Imac i5 with Cubase Pro 8-which HD to buy?

Hi.I’m a long time user of Cubase and Mac .

I just upgraded a new Imac 15 350 GHz 27" 5k retina display and an Apollo Quad thunderbolt audio interface.
I now need to buy an external drive to use with Cubase Pro 8.

My question: should I buy an SSD thunderbolt drive or just a USB 3.0?
My knowledge of External HD’s is nil. So any help in reference to brands that will work well with my computer and what type, would be greatly appreciated.

I ended up buying the Lacie d2 thunderbolt 2 3TB hard Drive.
Does anyone here use one, how are they, and what do you think about it for use with Cubase?

Hey Oz,
I presume it would more than be fine; thunderbolt should theoratically give you the best speeds of current interfaces (esata, USB3, TB), though you’re obviously stil limited to the top speed of the drive itself.
I’ve been using esata G-tech drives and drive speeds have never been an issue; my cpu runs out before anything else does!

Just a quick question; I’m about to spring for an iMac 5k but was curious whether you have tried running it yet at full 5k resolution?
By default the imac is limited to 4k resolution, but you can switch to the maximum display size by either option clicking the ‘scaled’ option in Display Preferences or using a third party app like Quickres.

If you have ran it at 5k, would you mind posting a full size screenshot of the arrange window (with the vst dock open?); I’m just curious to see how much screen real estate you get on the full 5k setting…

Cheers,

Joe

Hi.
Thanks for the info
I actually had problems upgrading Cubase, going from 4.0 to the Cubase Pro upgrade. So Im using Logic Pro X until I can sort Cubase out.

Hi. Any news on how Cubase looks in different resolutions on the 5k?

Hey Alto,

I’ve been running it for around a month now. C8 pro looks great; they’ve fixed the retina issue so that the GUI doesn’t look lo-res anymore.
It’s working great in all res now.

I tried running at 5k but even though the screen real estate is fantastic, text does get very tiny, to the degree that it gets a bit too small. So I run it one res lower which looks great.
Keeping fingers crossed for a scaleable GUI one day in which text can be enlarged on larger monitors.

Speed wise, Asio performance seems good, but graphical performance is stil lagging behind the PC in quite a way.

Thanks a lot for the feedback. Have they fixed it in 8.0.35 or 8.5? I wasn’t planning on upgrading to 8.5 since 8 suits me fine, but I will if retina support is 8.5 only.

Not sure, I think it’s 8.5 as that’s what I’ve been running. You could always download the demo?

OK thanks I will, if and when I get the iMac.