Virus TI - setting up on a New Mac

[.Russ.]

I've just upgraded to a Mac Mini i7 quad and I want to set up my Virus TI keyboard on my new system.

My TI on my old G5 never worked particularly well and stopped working with Logic Pro (despite many attempts with Access to sort out) - I would like some advice/help in setting up my TI on my new Mac before I go about installing anything:

I want to use my TI as the main midi i/o for a few outboard synths I have and connect the TI to my Mac using the USB output for midi only (no audio).

I want to use the audio outs from the TI into my mixer/interface and not send audio via USB.

I will be using Reason 7 as my DAW - now it has MIDI out.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Wonkey Donkey]

I would also be interested as I'm looking at moving from Windows XP to a new Mac mini but have concerns with my TI1 being being compatible with USB3 (especially as I had to get a separate USB PCI card just to get it working properly on my PC)

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by Wonkey Donkey

I would also be interested as I'm looking at moving from Windows XP to a new Mac mini but have concerns with my TI1 being being compatible with USB3 (especially as I had to get a separate USB PCI card just to get it working properly on my PC)

Been here. I bought a Mac Mini for development purposes, but experimented with it as a music platform to see if I could replace my PC. I came to the conclusion that for my workflow, I would need a very expensive Mac Pro to come close to match the power and flexibility that an inexpensive PC provides. The non-tower Macs don't have enough airflow to run the best CPUs, and of course there's no way to upgrade them or put in dedicated cards for things like USB and Firewire. Sometimes the value of putting in a new card for troubleshooting purposes alone is worth it. I've even thought about getting one of the Universal Audio DSP cards and slapping it in so I can run their plug-ins and save CPU cycles.

Mobility of course is a different issue entirely, and of course expandability sacrifices are made there, but if you need mobility I assume you'd be looking at a laptop rather than a Mini.

[TweakHead]

Originally Posted by MBTC

The non-tower Macs don't have enough airflow to run the best CPUs.

this is the truth! I've owned two Imacs - both for audio purposes - and had the same problem with the two of them. There simply isn't enough air flow to use as a proper audio workstation, despite seeing them on almost every issue of an Audio Mag in their photos and all of that. my advice for anyone who uses Logic Pro is to get the Mac Pro - or if they think it's to expensive, I'd go with Hackintosh, since you already paid the OS and the software anyway... But this issue used to be worse prior to the newest intel CPU models that deal better with energy and don't reach such high temperatures - more an improvement on Intel then Apple if you ask me. Plus, it makes life more complicated to get the dedicated USB bus for a TI when you only have so much as 3 usb ports on the Mac, right? Even running wireless Keyboard and Mouse, you still need to plug-in a controller or something...

[TweakHead]

off topic.

about firewire connections. I see that recent apple computers are not supporting it anymore. but they're selling (plus other brands of course) firewire to thunderbolt adapters. I've read reports online stating that it was ok except for the energy part, you still needed to plug the DC even on firewire 800 connections (that is bus powered). Wonder if anyone here has ever tried to use such adapters and how it all turned out for them!

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by TweakHead

off topic.

about firewire connections. I see that recent apple computers are not supporting it anymore. but they're selling (plus other brands of course) firewire to thunderbolt adapters. I've read reports online stating that it was ok except for the energy part, you still needed to plug the DC even on firewire 800 connections (that is bus powered). Wonder if anyone here has ever tried to use such adapters and how it all turned out for them!

Without wanting to sound anti-Apple (I'm not, I love their iOS devices) Apple is notorious for change for the sake of change at the expense of the consumer. They were all huge on Firewire for the longest time, almost anti-USB even, then Thunderbolt became all the rage and they are anti-Firewire. They will do this again, long before the music hardware industry catches up with them. This is why I want the flexibility to put in cards. If the Virus TI3 was announced tomorrow with Thunderbolt support only, I'm a $20 card away from making that happen with my current PC with no other changes required. Apple makes money on the hardware, unlike Microsoft, so they have a huge incentive to insert planned obsolescence into their hardware products. How else can they sell you a new one every couple of years? Look at what they did with the connectors for the iPhone going from version 4 to version 5 and the crappy lightning connector that rendered many aftermarket accessories obsolete.

I do realize that sounds like a biased rant, but I've put a lot of time into investigating this from both sides, and I truly am both a PC and a Mac person. I can tell you from the developer side of the food chain, Apple has a very half-hearted commitment to the Mac. Being part of the Apple developer program, I usually see changes coming down the pipeline about a year or more before the general public does (in some cases I cannot even discuss the things I see without violating an NDA).

I think for someone gigging live, there might be a lot of advantage to an Apple laptop. In a laptop you're going to have bad airflow no matter whether Mac or PC and make lots of performance tradeoffs that might not matter much if playing live or DJ-ing. But if you do everything in the studio, I think power and flexibility are more important.

Back to your question of this particular thread, I'm not aware of anyone using a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter; I would be really skeptical about that for music production use where every bit of latency matters, not so skeptical for something like a storage device. I mostly went Firewire for my audio interface only because I wanted to keep "everything else" off the USB bus in case I get another Virus or just keep the Ultranova on USB. So basically I've got a dedicated USB3 card the Ultranova sits on, and dedicated Firewire card the Saffire uses. At least that way trouble with one doesn't affect the other, and I don't have to worry about things like the FW chipset on my motherboard or whether I'm overloading the onboard USB etc.

Also I'd say to anyone please don't compare Windows XP to Mac OSX, it's not fair to compare a 12 year old OS to Apple's latest. Windows 7 and 8 are nice. Windows 8 has gotten some bad press because of the tablet interface stuff, but that aspect doesn't affect music production and they are remedying the complaints in a few weeks with the release of Windows 8.1.

[TweakHead]

I don't think anyone will ever have any kind of trouble using the Virus as a midi controller and as a standard hardware controller, using midi. The Midi out (and in? or just out?) protocol in Reason 7 strikes me as similar to any other offering on the market these days (and a great update to Reason's abilities, making it a more mature product of course). I've seen it (version 7) at a friend's house, he's got a yamaha workstation that performs as expected. But on such a host, you couldn't really expect to have "Virus Control" there unless Access decides to make a Rack Extension version of their plug-in that is, so you'll be using the Virus the same way I use my Virus C - but with the extra features on the sound engine.

[plaid_emu]

I bought a new Mac mini 2.6GHz quad core i7 in January, installed dual 128 GB SSDs and maxed out the RAM to 16GB. The thing can handle anything I throw at it. I use Reaktor and Absynth a lot too, in addition to the TI. I can feel the fan working fine but I can't hear it. Doesn't seem to be smoking when I push it real hard.

It's an amazing little machine, and if you can't make music on it without setting it on fire, then you probably have 150 tracks in your cluttered song with 42 instances of Diva and CPU hungry multiband compression plug-ins on every instance.

[TweakHead]

Originally Posted by plaid_emu

I bought a new Mac mini 2.6GHz quad core i7 in January, installed dual 128 GB SSDs and maxed out the RAM to 16GB. The thing can handle anything I throw at it. I use Reaktor and Absynth a lot too, in addition to the TI. I can feel the fan working fine but I can't hear it. Doesn't seem to be smoking when I push it real hard.

It's an amazing little machine, and if you can't make music on it without setting it on fire, then you probably have 150 tracks in your cluttered song with 42 instances of Diva and CPU hungry multiband compression plug-ins on every instance.

Problems with lack of proper air flow only become apparent with time. And it's not directly related to the performance, or how much this machines can handle. Just that the components tend to wear out pretty fast if you're using this computers for serious audio work. Myself, I can reach 150 tracks on a project without it being cluttered at all. Multiple instances of multi-band compression isn't needed, as that's better suited for the mastering stage (if at all, when you're talking about your own tracks)!

Some high quality plug-ins can be demanding, like analogue-modeled stuff. Even equalizers, but most specially high quality Reverbs (often used to benchmark audio related stuff). But you shouldn't take it for granted that just because a new machine does handle your needs well and the fan isn't even making a lot of noise, it's got good airflow. Just check the design on their Mac Pro related to air flow and you'll see what I mean. For example: the i7-3370 processor is (still) one of the fastest around and many people have it on pcs with dedicated coolers (even water based) and a lot of air flow. That's the processor used on the latest highest grade imac, yes, even thiner then before... Not only it has a huge tendency for overheating - like all previous models! (owned them from the G5) -, but you're in luck if you don't have to replace some of its components during its lifespan. So yeah, owned macs and still have them and I dare say "there's simply not enough air flow to them, except the Mac Pro"!

Cheers

[plaid_emu]

I suppose it all comes down to the user's needs. Before my new Mac mini, I used a 2006 first gen MacIntel mini with a 1.5GHz core solo CPU which I swapped out for a 2.33GHz core 2 duo, upgraded the system disk to a 7200 RPM Hitcahi, maxed the RAM to 4GB, and that thing still runs better than many of the modern PCs I've used. Never had any cooling problems.

I will admit I owned a G5 iMac that was a terrible glutton for heat. That thing was always noisily whirring away, but when the screen got destroyed with an errant RC helicopter, I never went back to the "all in one" solution.