Switching from PC and worried about iMac stability. Help!

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keano12

New Member
Hi guys Hi - I have always used a PC for recording and it's always been solid. I use a Mac at work and home for design. So I am going to get a new iMac 27" with Logic but I have heard lots of horror stories about stability and bugs. Latency issues. I am planning on the following set up can you tell me what your thoughts are it's already getting expensive as it is because I also have to buy my Apollo Twin.

I have a lot of sample based programs, and drums, Omnisphere, NI Komplete etc. GB's of it. So I will place the samples on a external HD.
  1. External USB3 for Samples.
  2. External USB3 for Songs/Audio.
  3. Is the 1TB Serial ATA ok.The flash drive is nice but $500.

3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2X8GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm - - - - - - Will this drive work ok? I know everyone says Flash Drive but that is $500 more. If the 1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm is ok I could put that $500 to 32GB RAM or 3.5 GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7. I heard there isn't a huge difference in speed may more RAM is better?
 
More ram is always better ( I have 8gb and am happy). I have 2 "other world computer" 7500rpm drives daisy chained with my firewire motu mk3 and they've been working fine for about 4 years.

Are you gonna make your own box for that drive?

Oh... you must mean the option for having it installed in your iMac. It's fine here but I don't really know what would be best
 
I don't really trust the claims of usb 3 personally as I've tested it against other protocols myself and at best it's peak performance rivals firewire 400 it's about 2x faster than 2.0 for me. Most sample libraries will be wanting to cache things to ram, and stock ram on most stock macs are horrible considering the os takes 3/4 of it if your using the average stock 4gb. I have 8gb in my ok performing 'ol 2 core mbp but if your using a drive with low instantaneous throughput, I would grab some ram, and or good fast hard drive for that kinda thing. Others may have a differing opinion but that philosophy for sample dependent instruments has served me fairly well. Streaming from a mechanical drive will more than likely cause crashes.
 
It doesn't take long to find horror stories about every piece of hardware or software ever produced.

FWIW, I have an iMac running Logic 9, Logic X, Digital Performer, Cubase, DSP-Quattro, and loads of various VIs and plugins. No problems here with crashes. I usually leave it running for days with either DP or Logic running, putting it in sleep mode at night.
 
Logic is pretty buggy I'll admit. General consensus of... my experience. No vst plugs and no abandonware with logic. Logic is hands down the buggiest daw I have ever used, but it's the potential that keeps me coming back. The simplicity. I've found every daw to have equal footing, none perfect. DP is solid and have been using it a long time, very dependable. Logic doesn't have that but it has immediacy. Logic is the only daw where I just opened it the first time and did what I needed. It just had some plugin issues. Again no such thing as a winner.
 
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