Hi everyone. Why I'm here:
I recently acquired a G4 (digital audio) and three cinema hd studio displays (with the old proprietary connectors). The G4 also included an ultrawide PCI card and one appropriate 34 GB hard drive and a working Zip 100 drive (but the CD-ROM drive is dead). And in researching what exactly I can do with all this, I ended up here. The focus is audio/midi production, so this must be the place!
My background in playing/composing music starts around 1978 (prior to that, my big kickstarters were hearing Switched On Bach and Frankenstein by the Edgar Winter Group; I was never the same after that). I shudder to this day when I think about the gear I had back then and through the 80's (MiniMoog, MicroMoog, ARP Solina, Yamaha SS30 string machine, EML 101, PolyMoog, Yamaha CP70, Oberheim OB-1, and on and on and on). I also had the privilege of working with some of the classics like the CS80, Jupiter 8, Emulator II, OBX-A and on and on.
I eventually constructed my own little studio based around a II FX (with some nice Nubus cards) which then became a Quadra 950 and then a Beige G3 and finally a G4 Quicksilver. At some point I had attached a couple of ADATs and an Opcode Studio 5lx and somehow got that all working (in the Quadra 950 I also had a Digidesign Audiomedia card and a Tascam DAT which was so cool back then).
I didn't have a lot of hardware synths at that time, but I got by with a Roland D550, an Ensoniq ASR-10, a Korg T1 and O5rw and a DX7. My MIDI sequencer at that time was Cubase VST but I had begun using Studio Vision just before that all fell apart. I was intimately familiar with the trials and tribulations of getting all that stuff to work consistently.
Then life intervened and I left that all behind. But a few years ago, life having settled down, I started again and built a studio based around an iMac (2011, 27") and four MOTU interfaces (one 828x and three 8pre's giving me 32 inputs). Logic was the DAW (I still hate that term) I settled on. The synths I acquired were two DW8000's, Alesis QS6.1, EMU5000 and 6400 samplers, Yamaha A4000 sampler, Roland XV5080, EMU Audity 2000, Yamaha SG1, Korg Poly61, M-Audio Venom, GEM S2R, Korg M3, Radias, Korg R3 and a Roland Vsynth XT. And a lot of software.
I also added an old PC for running old Windows utilities and virtual synths, all integrated into the main system.
And now I have my G4/OS9/OSX adventure ahead of me. Somehow I think this completes everything. The best of all worlds. And I look forward to learning what has transpired since those days of wild abandon and multiple reboots and extension management :-) And it looks like there are lots of software resources available as well. Looking forward to revisiting some of that.
I'm looking to integrate an Opcode Studio 5lx into this if I can find one and figure out how to get the serial ports hooked into my G4. I have some options to try, having acquired some Keyspan 4-port serial cards and serial to USB adapter. If anyone has experience doing this, I'd love to hear about any successes or failures. And is it even possible to hook up three Studio Displays to the G4 using three video cards? I would still need to find two more if it is possible.
And thanks to the people behind this site for bringing it into existence and keeping it there!
