Apple Notes

OS X news from the AES; Titanium Powerbook

Published in SOS January 2003
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Technique : Apple Notes

More OS X news from the AES convention, plus what you can really do with a fast Apple portable — now even faster — if you put your mind to it.

I included two major AES OS X stories in this column last month — namely, Digidesign announcing Pro Tools 6 as an OS X-based product, and Spectrasonics shipping Audio Units versions of all three of their synth, bass and percussion plug-ins, before any of the other formats which will run under OS X. These were perhaps the two biggest OS X stories at AES, but they were by no means the only ones.

For those who prefer to customise their own software, it was a relief to hear from Cycling 74 that the staple of this entire market, Max/MSP, will soon be moving to OS X. They also showed Jitter, a real-time video-processing effects program with 3D graphics, data visualization and analysis, under OS X. Meanwhile, BitHeadz showed their Phrazer and Phrazer LE loop sampling software running under OS X for the first time. The Arkaos IV VJ 'visual synthesis' software, now being distributed in the US by M-Audio, is also OS X compatible. It seems that any program that M-Audio decide to distribute automatically becomes OS X compatible overnight — just look at Ableton's Live and Propellerhead's Reason (which won a TEC award at the show).

Just one of the growing crop of programs that will run under OS X: Bitheadz' Phrazer sampled-loop tool.

EgoSys have really taken to OS X in a big way, with all their hardware now having fully-functioning OS X drivers. My favourite is their new MaXiO XD, a phantom-powered eight-in, eight-out interface supporting 24-bit/192kHz recording, with a dynamic range of 120dB and S/N ratio of 105dB. The Waveterminal 192 range gives numerous variations on the 192kHz theme. Other eight-channel analogue interfaces on show included GIGAPort AG, which manages eight channels via USB. The one I would have murdered for a few years back is the GIGAPort DG, which provides a full ADAT data stream. ADAT I/O was also on the menu from Universal Audio, who have an ADAT interface called the UAD-8 I/O for their UAD1 DSP card. The UAD1 itself is now dual-processor aware, which is just as well, as all Macs with PCI slots are now dual processor.

MOTU also moved into the 192kHz realm, with a sneak preview of a new high-definition 2U rack interface, offering 12 audio channels (in the basic unit, but expandable to 48) at up to 24/192. They also showed the 24 I/O, which squeezes two dozen 24/96 analogue inputs and outputs into a single rack space.

After a late start in the OSX stakes, Edirol are now running neck-and-neck with M-Audio in the competition to have the greatest number of OS X-ready keyboards, weighing in with the 23-key PCR30 and the 49-key PCR50 at the AES show. Both feature eight sliders, eight rotary knobs and nine buttons, with memory presets for Cubase, Digital Performer and Pro Tools LE.

Immediately after an evening discussion in a bar about the lack of entry-level software for cleaning up vinyl-sourced and other audio, Jason of BIAS showed me the perfect such application. It's called Sound Soap, and is so easy to use that my Gran could use it on all her old 78s. It is equally good for cleaning up the background noise on DV camcorder audio recordings. Of course, it's OS X compatible, just like the rest of the BIAS range (Deck, Peak, Vbox and SuperFreq) has been for ages.

The arrival of Digidesign on OS X sparked a host of announcements from their third-party developers. These included Waves, with their full Platinum bundle, and the whole range from GRM Tools. It will be interesting to see how many of these are ready to go when Digi ships Pro Tools 6.

Once more Apple's super-secret launch policy caught me napping during the final hours before my column deadline (causing more than even the usual consternation in the SOS office over the lateness of Wiffen's submissions), as they surreptitiously slid new Powerbooks and iBooks onto their web site when no-one was looking. Of course, I had heard the rumours, but the exact hour of their release is comparable to that of the Second Coming of Jesus ("no man knoweth the hour nor the day"). People don't believe me when I say that 99 percent of Apple employees don't know when these things are going to happen, but it is true. Certainly, no-one tells a humble consultant like me when to point his browser afresh at the Apple web site.

The milestone that this new generation of Powerbooks represents would surely (you would think) merit at least a bottle of champagne cracked against their Titanium hulls, as the psychological barrier of the 1GHz clock is finally broken in a portable form, especially when you add in the extra speed of the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics processor with up to 64Mb of DDR SDRAM, for lightning-fast graphics. Of course, this is primarily to make it the ideal portable to run Final Cut Pro, and no serious individual would ever dream of abusing such a professional machine with mere gameplay... would they?

More than just a pretty picture: not only can the new 1GHz Titanium Powerbook run DVD Studio Pro, it can burn DVDs with it.

I am more excited about this machine than any other in Apple's history, because for the last year I have done virtually no music-making or film editing on anything other than my trusty 667MHz Powerbook, simply because of its portability and my nomadic lifestyle. I have a dual-processor 1GHz desktop made available to me by Apple, but most of the time I don't have the time or energy to drag it around and keep setting it up and tearing it down. I am doubly grateful now to my managers for refusing my requests to upgrade to the last-generation Titanium (maxing out at 800MHz), simply because it had an audio input. The prospect of this upgrade to the magic 1GHz clock speed (along with a 1Mb DDR SRAM level-three cache, a first for a portable computer, the 60Mb hard drive and up to 1Gb of RAM) and the built-in SuperDrive with its ability to burn DVDs and CDs, together with all the extra plug-in effects and virtual instruments I will be able to run, has me feverish with anticipation.

In the spring of this year I foolishly agreed to co-write a musical for charity, to be performed in sunny Margate over the summer, despite the fact that I was half the time in Switzerland and the rest in Dunstable (except for a two-week spell in a mobile home near Cannes for the duration of the Film Festival). My co-writer, Sherin Sahagian, opted for the more sedate lifestyle of both living and working in Bromley, Kent. A Day To Dance only opened at all because I could pick up Sherin's emailed MP3s of his a capella melody lines and lyrics wherever I happened to be, via my Titanium, and arrange them in Logic with the EXS24 and other plug-ins. All this could not have happened without the 667MHz Powerbook. The follow up will now be done on a machine at least 33 percent faster.

Similarly, I only have a serious prospect of becoming a real film-maker (if my producer pulls in the threatened finance for the budget he is working on) because of being able to edit the footage I shot with my cast for Cannes on the same Powerbook in our mobile home each morning, before heading off to the Palais des Festivals to show it to the great and the good (and slimy and sleazy) on the wide-screen display of said Titanium. The one problem last year was that I had to get my editor back in the UK to burn new DVDs there and send them down with late-arriving cast members or via courier. With the new 1GHz machine, I will be able to burn demo DVDs in front of movie moguls at next year's Cannes film festival. The problem with devices like these is that they give people like me ideas above our station. If you are ever stuck in a movie theatre (or in front of your DVD at home) watching a dreadful horror film and Paul Wiffen comes up as the director's name, blame Steve Jobs for putting these ludicrous ideas into my head!

The final accolade for the Powerbook is the fact that it enabled me to easily produce demos for MacExpo and the subsequent UK tour (which will be all but over by the time you read this). Working with singer Simone Kaye, who is also the lead in my film, I was able to knock out demos in her living room with the 667MHz machine and a Swissonic USB Studio to send to producer Steve Levine to work his magic on. Of course, if I had had the audio inputs of the newer machines, I wouldn't have had to put my guitar through the Swissonic, but I would still have needed its mic preamps to record her vocals. At showtime, I'll be able to play back these demos on the new 1GHz Titanium.

Simone was so enamoured of the work process that she got an iBook and is now able to do similar things by herself, not to mention her Photoshop work, which she used to struggle with on a deskbound PC (she has also designed all the on-screen logos, artwork and backdrops for the DVD we are burning in presentations). However, I suspect she will be trying to persuade Apple UK to upgrade her to the new speed-bumped iBooks, as they too have been turbo-charged.

The new clock speeds for these machines are 700 and 800MHz (there is also an 867MHz Powerbook, but who would get that when you can go 1GHz?) and their graphics are now flying through the 7500 version of the Radeon graphics processor. The top model also features a 512K on-chip level-two cache running at full processor speed, and a 100MHz system bus. Even the entry-level portable is now a high-speed machine. In line with Apple policy, the pricing has not really changed, even though the power has.

Site Of The Month: Primesounds     A colleague recently drew my attention to this sound-library site (www.primesounds.com) and asked for my opinion. You might think that any site that comes up with 70 eight-second Mellotron samples when you type in the word 'strings' was designed with me in mind, even if they spell it 'Melltron' and classify it as a synthesizer. I would have preferred not to have to wade through all the 'dance' strings (whatever that means!) first, but clearly the database offers dance sounds first, as it assumes that the average user is "doing dance" (the term used by some of my more artistically-challenged colleagues) instead of making music. I was a little disappointed that searches for 'footsteps' and 'gunshot' gave no results and 'explosion' yielded only three, the best of which was truncated after only three seconds. I guess this makes the site of limited use for people doing sound effects for film, but then Primesound don't claim this as one of their target markets. The browsing integrated nicely with iTunes — which, incidentally, I recently discovered being used to catalogue sample libraries at Hangman Studios, the AV facility operated by IE Music, Robbie Williams' management, so that their clients can browse unaccompanied for the samples they want to use. The 'Melltron MK2 A3' sample I chose (from a CrimeSounds collection) was eight seconds long, including some nice ambience, took three minutes to download over a 56K modem, and sounded great. Looking around the rest of the site, it was good to see my old colleague from Sequential days, Chris Meyer, talking about his career through Digidesign, Marion Systems, Roland, and Music Maker Publications (where many of us Sound On Sound contributors first met SOS founder and Managing Director Ian Gilby). Chris apparently uses this site as a major resource for his AliasZone music project.