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[coriolis1986]

Hi all.

I have 3 old Macintosh computers - SE/30, iMac G3 500 and Quicksilver G4 733. I want to control my rack synthesizers/effects via midi (without audio recording) from these computers. Which computer is preferable?

SE/30 looks so cute but I'm afraid that it will be very slow to work with 8-16 hardware MIDI channels.

[Protools5LEGuy]

We can support you on the iMac and the QS. But you need a MIDI interface, a USB / Firewire one for the iMac or a PCI interface for the QS, that would be preferable.

Check http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/board,42.0.html and your budget...

[GaryN]

It's not so much the number of channels specifically but rather the data density at a given moment. For example,say, 4 channels of note ons / offs equals 100% X. Add another channel and you have 120% X. BUT, get crazy on some of those with lots of pitchbend and/or other continuous controllers and suddenly it's 400% X. (Yeah, I know this is a lousy example but it's late).

I used an SE30 for quite a while to record and compile sequenced songs and the biggest problem I had was, what else?- the screen.
You can quickly get to where you're zooming in and out and in and out…playin' all night and the music's all ri…… sorry. Plus, anytime you're looking at multiple tracks, it's a lot easier to see what's going on when each one's a different color. So…

I would recommend using one of the larger computers just for the comfort factor.

[IIO]

a G3 is about 100 times faster than the midi protocol data can be sent (through dozens of ports.)

so i would say it really depends on how you are going to create the midi data.

if you use cubase or logic and play something preexisting you will be fine with any computer with 100 MHz.
if you do complicated calculations in realtime to produce that midi data in a programming language a G3 might be to slow.