 15" myself. (Wonderful machine:-)
Haven't tried it with external screen yet, but I think the thunderbolt port can be connected without adapters to 1440p screens.
I will check this out and let you know this evening how it went. (perhaps it'll fry my MBP lol!?)

The specs says:
HDMI:
1080p at 60 Hz3840 x 2160 at 30 Hz4096 x 2160 at 24 Hz  <span style=

Hi all,
So I use Reason primarily as the center of my Propellerhead Reason 8.0 based live keyboard rig. I have a couple of 61-key controllers on stage, and a small Motu audio interface, and it has served me really well for years now. 
But my laptop is starting to show it's limitations. I have a Toshiba, 2.0Ghz i3, with 4GB of Ram, and a 4800Rpm hard drive. 

And it's actually a testiment to the cpu-efficiency of Reason that I am able to do as much with it as I am. 

I have basically a bunch of combinators in my rack, for various sounds, or combinations of sounds I use. Some are pretty complex. And I just track back and forth to select a different combi on the fly. And it swaps quickly, and plays back with no noticeable latency at all. 

But, the more I start to do, the more I see the CPU meter start to get in the red, and I've even got the "your computer isn't fast enough to play this song" error once or twice, (fortunately it was at practice.) 


After much debating with myself over going with a Mac or PC, I finally purchased a used MacBookPro. It is a 2012 model, and has a 2.9Ghz i7 processor, which is of course quad-core. 16Gb of ram. A 7200rpm 1Tb hard drive. And a 256Gb SSD. 
The OS is installed on the SSD according to the seller, and it boots really quickly he says. And I believe him. I think this is going to be a huge leap forward for my rig, and open up lots of processing head-room for me to do a lot more. 

So, on to my questions.

I am a somewhat familiar with Macs, but not in depth. 

Is there anything I need to do to optimize the thing to be used as a DAW? 
Do I need to turn off system sounds like I did on my PC?
What about auto-updating of apps? 
What else?

I'd like to feel pretty comfortable with it, before I use it live the first time. 


I am also using it at home in my studio as the center of my recording setup.
I had never done anything major with my old lappy because I knew it wouldn't take that many tracks to lock it up, so I didn't try. 
But I do plan on using this new one more for that purpose as well. 

Thanks in advance for any advice!

I am really excited about this. I think it's gonna be a huge improvement!

Yea it should be much faster than your old i3 and honestly OS X is pretty audio ready out of the box so it should be plug and play really.

dreampolice wrote:Yea it should be much faster than your old i3 and honestly OS X is pretty audio ready out of the box so it should be plug and play really.

Sweet!

Thanks for the info.

keeverw, I just migrated to Mac, as well. I plugged in my external interface (Focusrite Scarlet), and it TRULY was plug and play. Was unbelievable after all the back bending I had to do every time I migrated to a new PC. I did buy a powered multi usb port for all my toys, and that's made it easier.

I wonder if I might piggy back on this, because I have a question, too... I knew where to put my refills and song files in Windows for easy access, but wonder if anyone has a best practice for Mac? Do you just keep them in the Reason Folder or have another path just for refills, etc? I would love to start with a plan this time...

Julibee wrote:keeverw, I just migrated to Mac, as well. I plugged in my external interface (Focusrite Scarlet), and it TRULY was plug and play. Was unbelievable after all the back bending I had to do every time I migrated to a new PC. I did buy a powered multi usb port for all my toys, and that's made it easier. I wonder if I might piggy back on this, because I have a question, too... I knew where to put my refills and song files in Windows for easy access, but wonder if anyone has a best practice for Mac? Do you just keep them in the Reason Folder or have another path just for refills, etc? I would love to start with a plan this time...

I keep all of my ReFills and Reason songs in my Google Drive folder. That way they are always backed up and I can access them from anywhere

I have my refills, collected sounds, wavs, REX files, etc. in a different folder. I don't want to have them in my Reason folder... It would take too long to move them in case of an upgrade... Especially since the updater still seems not smart enough to take care of the FSB stuff...

D.

I have my iMac partitioned to 2 drives, one for the OS(reason is also installed on that drive) and one for everything Reason related (Refills, samples and songs) just do I back up of the Reason drive every now and then. Apart from that I have not done any optimization of my Mac. Mac's are just really music production friendly.

What about which drive to store the FSB, refills and patches on?
Keep it all on the SSD or some on the HD?

Yea do not put your extra refills in the Reason folder. This can cause heartache during upgrades as reason will overwrite that folder and you will lose them.

Wow, nice power upgrade. Should be fun...

Julibee wrote:keeverw, I just migrated to Mac, as well. I plugged in my external interface (Focusrite Scarlet), and it TRULY was plug and play. Was unbelievable after all the back bending I had to do every time I migrated to a new PC. I did buy a powered multi usb port for all my toys, and that's made it easier. I wonder if I might piggy back on this, because I have a question, too... I knew where to put my refills and song files in Windows for easy access, but wonder if anyone has a best practice for Mac? Do you just keep them in the Reason Folder or have another path just for refills, etc? I would love to start with a plan this time...

You shouldn't have any changing data in the Applications folder, really. Its supposed to be only changed when you install software, then you have to enter your password. This is kind of a safety net so that malicious applications can't infect or change other applications without you entering the admin password.

Also notice that on mac when you copy a folder that already exists in another folder (e.g. the "Reason" folder in the "Applications" folder, the whole folder will be replaced! Its not like on windows where the contents of the folders get merged. So when you download a new Reason version and just drag&drop the Reason folder from the dmg to the Applications folder (as the Props in a total dick move even suggest in the dmg background image), you'd delete all your ReFills and can't even undelete them as they get overwritten and not put in the trash bin!

keeverw wrote:What about which drive to store the FSB, refills and patches on?
Keep it all on the SSD or some on the HD?

You'll have better performance if they are on the SSD

dreampolice wrote:Yea do not put your extra refills in the Reason folder. This can cause heartache during upgrades as reason will overwrite that folder and you will lose them.

But the FSB has to be in the Reason folder now, correct? 

dreampolice wrote:Yea do not put your extra refills in the Reason folder. This can cause heartache during upgrades as reason will overwrite that folder and you will lose them.

keeverw wrote:
But the FSB has to be in the Reason folder now, correct? 

That's what I thought. 
But I had heard in the past, it's better to have those files on a different drive than the one Reason is installed on. Is that true?

no FSB and Orkester need to be in the Reason folder. 

dreampolice wrote:Yea do not put your extra refills in the Reason folder. This can cause heartache during upgrades as reason will overwrite that folder and you will lose them.

keeverw wrote:
But the FSB has to be in the Reason folder now, correct? 

keeverw wrote:
That's what I thought. 
But I had heard in the past, it's better to have those files on a different drive than the one Reason is installed on. Is that true?

FSB and Orkester must be in the Reason folder. Extra ReFills can be elsewhere.

eusti wrote:I have my refills, collected sounds, wavs, REX files, etc. in a different folder. I don't want to have them in my Reason folder... It would take too long to move them in case of an upgrade... Especially since the updater still seems not smart enough to take care of the FSB stuff...

D.

You can manually drag the Reason files into the folder yourself - done if for years now and never used the "updater (which is really just dragging a folder with the same name into another folder and replacing the original folder). I also maintain a few different versions of Reason for testing so this was more necessary in my case.

But recently I've put all files in a new folder in the Documents folder, as I believe this will be a better way forward.

eusti wrote:I have my refills, collected sounds, wavs, REX files, etc. in a different folder. I don't want to have them in my Reason folder... It would take too long to move them in case of an upgrade... Especially since the updater still seems not smart enough to take care of the FSB stuff...

D.

selig wrote:

But recently I've put all files in a new folder in the Documents folder, as I believe this will be a better way forward.

All files? Including program and FSB? Or the rest of the refills and sound files?

D.

Thank you, thank you, Guys! And, especially to Normen for reminding me about the folder drag replacing thing.... I remembered that from a few weeks ago, but it hadn't quite sunk in....

My only suggestion when playing live on a Mac is to turn off the WiFi to prevent any network related interruptions. Most of the processes that try to update things will sleep if there's no network connection. With Yosemite, if my iPhone rings I'm given the option to answer the call on my Mac - not desired in the middle of a Gig! With the Wifi off I've never had a problem live!

bobseekone wrote:My only suggestion when playing live on a Mac is to turn off the WiFi to prevent any network related interruptions. Most of the processes that try to update things will sleep if there's no network connection. With Yosemite, if my iPhone rings I'm given the option to answer the call on my Mac - not desired in the middle of a Gig! With the Wifi off I've never had a problem live!

Good info!

Thanks!

It's like stepping into a Ferrari after driving a Corolla for 5 years.

It goes from completely shut down to my largest Reason project loaded up, in less than 15 seconds. 

eusti wrote:I have my refills, collected sounds, wavs, REX files, etc. in a different folder. I don't want to have them in my Reason folder... It would take too long to move them in case of an upgrade... Especially since the updater still seems not smart enough to take care of the FSB stuff...

D.

selig wrote:

But recently I've put all files in a new folder in the Documents folder, as I believe this will be a better way forward.

eusti wrote:
All files? Including program and FSB? Or the rest of the refills and sound files?

D.

The application can't be moved there, and neither can the FSB etc (but I could use aliases for this). I just mean all MY additional ReFills, Combinators, patches, samples, etc.

Thanks for clarifying, Giles!

D.