Powerbook G4 1.25 performance (was: Re: Need time sync explained)

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 3 nov 2007, at 15.37, van Sinn wrote:
> van Sinn wrote:
>> My plan (for later implementation) is having a MIDI/USB organ- 
>> style floor keyboard for playing stacked-up key/synth/organ's in  
>> MainStage while doing my guitar stuff.  Planning to run this from  
>> a Mac lappie makes for good reasons considering a SW-based looper.
>> If my planned setup moves on, I imagine needing to switch between  
>> looping the guitar parts only, and occationally also sampling both  
>> guitar and the MainStage stack.
>> For the latter reason I'd expect a plugin looper a better choise.
>
> Will a G4 1.25/1.33, 1 gig ram Tiger installed lappie be enough to  
> run MainStage with 3-4 synth/piano/organ's stacked up with some  
> effects, while running some looping SW, probably not utilized as  
> deep as what I've heard serious looper from in here do (on youtube  
> et al..) ?


That's the same Powerbook model I have, except for that I have 2 GB  
RAM in mine, and I'm afraid your ambition is too high for that  
machine. Over here I have found that the upper limit for what I can  
run during a concert, without risking audio artifacts due to CPU  
overload, is

- 1 synth/sampler (EXS24, ES2, EVP88, EFM1 or Sculpture). Absolutely  
no CPU headroom for stacking software instruments ;-(
- 1 Platinum Reverb (on an aux send bus)
- 1 Autofilter + Stere Delay (on an aux send bus)

The sampler EXS24 is the least CPU intensive, so for some sampler  
patches I have also chained a Tape Delay and a Phaser plug-in. But as  
for the Sculpture and ES2, which are awesome synths for EWI playing,  
there is no CPU power left for adding effects to the sound patches.

I the examples above I am not running any looping software, only the  
synths/sampler/Guitar Amp Pro simulator. In other words; G4 Powerbook  
is pretty lame by today's standards ;-(

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)