I just bought myself a 1 gig Tibook and I'm considering selling my previous rig, once the move to the Tibook is complete. I hope that I can at the least bounce some pricing ideas around and/or drum up interest. This is a recording rig featuring a G4 desktop and MOTU audio interface.
The interface features up to 24 channels of I/O and with some tweaking, the G4 CAN push the full 24 out (UI gets a little clunky then... expect recording 8 channels more easily). I've run mixes using Digital Performer up to 48 tracks WITH some plugins (not very well but with some coaxing it can do it).
The interface is PCI based so I can't use it with the Powerbook.
The rig:
Computer:
G4 500 single processor
768meg Ram (1x 256 1x512)
100gig Western Digital HD ATA (8mb Buffer)
18gig Maxtor external 10,000 rpm Ultra SCSI
QPS 8x4x24 Firewire CDRW
DVD RAM
Zip 100
ATI Rage Pro AGP card with ADC output
Macally i-key keyboard
either Kennsington Orbit or optical scroll mouse
SCSI PCI card for the SCSI drive
17" Princeton Graphics CRT
The 18gig SCSI was the stock drive. The SCSI card matches the stock card. I mounted the drive in a 3.5" external housing and installed the internal 100gig. The 100gig drive is about 5 months old.
I may add some more ram if the price is right. I had a gig in before, but when I upgraded the firmware for OS X, one 256 stick was disabled. I've done most of my audio work with the 1gig of ram. Ram is key because you can alleviate stress on the processor by increasing the per track buffer. This increases processing power for plugins and allows more tracks to playback at the cost of using up more ram and also increasing latency. If you are mixing, latency is no concern. When tracking, have the performer monitor themselves BEFORE it gets into the computer (you need a mixer that can route audio back to the cans ... you may also need an outboard effects box if the performer needs reverb, I had a cheap Behringer box just for that purpose).
The computer just had its Logic board replaced at Tekserve here in NY. Ask me about the details. Anyone who knows Tekserve would know they are top-notch.
The 2408:
Mark of the Unicorn 2408 mk1
This is the original with PCI card
20bit A/D converters
24bit Digital transfers
24 channels ADAT
24 channels T-DIF
2 channels S/PDIF
8 channels analog
ADAT sync, DA-88 sync with remote
The 2408 is the perfect digital hub. It can interface with digital mixers, MDM tape based digital recorders, DAT machines, etc. This was the first version so the inputs are unbalanced RCA at 20bit ADC. But the internal digital path is still 24bit. So, if you had a 24bit DAT or ADAT, it will pass audio to and from the computer digitally at the full 24 bit word length. Only analog conversions are 20 bit. It is unfortunate but I guess at the time it was a reasonable compromise to keep costs down.
No software except for OS 9 and OS X 10.2 disks and the 2408 driver disk (comes with a free DAW software called Audiodesk... kind of worthless, though). I only use Digital Performer and I wish to keep my copy so I can use my registration to upgrade to DP4.0 when available.
I'm planning on putting them up on ebay. I'm not sure if I should sell them separate or as a package. I've seen a similar package go for around $1200.00. But this was before the G5 release, but also that package featured a G4 with less RAM and less hard drive space (256 and 27gig only). I'll probably want around that for both. Or maybe a 800.00/400.00 split or so.
I am looking for advice about pricing and also whether to sell separately or together.
Thanks for any input.
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