Future Mac owner coming from PC

Question

Hello all,
I'm coming from the PC side of music making.
The last time I used a Mac for music was back on Sound Tools on my 2Si and Opcode's Vision.
So I'm a little out of the loop
I'm getting an iMac.
What difference will I see between the 2.8 and 3.06 Processors.
What difference will I see between 2 and 4GB of memory.
On my PC, I have one Hard Drive for my system files and programs, one Hard Drive for my loops, and another for my audio recordings.
I don't know how efficient the Mac OS is for hard drive usage.
So; If I run with many loops, should they be installed to another drive.
Is it OK to keep your loops and audio recordings on the same hard drive.
Do you place them on the internal drive, or external drive.
And speaking of external drives, how well do firewire soundcards work in tandem with external firewire hard drives?
How about using a firewire audio interface and putting audio and loops on USB?
I know there are many questions here, so If there is a web site that already addresses all of this, please post the link instead of typing your fingers off.
As I said, I'm new to the "new" Mac world and don't even know where to begin to look for answers.
Thanks so much for your help!
Peter

Answer 1

I just bought a 3.06 GHz iMac mostly for running Logic. Here's my setup: System Files and Program Files on internal drive, essential sound samples and instruments on main internal drive (e.g. EXS samples), nonessential samples on FireWire 800 external drive (e.g. Reason samples). Recordings on External drive. I have not yet purchased another External Drive devoted to recording. I don't do a lot of live recording, but if I did I'd have a second external drive for that.
Your iMac will come with two Firewire ports. One is FW 800 the other is FW 400. If you get a FW audio interface (get one, don't get USB, not fast enough), get FW 800 external drives, keep them on one port, and then put your FW 400 Audio interface on the FW 400 port. There's some sense out there that once you attach a FW 400 device to either port, you slow the FW 800 drives to FW 400 speeds. I just posted a discussion about it here, and the response is that it isn't that simple. I have found that my FW 400 Audio Interface (Focusrite Sapphire) does not slow down my FW 800 drive. I think its because I have them on two different ports and that does matter (even though they share the same internal bus).
I bought the 3.06 GHz iMac, not really for the faster processor, but for the better video card, the nVidia 8800 GS (which is apparently really an underclocked 8800 GT--the same high end video card used in the Mac Pro). I did this because Apple has announced that it will shortly be coming out with a new OS version, called Snow Leopard, which will have few if any new features, but is intended to make the OS much more efficient at using two things: multiple Cores, and the GPU (graphics card), but dumping more work onto the GPU than the current and previous versions of the OS. Also, Apple has recently been moving away from ATI cards to making most of its current line (all laptops for instance) to nVidia graphics cards. I presume (but do not know) that support in Snow Leopard from Apple will be geared much more heavily toward nVidia, and that graphics chip, which when you look at the specs on Apple's iMac page, show the card has at least 2-3 or more times the computing capacity of the ATI cards on the lower end iMacs. You can build-to-order the 2.8 GHz iMac with the faster nVidia video card if you buy it online. The cost savings is just, I think, $200. So, I figured I'd just fork over the extra little bit of money for the best processor, video card, and larger stock HD.
If I had to buy it over again, I'd get the 1TB internal drive. Its eSATA II, with transfer speeds up to 3Gps, which means it is theoretically as much as two times faster than even a FW 800 drive will be (I think). I went with the stock 500 GB internal drive.
As to RAM, boost it to 4 Gigs. I did. Its cheap. Crucial has the right RAM for it at just $56 for the entire 4 Gig kit (you remove the original 2x1 Gig modules and replace them with 2 x 2 Gig modules). Simple as pie to do by the way. Apple charges $150 for this upgrade. Its a ripoff. The RAM may not "speed up" Logic, but it will do two things that you will want. It will allow Logic to add more effects and instruments simultaneously into RAM, thereby reducing the need to read/write from your drives. It will also allow you to run other stuff in the background without getting out of Logic (e.g. Safari). Besides, for just $56, you'll know you have your machine in optimum shape to do what you want, and if you hit a wall, you won't be sitting there wondering: "is it the RAM?"
By the way, so far, I have found the iMac more than fast enough to handle seemingly ridiculous loads (to test it while I still had time to return it, I created a song with four very sample heavy EXS tracks, two Sculpture tracks, and an Ultrabeat track). I threw on Space Designer to five of the seven tracks, along with the master track (I know, sounded dumb, but that wasn't the point), along with compressors, modulators, and numerous other insert effects). With all of this going on, the highest CPU load I hit was 55%. I then, just to check it out, had Logic running in the background playing the song, launched Safari, Mail, Word, and Photoshop CS3. Not a hiccup. Only when I then launched Bridge CS3, and it drew 800 MB of my original 2 Gigs of RAM, did Logic stop and tell me I had insufficient system resources. After buying the extra 2 Gigs of RAM, ran the song, the other stuff, and couldn't believe this machine could get all of this done. Nice. I kept the iMac.