dezt Posted April 30, 2009 Posted April 30, 2009 We are looking at the possibility of using Macs in the music dept. I was wondering which sort i should go for, should i go for the 20" imac's or should i see if we can get funding for power macs? What does anyone else use out there? does anyone use macs in the music dept or does everyone use PC's?
GAS Posted April 30, 2009 Posted April 30, 2009 Hi Ya, We are Secondary School and we have about 45 20" iMac in Music department connected to our Apple Server and to Our Windows 2003 server. All working perfect, they using Sibelius, Garage Band Ect... If you have any question PM me your number and I call you. 1
Guest Guest Posted April 30, 2009 Posted April 30, 2009 (edited) iMacs are more then powerful enough for just about anything the kids can throw at them. Id spend the money you "saved" on midi/audio interfaces, keyboards, software, virtual instruments, mics etc. Alot of people forget that you need these things and end up spending £££thousands on a suite thats no use to anyone beyond "typing up" their scores (sort of like we've got ) Edited April 30, 2009 by Guest
dezt Posted April 30, 2009 Author Posted April 30, 2009 Just out of intrest GAS, why the apple server? do you need one to be able to allow students to connect to windows resources?
rush_tech Posted April 30, 2009 Posted April 30, 2009 Just out of intrest GAS, why the apple server? do you need one to be able to allow students to connect to windows resources? We have 6 IMacs in our music dept and are looking at buying a server to allow us to lock them down. 1
rolfea Posted April 30, 2009 Posted April 30, 2009 We have Imacs with logic, garageband and sibelius we use a xserve to control permissions and authetication, however soon we want to combine the open directory to active directory, but keep the xserve doing the permissions on applications which are allowed and not allowed to run
GrumbleDook Posted April 30, 2009 Posted April 30, 2009 20" iMacs (2 rooms 1x 10 and 1x 15) with Garageband, Sibelius and Logic Express and a MacPro in a recording studio with the external mixers, etc connected.
dhicks Posted April 30, 2009 Posted April 30, 2009 midi/audio interfaces, keyboards, software, virtual instruments, mics, etc. If people grumble about the costs of a Mac compared with a PC, it's probably worth pointing out that Macs do come with GarageBand, whereas PCs don't come with anything music-related other than Sound Recorder. I'm not actually sure you need a MIDI interface these days - we got USB-pluggable Edirol keyboards, they're bus-powered and everything, you just plug them in and they work. Around £50 each. -- David Hicks
gazpianoman Posted June 1, 2009 Posted June 1, 2009 We've just installed 22 20"iMacs with Reason, Sibelius and Logic Pro 8, a mac pro server to manage those, and another mac pro to run the ProTools HD studio. I would recommend all of the above, it's an awesome setup.
K.C.Leblanc Posted June 1, 2009 Posted June 1, 2009 We've just installed 22 20"iMacs with Reason, Sibelius and Logic Pro 8, a mac pro server to manage those, and another mac pro to run the ProTools HD studio. I would recommend all of the above, it's an awesome setup. Pro Logic 8, is that like Cubase? If so how does it compare on the ease of use front? No, we just use PCs. Much easier & cheaper. But you don't get the monogramed cleaning cloth.
webman Posted June 1, 2009 Posted June 1, 2009 But you don't get the monogramed cleaning cloth. Quite right. We get better ones
gazpianoman Posted June 2, 2009 Posted June 2, 2009 Yeah Logic Pro is the apple sequencer of choice. It's fantastic in a lab environment as it's very high quality and really easy to get on with. Superb software instruments and loop library means better output with minimal 'setup' time. Also, it's reasonably priced... £1200 for a bulk 500 licence package, 50 of which can be off site if needed.
artsaudi Posted June 2, 2009 Posted June 2, 2009 We are looking at the possibility of using Macs in the music dept. I was wondering which sort i should go for, should i go for the 20" imac's or should i see if we can get funding for power macs? What does anyone else use out there? does anyone use macs in the music dept or does everyone use PC's? We have eMacs which are 4/5 yrs old now, with Sibelius 5 and GarageBand installed. The machines are still working good and very stable. We are planning to change it to iMacs in a year or two depending on the budget.
El_Nombre Posted June 2, 2009 Posted June 2, 2009 We run Cubase and Sibelius here on four PCs with a variety of interfaces, monitoring setups and plugin packages, all recording projects to a NAS (as kids aren't allowed access to the C drive and their home areas would fill up.) Works a treat.
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