New iMac Quad or Install SSD in Older Duo iMac ?

I'm at a bit of a crossroads - my intention is to establish a smaller commercial project studio in the next year, I have a start up budget to play with and would like to invest wisely.

I've been investigating the UAD-2 PCIe DSP Accelerator Cards but found out my iMac's (27-inch, Late 2009, 3.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor 16 MB RAM) connectivity (One FireWire 800 port; 7 watts Four USB 2.0 ports SD card slot) is outdated for this DSP technology ..... so I reconsidered the UAD-2 Satellite DSP Accelerator (FireWire) & Ive been planning on having an SSD drive installed to his iMac for all the benefits that it brings ....

but am starting to wonder if I'm investing in a bygone computer that isn't going to last much longer, isn't 'commercial grade' to begin with and I really don't want to compromise on what is essentially the most important main artery (desk) ....

should I upgrade to a new iMac Quad core for all the enhanced performance - 3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7 32GB RAM, (warrantied) reliability & the accessibility to the UAD-2 PCIe DSP Accelerator Cards that initially was interested in ......

Your thoughts and opinions are most welcome ?

Newer iMac for sure!

The only 5 year old computers that are less underpowered are 8-core mac pros, but they're also behind on new connectivity.

I have the new imac i5 with only 16GB of Ram and an SSD and compared to anything I seen it's pretty incredible. I absolutely love it! It's incredibly fast and almost totally silent. So the machine you are considering is bound to impress.

The biggest thing is the SSD. It boots up in seconds and programs start almost instantly. Google chrome took about 15 seconds to install. LArge projects load almost instantly (even when accessing audio files on my external usb3.0 drive). You would probably see those benefits even with just a hard drive upgrade in your current imac.

USB 3.0 is another thing. It makes using an external hard drive a lot faster. Not to mention thunderbolt options if you have the money for thunderbolt devices. For example thunderbolt hard drive and a thunderbolt hub available that adds more USB ports and firewire and would be a really nice addition to any studio system.

So between the two options I would say definitely go with the new computer 'except' one thing to consider. You still could get a bit of mileage out of your current computer, which would allow you to wait to upgrade until the new apple line comes out (and who knows what improvements they'll make next time). At any rate if you can wait, you'll have a newer machine (when you do upgrade) that will last that much longer before your next upgrade. What I mean by that, for example, is I had to upgrade my 2007 machine in 2011 but if I had been able to wait, my current model would have been available and I would have the same computer I do now, but with one less upgrade along the way. That being said I think they just made a pretty big jump and would expect the next few models to have minor changes only (maybe an extra thunderbolt hub or new screens, etc.)

Something to consider: If you use a multiple firewire devices you may have an issue (unless you get the belkin thunderbolt hub I mentioned). Since it has no firewire the only way to use firewire is with a thunderbolt>firewire adaptor (only $60) so you would have to be able to daisy chain them (or use up your thunderbolt ports).

Also research Mavericks compatibility with your devices. Mavericks has been a really smooth transition for me except one device which was a trusty old firewire (cheap) interface that I should have rtetired a long time ago (not supported under lion but worked perfectly anyway). Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much about newer firewire device compatibly but I would look into it nonetheless. My Saffire adio interface I got to replace the old interface works perfectly (with the adaptor) and hasn't had any issues.

You still could get a bit of mileage out of your current computer, which would allow you to wait to upgrade until the new apple line comes out (and who knows what improvements they'll make next time).

If you're talking about the newer Intel chips, not happening until next year:

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/07/09/broadwell-early-to-mid-2015/

Thanks so much for the input

I must say I am contented with my existing Mac setup and will probably keep it regardless for a second system in a second location that'll also enable me to seamlessly re-amp ...

Must say, having heeded your advice I'm leaning towards new iMac - as I feel like im painting myself into a corner in modifying older iMac, it already limited with peripheral gear its compatible with and by the sheer fact that I will inevitably have to upgrade this iMac in the next one to two years anyhow ....

Much obliged

I'm wondering if SSD is useful in music production at all? I mean it surely is at some points, but I believe people who work with 3D/video are those who really take advantage of SSDs and Thunderbolt and all that stuff.

I'd like to go with an SSD myself, just a small one, on which I can store the system, and Logic, etc. and perhaps some virtual synths that have presets that don't load too quickly. But if you're going to put your sample libraries on an SSD, it's just useless. I did the test not long ago, when I still had the iMac in my signature. (normal hard drive) I hooked it up to an external hard drive, where I had placed lots of various audio files, to test how quick it would copy to Logic (I loaded them through the Logic browser). With FireWire 800, even really big audio recordings in highest quality were instantly loaded into Logic. Needless to say that it was the same scenario with small samples.

If you use an external SSD to store things, it's most useful to have it connected by Thunderbolt 2 I believe. I saw a table somewhere with all the different ways of connecting it, and the speed, and honestly, most other types of connections, even FireWire, didn't allow you to use the full potential of the SSD. I will try to find that table again.

But I believe the SSD is useful to store the things I mentioned earlier, that is the system, the DAW, and perhaps some synth libraries. I'm not too sure about this but for example I noticed that Nexus 2 presets take a small moment to load (it's short, but not instant). This would probably go faster if the libraries were saved on an SSD. But then again that's only if you use presets like these, I rarely do this to be honest so it doesn't really bother me.

I think you should go with a new iMac! Ultimately, you could go with a small SSD (256 to 512 GB) and then buy a 1-3T external hard drive to store all your stuff, that was my plan not too long ago.

Good luck!

One of the most dramatic advantages of an SSD over a spinning hard drive is the SSD's ability to access many pieces of information from different places on disk very quickly.

To read from two different files stored in different places on the magnetic platters, a spinning hard disk drive (HDD) has to physically move a magnetic head on a miniature arm with a stepper motor. That means that its seek time, the time needed to find a different piece of information, is longer (measured in milliseconds). An SSD has no moving parts - it just has to change which electrical lines it uses to read from, so its seek time is nearly instantaneous. (Nanoseconds?)

If by "samples" you're referring to the long, continuous audio files recorded into a project on Audio tracks, then I agree that - up to a certain number of tracks depending on the drive speed, sample rate, and bit depth - HDDs work just fine because most of the data is coming from the same "neighborhood" of the disk.

While that's technically a correct use of the word "samples," most of the time I'd expect "samples" in this context to mean the individual tiny snippets of audio (samples) used for a Software Instrument track and a sampling synthesizer, like EXS24 or Kontaxt - the individual notes of a piano, or individual hits of drums.

For those kind of samples, which involve a ton of seeking to various places on disk (especially when using many different Software Instrument tracks at once), SSD typically performs dramatically better, because that use case plays to its strengths.

So what you describe is very unusual. I suspect that, if you're repeatably getting better performance for sampling instruments out of your HDD than your SSD, you probably have a top-notch HDD and a bad (defective) SSD.

Edit: something I forgot to mention. This only applies to samples that need to be streamed from disk and don't fit in RAM. If all the samples fit in RAM, the only difference is the initial loading time.

One of the most dramatic advantages of an SSD over a spinning hard drive is the SSD's ability to access many pieces of information from different places on disk very quickly.

 

To read from two different files stored in different places on the magnetic platters, a spinning hard disk drive (HDD) has to physically move a magnetic head on a miniature arm with a stepper motor. That means that its seek time, the time needed to find a different piece of information, is longer (measured in milliseconds). An SSD has no moving parts - it just has to change which electrical lines it uses to read from, so its seek time is nearly instantaneous. (Nanoseconds?)

 

If by "samples" you're referring to the long, continuous audio files recorded into a project on Audio tracks, then I agree that - up to a certain number of tracks depending on the drive speed, sample rate, and bit depth - HDDs work just fine because most of the data is coming from the same "neighborhood" of the disk.

 

While that's technically a correct use of the word "samples," most of the time I'd expect "samples" in this context to mean the individual tiny snippets of audio (samples) used for a Software Instrument track and a sampling synthesizer, like EXS24 or Kontaxt - the individual notes of a piano, or individual hits of drums.

 

For those kind of samples, which involve a ton of seeking to various places on disk (especially when using many different Software Instrument tracks at once), SSD typically performs dramatically better, because that use case plays to its strengths.

 

So what you describe is very unusual. I suspect that, if you're repeatably getting better performance for sampling instruments out of your HDD than your SSD, you probably have a top-notch HDD and a bad (defective) SSD.

 

Edit: something I forgot to mention. This only applies to samples that need to be streamed from disk and don't fit in RAM. If all the samples fit in RAM, the only difference is the initial loading time.

Good post! Was that reply to me by the way? I was unsure.

For those kind of samples, which involve a ton of seeking to various places on disk (especially when using many different Software Instrument tracks at once), SSD typically performs dramatically better, because that use case plays to its strengths.

But not all software synths work like this, right? I suppose this would only be the case for so-called "Romplers", sample based software synths, what about *real* Software synths, like ANA Synth? Would it have a better performance too? On the other hand, I had ANA Synth installed on a standard HDD and wouldn't know what performance could have been improved haha.

I suppose synths like Trilian and Ominsphere are sample based, so I guess an SSD would make a big difference here.

The difference is that only a small portion (transient) of the sample is stored in memory.

SYSTEM - Streaming

Hmm access denied, I'm not a customer YET

What would be the best solution then? A combination of both perhaps? One part loaded from the SSD, the other stored in the memory or so.