Nad
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Macs can do the job.Yes, you can do this stuff on Macs. Several of the people who regularly attend this forum are Mac users. Some use both PCs and Macs. So if you have some Mac specific questions or ideas, post them here! They will get looked at.
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Thaumata Strangelove
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i love my mac.I was dubious that SL would run very well on my mac but I've not had any problems with my new 15" mbp.
Also, I tried shoutcast recently and it works great. It took me all of five minutes to set up and tested perfectly on my land. (Though, I hadn't been aware to expect the 30 second lag and that was kind of a funny shock.)
Go mac go!
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Silas Scarborough
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Something you might want to consider is running Windows on the Mac, assuming you have one Mac to drive your audio and a different computer for SL. The reason for doing that is you can eliminate the PC hardware and the vulnerability to over-heating. In well over twenty years, I've never had a Mac overheat but my PC is probably going to cost somewhere near $700 because of a problem directly due to overheating.
Although you can run a product such as VMWare to run OS X and Windows on the same Mac, I'm very leary of taking such an approach as bringing Windows close to anything important is something that would require extensive analysis to justify.
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Zak Claxton
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I run SL and Nicecast, both on Macs, with no problem. I run SL on my 15" MBP, and do my audio through Old Bessie, the G4.
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ka-klick
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One great thing about OSX is that it actually seems to do multi-processor awareness very well. I have no problem streaming via GarageBand -> NiceCast at the same time I have SL up at the same time. On any platform make damn sure you have loads of RAM (I'm comfy w/ 2.5G) I'm on a 2.5Ghz dual proc G5 . I get chills thinking about what one of those quad core MacPro's would be like. Guess I need to sell lots more CDs/Downloads.
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Nad
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One night I forgot I was running Photoshop, downloading 5 torrents, and misc other stuff when I was performing using Garageband (a file with 80 tracks), Nicecast, and recording the set with Audio Hijack Pro on my 2ghz mac g5 (3.5 ram). It dint hiccup once, and it was only later that I discovered I had been running all that stuff meanwhilesomely. But then... other times I am running nothing but Sl and it crashes. SL is the ONLY program I have on my system that takes the entire OS down. The SL client is really really lacking on Mac - it doesn't use any of the great graphic stuff. It's among the poorest ports from PC to Mac I've ever seen. The good news is that the Nicholaz 3rd party client is a GREAT improvement.
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Zak Claxton
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My Mac itself is solid as a rock, both my G4 and the snazzy new 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo MBP. In addition to SL and live performing, I use them both for serious audio recording, video editing, and all manner of processor-intensive shit.
My deficiency is much more on my crappy upstream bandwidth here at the far end of a DSL station, apparently. It's helped a lot using two differeent Macs in that regard. At some point, I plan on moving up to FiOS from DSL. Once I have fiber in here, looooooook out. 
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Zak Claxton
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And yes, Nad: SL is the only app that will take down my whole OS. Rarely, but it still does happen with no rhyme or reason. Ah well. We're always second-class citizens as Mac users. I'm just thankful I don't have to have a PC here only to run SL! 
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KTravanti
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I use a Mac pro duo core computer, my Korg and mic ( its an Audio Spectrum) is connected into my Mackie DFX-6. I use Nicecast for broadcasting. IMHO.. it is WAY easier to perform this way instead of using PC. 
KT
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Zak Claxton
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| KTravanti wrote: | | IMHO.. it is WAY easier to perform this way instead of using PC. |
Kori, in my less-than-humble opinion, everything on a Mac is easier and better than on a PC.
But I don't say that in mixed company. I don't want to be accused of being a Mac Snob (although, hee hee, I pretty much am).
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KTravanti
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| Zak Claxton wrote: | | KTravanti wrote: | | IMHO.. it is WAY easier to perform this way instead of using PC. |
Kori, in my less-than-humble opinion, everything on a Mac is easier and better than on a PC.
But I don't say that in mixed company. I don't want to be accused of being a Mac Snob (although, hee hee, I pretty much am). |
In a very short time Zak I have become a Mac snob! lmbo!!!
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Zak Claxton
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My time isn't so short: I started using Macs in 1985, not very long after they were first introduced, and I've been using them personally and professionally ever since. I really have nothing against Windows machines at all. For me, the personal preference of using a Mac is based on the things that I do for work and pleasure... music, graphics, video, and so on. They're not for everyone. Just ones like me.
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Silas Scarborough
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I've got a Mac Quad and here's something I discovered the other day: My PC self-destructed several weeks so I've been running SL on the Mac and absolutely hating it. One of the reasons for that is audio streams were dropping out at unacceptable rates. I tried dropping SL max bandwidth to 100 and that helped but did not eliminate the problem. My next approach was to increase the CPU allowed Nicecast via the Quality setting. It had been set to about 25% and that was fine so long as SL was running somewhere else. Yesterday I tried increasing it to about 60% and didn't get a single drop even though I did nothing to reduce SL bandwidth.
Something I've meant to do for a while but have not tried as yet is to use the Archive function of Nicecast to capture the stream to disk. What benefit is there to using Audio Hijack over the Archive function? I'll guess that Audio Hijack is grabbing the audio when it's outbound from GarageBand and Archive is saving the audio after it's been compressed and is outbound from Nicecast, therefore the audio resolution in Hijack would be much better. Is this accurate?
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Zak Claxton
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| Silas Scarborough wrote: | | Something I've meant to do for a while but have not tried as yet is to use the Archive function of Nicecast to capture the stream to disk. |
I use it all the time. By default, it captures a 128kbps MP3 file. It's perfectly fine for standard purposes like making Podcasts, putting audio examples on on your web site, and so on. I wouldn't use it to track a live album, of course, but for basic capture and Internet-based song sharing it's great.
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Zed Essex
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Recording a performance in high quality.i use a mixer to blend my guitar with my voice before it enters into the computer. When I want to make a high quality recording I use the aux outputs in the mixer which are routed to my DAT machine. This is good cause other than this i have no use for my good ol' DAT Machine! But Silas is correct you are much better capturing audio before it goes thru an encoder. Mp3 encoders discard certain frequencies in addition to compressing the data, so if you need to record high quality audio it's better to avoid this.
If you have any questions about audio, fire away. I'm a recording engineer in RL!
Oh and for the record i bought my first MAC when I got my protools HD rig. At the time I was a died in the wool PC guy, but got the mac because there were more plugins available for it at the time and I only wanted to use that computer for serious recording.
Over time whenever my PC wouldn't do something i wanted I would try it on the MAC, and began to notice I got more work done on the Mac! I still use PCs tho, My Sl radio station runs on one, and I have another one I use for buring DVD;s and encoding video. The bulk of what I do is done on MAC computers tho. I find the MAC OS head and shoulders above Windows which seems to create a new problem for every solution! Especially Vista!
Zed
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Zak Claxton
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Re: Recording a performance in high quality. | Zed Essex wrote: | | I'm a recording engineer in RL! |
So am I. Zed and Zak are your engineering experts here.
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RayW
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Re: Recording a performance in high quality. | Zed Essex wrote: | | If you have any questions about audio, fire away. I'm a recording engineer in RL! |
Hey, Zed ... You should post some tips and what-nots on the FAQ section. Sounds like you could really add to that discussion.
Not that you don't, too, Zak. All of us appreciate the input from you guys who have made a vocation at this.
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Morris Dawes
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Running SL on a PC while doing the music etc on the MacI think I read above about someone using one computer to run SL and at the same time another computer to run the music and audio. That sounds like a good idea to me. What if I were to run Logic and NiceCast on my iMac G5 and then another coumputer (say a Windows machine) to run SL so I could see the audience?
The reason I mentioned a Windows machine for running SL is that I would imagine that I could pick up somthung used on Craigslist or Ebay pretty cheap right? I'm not so up on the Windows world. What would you all recommend I look for in a Windows computer to run SL (only) while I use the Mac for music? How much would I expect to pay? Would a notebook Windows computer do the job?
Best,
Morris
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Zak Claxton
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Re: Running SL on a PC while doing the music etc on the Mac | Morris Dawes wrote: | | I think I read above about someone using one computer to run SL and at the same time another computer to run the music and audio. That sounds like a good idea to me. What if I were to run Logic and NiceCast on my iMac G5 and then another coumputer (say a Windows machine) to run SL so I could see the audience? |
I am one of the people who run them on two computers, and I'm VERY glad I do. I've had SL crash one computer many times in the middle of a show, but the computer streaming my audio keeps rolling right along.
| Quote: | | The reason I mentioned a Windows machine for running SL is that I would imagine that I could pick up somthung used on Craigslist or Ebay pretty cheap right? |
I think it's a fine idea... just make sure that whatever you get has the sysreq that is capable of running SL.
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RayW
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I have two computer, also. But, unlike Zak, I have SL on the powerhouse and use the old one to broadcast from.
Well, that is until today. Today my streaming LIVE into SL days are on hold. The old machine is dying ... it's been a slow one. But, twice in the last few days it just went into a coma.
So, soon (not soon enough) I'll be saying I run SL on the powerhouse and use the new machine to broadcast from.
(Yah ... I know I'm not a Mac user ... my wife is ... so its in the family)
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Zak Claxton
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| RayW wrote: | | I have two computer, also. But, unlike Zak, I have SL on the powerhouse and use the old one to broadcast from. |
Nope! SL is much more processor intensive than streaming. I'm running SL on the shiny new MacBook Pro, and streaming on the old-but-reliable G4.
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RayW
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 Sorry, Zak. Not sure where I got my wrong impression! In fact, I think you said this in another post elsewhere. So, double oops on me.
It makes sense.
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vonjohin
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Re: Recording a performance in high quality.Count me in...
| Zak Claxton wrote: | | Zed Essex wrote: | | I'm a recording engineer in RL! |
So am I. Zed and Zak are your engineering experts here. |
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Davin Romano
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I've had a problem with my recently setup nicecast streaming.. It seems it doesn't end the session when I stop broadcasting, and locks up my server completely.. Now I've gotten a page of commands to do it all manually thru Terminal.. and I'm not that savvy..
I was hoping Start/Stop broadcast would have done what it was meant to do.. I havent' seemed to be that lucky yet.
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