Apart from the challenge to fully understand and master the new OS (not as easy as the average Mac evangelist will tell you – even if you don’t ask…) as well as Win XP Pro, it appeared that the hardware didn’t live fully up to its design. Unfortunately it’s only then that you take all the forum remarks about the MacBook’s bug list seriously… A striking body temperature (yes, we all know that we like it hot, but hot on metal surfaces is too hot) and the noise level of a fan that doesn’t like to stop working rank among its most prominent features.
Plus Boot Camp 1.1 was far from being a stable matter. And since all our music software ran on windows, that was a problem. We installed Cubase SX 3 and finished a production anyway. We began asking ourselves though, whether we had been overrun by Apples wonderful marketing machinery. The “liberty” to work on both systems at native speed turned into a completely unnerving experience. Windows and OS X just don’t go along well. Just a few examples; indeed it is possible to READ an NTFS partition under OS X – but WRITING is impossible (unless you find a reliable 3rd party software). Then it turned out that Bootcamp can’t establish more than two partitions, one for Win, one for Mac. No 3rd data partition possible. By that time the comments of some long term Mac users not to bother, because his holiness Steve in his endless wisdom had created such a stable system that a data partition is just not needed, OS X will never crash and become useless like Window, didn’t appear to be very trustworthy after we did have some inexplicable system crashes. Having partly been turned into Mac heads nevertheless, our hearts were filled with great expectations regarding the final Bootcamp version under Leopard. Alas, that problem persisted…

Which means an external hard drive is rather indispensable. O yes, and it must be Firewire of course, since the 2 USB ports on our 15,4’’ MacBook “ “Pro” are not so Pro after all and more importantly, completely insufficient in a Studio environment. But thanks for the otherwise completely useless Firewire 800 port.

At least the keyboard was legible, due to the illuminated keys. Very cool! So here we finally had some reason to rejoice. The display was also very well received. Non-reflective, with LED’s (which a lot of PC notebooks still don’t have to offer), an ok resolution of 1440 x 900, and fully legible even when working directly in the sun. So some flaws aside, the hardware did its job. But changing the OS all the time was frustrating in the long run. After a lot of discussions we consequently opted for a radical system change, and so our studio became fully Xed. At the moment of decision, nobody could foresee the consequences, though…
Excerpt: …Cubase behaves very unstable on Mac. The program quits for no reason (unlike Reason) – and it can do so any time. To make a long story short, we are looking into buying Logic now… Many plug-ins were never written for the Mac, so go, get some new ones. One unwanted consequence of that is a lacking compatibility to older projects of course. Etc., etc., etc….

So yeah, time is relative – particularly in relation to the desired results. Since we really, really liked the hardware – and some of the charms Mac OS X has to offer - we had a lot of patience with the Mac and even enjoyed problem solving for some time. But after a while it sucked big time, bottom line being that with a Windows notebook we had spent much more time making music instead of finding out, that Windows on a Mac via Bootcamp is just some kind of a half heartedly implemented compromise. So the only USP of the Mac stays its hardware. And even that is not fully true music wise.

Our résumé: think more than twice before you consider a switch from Windows to Mac in your studio because Bootcamp is out there. Particularly if the only reason you want to change for is the legibility on the keyboard….

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With the arrival of the Intel platform plus Bootcamp, the time finally seemed to be ripe for THAT switch. XP was aging, Vista a pain in tha a**, and very little decent and stylish PC notebooks on the horizon. Unfortunately, time becomes a black hole in the process, and loads of unexpected difficulties arise. So just before you are about to realize that your girlfriend is gone (bad) and your fridge is empty (worse) you can rightly state: “switch carried out, all machines ready to fire”. But by then, the next generation of MacBook Pros has arrived… But lets start from the very beginning.

It was a thrilling notion on one of the first warm spring days last year, me using a notebook as my principal machine again. The power of most laptops being completely adequate today, the first choice was a Sony to begin with. The design, well, slightly organic, but somehow stylish enough. Plus the hardware insight was top for early 2007, a 200 GB disc, 2x 1024 MB RAM, plus a reeeally bright display.

But a “ready for the coffeehouse” batch doesn’t mean it can live up to the necessities of studio work. The reflective display design did indeed reflect all the other LEDs etc. in our otherwise rather dark studio atmo plus the 1280 x 800 pixel resolution is just not enough for 15,4’’ screen – certainly it’s not PRO. But that wasn’t enough to make me seriously think about a change. The thing that really mattered was the keyboard. The letters on the keys completely zoomed out in our studio because of the light grey keys with WHITE lettering on it. That could already become a problem on a normal grey day – well designed, Sony. So that was how it actually started. And after a lot of research it just had to be a MacBook Pro, since at the time being that seemed to be the ultimate hardware. And why not striving for the best - as we do with our music…?
On another beautiful day this wondrous thingy finally lay in front of me, a Core Duo first generation MacBook Pro. The design, plus the look and feel made me and zu Fuss almost bow in respect. What a simple yet refined elegance. But alas, the joy didn’t last long…

Second part coming soon

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Es ist endlich da. Die Erwartungen waren entsprechend hoch und ich kann vorweg sagen, sie wurden zumindest bei mir, nur wenig enttäuscht.
Mit Thor, einem neuen Syntheziser und einem überarbeiteten Sequenzer, der etliche neue Funktionen beinhaltet, ist Propellerhead ein großartiger Wurf gelungen. Doch zu Beginn auch gleich der Wermuthstropfen: Audio ist immer noch nicht mit Reason 4 möglich. Wie die “Beat” in einem Interview mit dem Gründer und Geschäftsführer Ernst Nathorst-Boos schreibt: „… Reason bleibt Reason!“, und „…Reason ist so wie es ist am Besten. Es ist mächtig und gleichzeitig sehr fokussiert. Es gibt andere Programme, die großartig sind, was den Bereich Audioaufnahmen anbelangt. Wir könnten niemals die kompletten Funktionen dieser Programme in Reason integrieren, ohne Reason in seiner gesamten Struktur zu verändern, und das wäre möglicherweise das Ende seines Konzeptes. … - für alles andere gibt es ReWire…“.
Die Liste der Neuerungen in Reason 4 ist riesig und kaum mit einem Blogbeitrag zu bewältigen. Mit dem neuen Syntheziser Thor ist nicht nur einfach ein weiteres Instrument dazu gekommen, sondern ein echtes Multitalent. Er verfügt über einen semi-modularen Aufbau mit bis zu drei gleichzeitig aktivierbaren Oszillatoren (analoge Simulation, Wavetables und FM-Synthese). Des Weiteren kann aus vier Filterarten ausgewählt werden, wobei drei gleichzeitig zum Einsatz kommen können. Ideal für Klanggestalter: eine komplexe Modulationsmatrix, über welche alle Parameter des Synthies miteinander verschaltbar sind. Zusätzlich gibt es einen Step-Sequenzer, der nicht nur zum einfachen Notenauslösen verwendet werden kann, sondern auch zur Modulation oder auch als Arpeggiator. Klanglich ist Thor äußerst flexibel und überzeugend.
Der erste Eindruck ist insgesamt großartiger als erwartet. Viele Neuerungen machen das Arbeiten mit dem Sequenzer flüssiger. Aber dazu mehr demnächst im zweiten Teil.

+ flexibler neuer Synthie mit semi-modularem Aufbaue, Sequenzer deutlich verbessert, Arpeggiator mit vielen Spieloptionen, ReGroove-Mixer für komplexe Groove-Muster.
- keine Audiospuren, keine VST-Einbindung
Hersteller: Propellerheads Software
Preis: 449 EUR/ Update: 99 EUR

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Just a very brief Joyeux Noel/ Happy Christmas/ Weisse Weihnacht and so on.
We at Stalking Gogo Girls are using the absence of work - and our girlfriends… - to figure out how to use the new Native Instruments “The Superinstrument” Kore 2. Unfortunately it’s not as easy as their demovideo suggests. As usual with NI… Althought we love their software, we found the only fast-access piece ever was FM8 (demo - we didn’t buy in the end). The trouble with NI; instead of building around computation standards like undo (!) they are creating stylish but limited GUIs with static hardware like functionalities. Ok, we are a bit harsh here, but if we count all the hours that went into Kore 2 already (and yes, this we have bought…) we are a bit pissed about the results. Maybe this needs some “Superproducers” as well? I recently read an interview with one of the Swayzak guys where he describes how they started. I can’t remember it fully, but it was something as impressingly minimal as 2 samplers and 2 FX… And what great music came out of that!

Essence for another too gift loaded christmas: maybe it’s not “Superinstruments” with “unlimited” soundfeatures and sounds we need, but some of that famous “less is more”.

Hmmm… Still undecided (1 Christmas Holiday to go…)

The White Go Gos

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