Setting my Mac up as a DAW... some VM ideas

Dagon

Just after getting my Macbook pro, and I'm really happy with it. It's a 15", 2.4ghz with 4gigs of RAM. It's really cool, but there seems to be a lot of "bloatware", and a lot of applications that wouldn't be necessary for a DAW such as calendars, photos editing, etc.

I've used virtual machines in my job, so I've come up with the following solution to keep my Mac running fast, and to keep it free of bloat:
- Remove everything but the bare essentials from the mac
- create two virtual machines
-> VM1 is mac osx with lots of applications - bloatware galore - including photoshop, office, various internet utilities, mail, chat, etc. I will use this to play around and learn more about mac
-> VM2 is windows xp - just for games and stuff I'm used to doing on Windows

The cool thing is that the VMs will only use up resources and memory when they are switched on. If I want to do resource heavy music editing, I just switch them off. They won't be taking up place on the Macs internal hard drive as they can be installed on a large external hard drive.

Also, if the VMs get infected with viruses, or end up with a lot of memory draining applications running in the background, again it's ok because this will be isolated within the VM and won't affect the host machines. As far as I know, the VM will not "know" anything about the host machine, therefore it can't spread viruses onto it, etc.

Possibly create VM3 for another os. You can create as many as you want, and transport them around..

What do you think?

fitz

Space could become an issue. Maybe put the images on an external drive.

trackmixstudio

Hold on there a minute!
Sounds like you are coming from windows.
Your macbook is designed to be a DAW. Just get an external firewire drive and you are set to go. You don't need to remove any software (apart from the office test drive) and you certainly don't need to set up any "virtual" machines.
On a a mac you don't get loads of background sh1t running like you do on windows.
Core audio is part of the OS unlike asio drivers on windows.
Just put logic (or your preferred software) on it and go make music. It's as simple as that.
One thing worth doing is navigate to Applications>utilities>disk utility and drag it to the dock. Run disk utility once a week and before and after you install software. Select the main hd and repair permissions. If you are going to put windows on for games I would recommend a small partition and install the games to an external drive.

dav nagle

trackmixstudio wrote: »

Hold on there a minute!
Sounds like you are coming from windows.
Your macbook is designed to be a DAW. Just get an external firewire drive and you are set to go. You don't need to remove any software (apart from the office test drive) and you certainly don't need to set up any "virtual" machines.
On a a mac you don't get loads of background sh1t running like you do on windows.
Core audio is part of the OS unlike asio drivers on windows.
Just put logic (or your preferred software) on it and go make music. It's as simple as that.
One thing worth doing is navigate to Applications>utilities>disk utility and drag it to the dock. Run disk utility once a week and before and after you install software. Select the main hd and repair permissions. If you are going to put windows on for games I would recommend a small partition and install the games to an external drive.

100% correct +100

This is the reason I switched, hope the mac is a sweetie pie

Dagon

Yes, fitz, as I said I'd be using a large external drive.

Yes Dav, the Mac is certainly a sweetie pie! Thought something was up with the screen though, then I realised it was adjusting itself to the room lighting... amazing!! I just switched that feature off...

One reason I wanted to create some virtual machines is because I've got my hands on a copy of VMWare fusion and I want to give it a blast I thought it be good to create separate machines for different usage. It's essential in Windows anywa, but I guess I need to unlearn everything I've learnt about Windows, egh!"

Dagon

trackmixstudio wrote: »

Hold on there a minute!
Sounds like you are coming from windows.
Your macbook is designed to be a DAW. Just get an external firewire drive and you are set to go. You don't need to remove any software (apart from the office test drive) and you certainly don't need to set up any "virtual" machines.
On a a mac you don't get loads of background sh1t running like you do on windows.
Core audio is part of the OS unlike asio drivers on windows.
Just put logic (or your preferred software) on it and go make music. It's as simple as that.
One thing worth doing is navigate to Applications>utilities>disk utility and drag it to the dock. Run disk utility once a week and before and after you install software. Select the main hd and repair permissions. If you are going to put windows on for games I would recommend a small partition and install the games to an external drive.

It's really cool about Core audio. One of the reasons I got a Mac. PCs just aren't designed for music, whereas macs are much more geared towards it in lots of ways...

fitz

Oops, missed the bit about the external drive.
Yeah, I'd agree with the guys above...you won't need a second image for OSX. Core Audio is rock solid. I'd be interested to hear how well the windows image runs.

Dagon

I think I'd prefer to use VMWare over bootcamp, the hard drive is teeny...

Trackmixstudio, thanks for the advice on disk maintenance, I will definitely keep that up.

My sister has been using Macs for years and she reckons they don't keep getting slower and slower each year, so that's good to hear!

trackmixstudio

If you will be using windows for games, you will need to use bootcamp to get the full power of the GPU.

dav nagle

trackmixstudio wrote: »

If you will be using windows for games, you will need to use bootcamp to get the full power of the GPU.

Once again the lords speaks. Boot-camp is the only one that will run windows games perfectly. I had boot camp for a while and it ran battlefield 2 perfect. After a while I got rid of it, in some ways it can be annoying. Things like switching between mac and win became a pain. Holding down keys and what not.

unclebill98

Let go of the PC buzz and just start using the Mac. As trackmix pointed out your using a real music machine.

One thing to do, is what ever HD your using turn off the spotlight function for that drive. If you using Logic this will already be taken care of.

As for macs getting slower as time goes on, this can happen if you do not do regular checks etc, sure thats the same for any computer.

dav nagle

unclebill98 wrote: »

Let go of the PC buzz and just start using the Mac. As trackmix pointed out your using a real music machine.

One thing to do, is what ever HD your using turn off the spotlight function for that drive. If you using Logic this will already be taken care of.

As for macs getting slower as time goes on, this can happen if you do not do regular checks etc, sure thats the same for any computer.

Exactamundo, pc's are the old world, you are in the new world now. If you want to play games get a 360, let your mac do what it does besT, audio. My 360 gamertag is Davan 195. I will kick your ass at any game any day so hit me up, I am the GAMESMASTER.

unclebill98

dav nagle wrote: »

Exactamundo, pc's are the old world, you are in the new world now. If you want to play games get a 360, let your mac do what it does besT, audio. My 360 gamertag is Davan 195. I will kick your ass at any game any day so hit me up, I am the GAMESMASTER.