Macbook Air 2011+C6?

Hi there,

I know it’s a little early to ask this question, since they only came out last week, but has anyone had a chance to try C6 on a new 2011 Macbook Air?

I am seriously considering getting the 13"er, probably i5 with 256GB SSD.

Even more specific than that, I would like to run the VSL library once the Thunderbolt drives become available, and 1 instance of a convolution reverb and a compressor. Do you think this would be asking too much?

I don’t expect anyone has tried this yet, but thought I’d run it past you.

Thanks,
Darren :slight_smile:

Aloha M,
and good question.

I’m too am trying to decide between the 13" MBA or the 13" MBP.
It’s the processor/ram thang that scares me.

1.8 i7 in the MBA approx $1700.00
or
2.7 i7 in the MBP approx $2200.00

Both with 256 SSDs

Also
only 2gig s of ram in the MBA and you can’t increase it (AFAIK)
4gigs in the MBP and can be increased to 8gig ($200.00)

Right now I am leaning toward the MBP because I
do not want to make a big mistake and buy an
underpowered machine.

Let us know what direction you decide to take.

my 2cents
{‘-’}

Hi there,

Yes, the Airs can have upto 4GB - but you have to request that when you purchase as I don’t think they can be upgraded later.

That is still disappointing - and I was hoping for 8GB. Maybe next year eh?

I was going to go with a Pro (I don’t mean a prostitute! Haha) mainly because of the 8GB expandability, until I realised how comparatively fat, heavy, and expensive they are, and loaded with stuff I’ll probably never use (DVD drive, SD slot, most of the ports). Even though I use large sample libraries, I can just about get by on 4GB, since I’ve been doing exactly that for years on my ageing Quad G5. And I’ll only be using it for trying out ideas in C6, rather than full scale work. I’ll mostly be using it with Sibelius for score work. So, for me, a MB Pro would be not worth the sacrifice in portability.

The only slight concern is that Lion apparently has a huge hunger for memory, and can easily munch on 1GB+ for breakfast before anything else is even loaded. I’m hoping an update by Apple can tame the beast and reduce his appetite accordingly (maybe a lil’ dog biscuit would do? :wink: ).

I haven’t completely made my mind up yet about the Air/Pro thing, but I’m leaning towards the Air at present.

If you do get a Pro, you might want to consider getting a HDD model and swapping out the the DVD drive with an Optibay, putting the HDD in there, then adding an SSD (OCZ Vertex 3 is a good choice) in the HDD space. Put the OS+Apps on the SSD, and your audio on the HDD. Best of both worlds.

Plenty of people have been doing this successfully and there’s a few videos on Youtube about how to do it.

Cheers,
Darren

I would be very cautious about running big sample libraries on anything that can’t have at least 8gig of RAM, preferably a LOT more - unless you plan to run the libraries on slave machines. These libraries eat up cpu and RAM.

I love my Macs, but it’s easy to bring the studio 8 core 2.8 gig MacPro to its knees with a few nice orchestral samples…

64 bit may solve all this one day, but I’m not holding my breath.

Yeah, I know it won’t be able to handle a full orchestral mockup, but I will be content with loading a few sounds just for sketches and trying ideas out to be honest. My main usage will be for writing scores in Sibelius away from home. :slight_smile:

I will be disappointed if it struggles to load and play back any samples though.

Apparently a new VE Pro has reached the beta stage which will be far more memory efficient. Equiped with an SSD drive, I’m hoping an Air should be able to cope with a modest amount of samples loaded.

However, I can’t really do any of this until there’s a Thunderbolt HDD available.

…unless I got a MB Pro. /chin