Apple Notes

Cinema Displays; Xserve; Latest Version of Mac OS X

Published in SOS April 2003
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Technique : Apple Notes

This month there's news of all the new Apple hardware and the latest version of Mac OS X, which finally offers support for networking MIDI and audio over Firewire, plus details of how to create a true OS 9 partition on a dual-boot Mac.

Mark Wherry & Mike Watkinson

Such is the fickle world of hi-tech journalism that no sooner had the ink dried on last month's Apple Notes than Apple unleashed an avalanche of new and upgraded hardware. The first major news was an upgrade to the Power Mac range, and the new line-up features the fastest and most affordable Power Macs Apple have ever produced. These include support for two significant technologies introduced with the 17-inch Powerbook — Firewire 800 and Airport Extreme — in addition to optional internal support for Bluetooth when you purchase from the Apple Store.

One of the best aspects of the new Firewire 800 port on these Power Macs, especially from the desktop musician's perspective, is that it comes in addition to the existing two Firewire 400 ports. And since Firewire 800 ports are backwardly compatible (with an adaptor), it means there are now three Firewire ports available on each Power Mac providing two separate Firewire busses — one shared between the two Firewire 400 ports and one dedicated to the Firewire 800 port.

The entry-level Power Mac now costs £1149 and features a single 1GHz G4 processor with a 1MB Level 3 cache and a 133MHz system buss, 256MB DDR266 memory, a 7200rpm 60GB Ultra ATA/100 drive, a combo drive, and Nvidia GeForce4 MX graphics with 64MB DDR memory. The mid-range model retails at £1599 and has dual 1.25GHz G4 processors, each with a 1MB Level 3 cache, a 167MHz system buss, 256MB DDR333 memory, a 7200rpm 80GB Ultra ATA/100 drive, a combo drive, and ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics with 64MB DDR video memory. The high-end Power Mac costs £2099 and adds to the features of the mid-range model by including dual 1.42GHz G4 processors, each with a 2MB Level 3 cache, 512MB memory, a 120GB drive and a faster 4x Superdrive. Finally, there's also a build-to-order monster Power Mac the Apple Store applies the 'Ultimate' label to, adding 1.5GB memory Nvidia GeForce4 Titanium graphics with 128MB DDR video memory, and built-in Bluetooth — yours for only £2949.

It's worth bearing in mind that the standard Power Mac models now boot up only into OS X, although Apple are still offering the previous high-end dual 1.25GHz models that dual-boot in OS X and OS 9.

Alongside the announcement of upgraded Power Macs came the introduction of a new 20-inch wide-format Cinema Display offering a 1680 x 1050-pixel resolution for just £1099. This was coupled with dramatic price reductions on the 17-inch Studio Display and the stunning 23-inch Cinema Display, which now retail for £549 and £1699 respectively — the 17-inch offers a 1280 x 1024-pixel resolution, while the 23-inch provides 1920 x 1200.

Apple's new line-up of 17, 20 and 23-inch Studio and Cinema Displays, with models to fit the budgets of most Mac musicians.Photos courtesy of Apple nonsense... well you know

A week later, Apple took the opportunity to revitalise the iMac product line with faster processors, DDR memory, faster 4x Superdrives, and, most importantly, lower price tags. The entry-level 15-inch iMac now has an 800MHz G4, a 7200rpm 60GB Ultra ATA drive, a combo drive, and Nvidia GeForce2 MX graphics with 32MB DDR video memory for £999. The 17-inch iMac now retails for £1449 and features a 1GHz G4, 256MB DDR266 memory, a 7200rpm 80GB drive, a Superdrive, and Nvidia GeForce4 MX graphics with 64MB video memory. When it comes to wireless networking, the 15-inch iMac supports Apple's original Airport technology and is compatible with Bluetooth via an external USB dongle, while the 17-inch model features support for the newer Airport Extreme instead and can be ordered with optional internal Bluetooth. It's also worth noting that the 17-inch iMac is the only model to feature an analogue line-in audio input.

In addition to the iMac announcement, Apple also lowered the price on the eMac. A 700MHz G4 eMac with 128MB memory, a 40GB Ultra ATA drive and a combo drive costs £799, while a model with an 800MHz G4, 256MB memory, a 60GB drive and a Superdrive is available for £999. Both models feature Nvidia GeForce2 MX graphics with 32MB of DDR video memory.

If updated Power Macs, displays, iMacs and new eMac prices weren't enough, the following week Apple announced an upgrade to its Xserve 1U-rack server and introduced the Xserve RAID storage system. The original Xserve was discussed way back in August's Apple Notes, and the updated model now features single or dual 1.33GHz G4 processors (each with 256k Level 2 and 2MB Level 3 caches), 256 or 512 MB PC2700 DDR memory running at 333MHz (which can be upgraded to 2GB) and a hot-swappable 7200rpm 60GB ATA/133 Apple Drive Module for up to 720GB internal storage capacity. Other highlights include a slot-loading 24-speed CD-ROM drive or an optional combo drive, two full-length PCI slots and one half-length slot that's occupied with a graphics card by default, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports, two Firewire 800, one Firewire 400 and two USB ports.

Xserve — the ideal audio workstation for your rack? Either way, it's still the most attractive 1U server you'll ever see.

Xserve runs Mac OS X Server, which, aside from a more extensive networking feature set, is otherwise compatible with the standard client version of Mac OS X, and should, in theory at least, have no problem running applications like Cubase or Logic. As we've previous speculated, the Xserve is many

Hard drives have never looked so appealing. Xserve RAID might just be the ultimate storage solution for your audio tracks and streaming samples.

ways the ideal Mac for musicians, and since Apple themselves continue to promote its suitability as a video workstation, there's no reason to believe it couldn't also be the ideal audio workstation. Watch this space.

Xserve RAID is an industrial-strength storage solution, ideal for those running Internet servers and, potentially, a very significant development for Mac-based audio professionals. Taking the form of an elegant 3U rack module, designed to aesthetically complement the Xserve itself, of course, Xserve RAID has the capacity to accommodate 14 hot-swappable Apple Drive Modules, each containing a 7200rpm 180GB ATA/133 drive for a maximum capacity of 2.52TB — Terabytes. And if you want a benchmark, one Terabyte is roughly equivalent to over 70 days of continuous playback of CD-quality stereo audio.

Xserve RAID supports RAID levels 0, 1, 0+1, 3 and 5 via the hardware RAID processor, in addition to levels 10, 30 and 50 in combination with the software RAID features in OS X. If you're not familiar with RAID, it's basically a group of technologies that determine how data is written to an array of drives, including striping (splitting data that would normally be stored on one drive across multiple drives, which effectively doubles the apparent drive speed when two disks are used instead of one), mirroring (where one drive provides a complete duplicate of another for total redundancy) and the use of parity data, where a smaller degree of redundancy is shared across all the drives in the array.

You can connect an Xserve RAID to an Xserve or Power Mac with the optional Apple Fibre Channel card, an interface in the server world for providing fast and reliable connectivity between storage devices. The Fibre Channel interface supports up to 200MB/s — enough for handling over 2000 mono CD-quality audio tracks — and the Xserve RAID and Apple Fibre Channel card features dual Fibre Channel ports for up to 400MB/s throughput. This is pretty staggering when you think about it, and could make Xserve RAID a one-stop solution for a studio disk drive requirements.

When it comes to the cost, a single-processor Xserve retails at £2399, while the dual-processor model is £3199, and an 'ultimate' fully expanded beast is £3700. The 720GB (four drives), 1.26TB (seven drives) and 2.52TB (14 drives) Xserve RAIDs cost £4999, £6199 and £8999 respectively. While the these prices might be out of reach for more modest project studios, in terms of what studios might spend in terms of Pro Tools hardware, they certainly aren't unrealistic. Mark Wherry

Since most audio applications that require OS 9 don't run in OS X's Classic mode, and since most Macs now boot only into OS X, musicians who purchase new Macs are going to be the first who really have to work entirely in OS X. However, as existing Mac users, the rest of us can be happy in the knowledge that we still have the option to install and boot from OS 9 if necessary. Or do we?

Since August 2002, mirror-door Power Mac owners haven't been supplied with OS 9 install discs. These machines come with Restore discs and OS X Install discs only, so the system can only ever return to the factory-installed condition where OS 9 and OS X boot from the same hard disk — the option of installing OS 9 into its own partition, for example, is not available.

Countless threads on Internet forums have discussed the relative merits of keeping each OS in its own partition, but here's a brief guide if you're curious about the subject. First, divide your boot disk into four partitions (using an additional partition for a 'scratch disk' if you also use applications like Photoshop) as follows: 10GB for OS X, 5GB for OS 9 for music, 5GB for OS 9 for Classic support, and the rest for data.

The reason for having two OS 9 partitions is that OS X will control the extensions within the version of OS 9 used for Classic support, to the extent of installing any that are required for Classic mode if they're not found by default, and updating them each time OS X is updated. Ideally, an OS 9 installation for music shouldn't be subject to this tampering so you can maintain strict control over the extensions and their impact on performance.

In order to have control over the location of OS 9 there are two possible solutions, although since both require the system disk to be formatted and partitioned, it's worth making doubly sure you've backed up all critical data, and have codes and installation CDs for all applications and device drivers that you'll need to reinstall.

The first approach is to use a bootable OS 9 CD. As the purchaser of a Mac, you own a licence to install OS 9 on the machine you purchased, and while there are several tortuous methods of creating bootable install discs if you own a copy of Toast, the most reliable means of obtaining a CD is to purchase one from Apple (costing £38 plus VAT and £5 p&p from the Apple Store — phone 0800 0391010, or visit the web site at www.apple.com/ukstore).

Booting off this CD (with the C key held down) means you can format and partition the hard drive using Drive Setup, and install two copies of OS 9 as outlined above. You'll want to ensure that Mac OS X doesn't choose the version of OS 9 you intend to use for music applications as its Classic environment, so delete the three Classic support files found at the root level of the folder, which are called Classic, Classic Support and Classic UI.

Firewire Audio Networking Aka IEC 61883-6     The Audio and MIDI pages of Audio MIDI Setup with a Yamaha 02R96 mixer connected via mLAN to a Mac running OS 10.2.4. The recently released OS 10.2.4 upgrade, available from Apple's web site or the Software Update facility in OS X, contains something momentous that many of us have been awaiting for three years — full support for the music and audio protocol IEC 61883-6. This started life as mLAN, Yamaha's concept for a local area network to carry both MIDI and multi-channel digital audio over Firewire, and although Yamaha had placed their original specification into the public domain (as Apple had done with the carrier for this protocol, the Firewire interface, which had been their brainchild), the term mLAN is now reserved for their implementation with an additional command layer on top. To potentially confuse matters, Apple's engineers have also put their own command layer on top of the IEC 61883-6 music and audio protocol, and are calling this Firewire Audio Networking (FAN). But the important thing is that mLAN and FAN both share full support for 61883-6, and this is made visible in the version of the Audio MIDI Setup utility that ships with 10.2.4, described by Apple as an upgrade to the previous Firewire audio capability, which was previously restricted to stereo support for Firewire speakers like those from Harmon Kardon, but now takes advantage of the full multi-channel capability of the 61883-6 protocol. I got to try out this facility with an Yamaha 02R96 mixer equipped with the YGDAI mLAN card, which has been shipping and working with an ASIO mLAN driver under OS 9 for over a year. Instead of having to install a driver into the ASIO folder of whichever OS 9 application you want to use in conjunction with Firewire Audio and MIDI, once 10.2.4 has been installed and Audio MIDI Setup is open, all you have to do is plug in a 61883-6 device, such as the mLAN-equipped 02R96, and the mLAN device appears in the various fields for input and output. I opened a Logic song that had been created using a RME Hammerfall DSP driver selected in Core Audio communicating with the 02R96 via the trusty ADAT interface (whose virtues I've been extolling for 10 years now) and switched that driver to the mLAN one. As soon as I switched the channel inputs of the desk from ADAT Optical to the mLAN card, exactly the same audio information appeared at the input from the Firewire cable as had been coming in via the fibre-optic interface. This is something I was starting to think might never happen, and to some extent vindicates the thousands of words I wrote on the subject of 61883-6 some years ago. Finally, you no longer need additional audio hardware either inside a Mac in the form of a PCI or PCMCIA card or outside as a USB device to get both digital audio and/or MIDI in and out of the computer. Unfortunately, there's no great quantum leap in terms of channels carried or cost of required hardware when using Firewire. In the case of Yamaha mixers, we're saving the cost of an ADAT card for the Mac, but we still need an YGDAI card in the Yamaha mixer. The Mac can now handle dozens of I/O channels via Firewire, but the YGDAI format still imposes an eight-channel limit per card. When devices ship with mLAN at the heart of their architecture instead of through outdated interfaces (designed when eight channels was the most a digital interface could carry), we can hope to see more channels being usefully transmitted over the network. Paul Wiffen

The second method doesn't rely on the safety net of a bootable OS 9 CD and requires a second, preferably external, hard drive. First, make a copy of the OS 9 System Folder (part of the original installation, or what you get when you use the Restore discs) on your second hard drive — remember, the OS 9 system folder is called System Folder, while the OS X system folder is just called System. Boot up from the OS X CD by holding down the C key, and use the Disk Utility that's available from the OS X installer menu to format and partition the system drive, making sure you tick the 'Install Mac OS 9 drivers' option.

Install OS X into its partition, copy the OS 9 System Folder copy (on the external drive) into its two intended partitions, and finally delete the Classic support files from one of these as detailed above. Note that if both OS 9 systems become unusable and require replacing, you hopefully backed up that copy on the second drive or, more prudently, gave the Apple Store a ring in the meantime!

As mentioned above, reformatting the system drive in this way will require the reinstallation of applications and the restoration of data, and should be only attempted if you're very keen on keeping the Mac OS 9's extension set under close supervision. I've run my iBook 600 with 9.2.2 and 10.1.5 for over a year with no real problem, despite the large amount of software and other files that litter its hard drive. However, when I finally move this particular machine over to 10.2.3 and start to use OS X for music on a more regular basis, I'll probably run two OS 9 partitions for peace of mind, unless, of course, I decide to dispense with it altogether! Mike Watkinson