I just bought (gulp) a Mac Mini

ivansc · 12-23-2016, 05:59 AM

Last Mac I owned had a small black and white screen and no hard drive!

Its a 2011 Mac Mini unibody with a couple of 500gb drives & 8gb of ram. i7 2.3 cpu and Mavericks. I am planning on running both Reaper and Logic pro 9 on it, as my drummer has Logic Pro 9 and not reaper.
Anyone care to fill me in on such things as a display for the beast, i.e. NOT an Apple one (overpriced) but aomething that will work as well as my 23" IPS panel ones on the studio PC.

ivansc · 12-23-2016, 05:42 PM

80 views and nobody wants to talk?

VinodXAgent · 12-23-2016, 06:19 PM

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP632?v...S&locale=de_DE

cyrano · 12-23-2016, 08:08 PM

Any HDMI display would work. Or a DVI one with the included adapter, if that came with the Mini.

And, BTW, Apple no longer sells displays.

ivansc · 12-23-2016, 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VinodXAgent

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP632?v...S&locale=de_DE

And there you have the reason I asked for informed advice rather than links.

Doesnt even mention the server version or indeed that an i7 quad variant exists.
I have managed to find the correct manual and download it & am now confident I know what to order to increase from 8gb to 16gb ram when I need to.

Biggest problem I have right now is deciding on how good a resolution monitor the little blighter will be happiest feeding.

@Cyrano: Good news about the HDMI as I happen to have a spare full 1080 HD television I can at least try out when the Mac arrives.

cyrano · 12-23-2016, 11:07 PM

Most HD TV's will work. Rare cases could have a problem with CEC, the protocol that allows for extra's, like auto power off when you turn off the mini.

You can see the natively supported resolutions in System prefs, monitors, if you hold the ALT key while clicking on the resolutions tab or dropdown menu.

And I think the i7 server is the best Mini, if you can find one for a reasonable price. These tend to go for almost new price...

ivansc · 12-24-2016, 03:42 AM

mac Mini arrived this morning!
First impressions are that I love the video.
Much nicer looking than on my PC even though the Mac is using one of two identical LG IPS monitors I usually have hooked up to the PC.

And (bearing in mind it is a clean install of Mavericks) it seems surprisingly fast for an i7 quad core running 2.0ghz

Just downloaded installed and ran Reaper including importing my licence key - all went very smoothly.
As a leftie I think I am going to get used to the window controls being top left instead of top right very quickly.

Now to see if my external DVD drive works and Office installs OK! IT DID! Authorised and running fine...
Next step will be installing the Babyface.

Boy do I ever have a great excuse for not recording anything!!!

Cant get over how tiny this is.

moondoggie53 · 01-17-2017, 07:40 AM

Look through the monitors available and find something/anything with a firewire connector. I've been doing that with a MacBook Pro with excellent results. The more precise the dpi is, the more they will cost. Next $ outlay on my list is the mini: good luck!

cyrano · 01-17-2017, 10:01 AM

I think you mean a display port adapter. Firewire isn't used for displays...

ivansc · 01-17-2017, 12:30 PM

funnily enough I found several references to firewire display adapters for earlier Mad Minis online... as well as the £$$$$$$££ Thunderbirdboltboy mega monitors....

jpanderson80 · 01-17-2017, 12:50 PM

Ivan, welcome to the mac party. I'm interested in hearing how your projects flow with the new system. I've heard some say that PC has caught WAY up... but my late 2009 iMac is still rockin for the moment!

BrendaEM · 01-18-2017, 11:31 AM

My Roommate has a Mac Mini. It's a good little machine for his home-entertainment situation. Under heavy processor usage, the fan gets a little loud, but swapping out the original drive for a SSD helps noticeably.

kevor · 01-26-2017, 11:37 AM

I bought a Mac Mini this summer, and I found a pretty solid display from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 that has worked very well for me - It's a bit small but I couldn't beat the price.

The only issue I found was that I had to get Thunderbolt adaptors for my firewire interface and my external drive - which promptly died on me. The Thunderbolt external drive I bought as a replacement works great.

ivansc · 06-03-2017, 11:06 PM

Been a while, so here is an update on my Mac experience.

I have been working in Logic P{ro9 on the Mac because "our drummer" and I are involved in an album project for the singer in our band, who has terminal cancer.
Sadly Paul passed away a few weeks ago but not before he had managed to record all his parts and leave us notes critique`ing what the rest of us had done!
Paul the drummer is now mixing the album, although two tracks were played at Paul the singers funeral service, at his request.
All very emotional but so glad he got it finished.
As to the Mac, everything went very smoothly even though I started out knowing nothing about Logic.
I was moving stuff back and forth between Reaper and Logic with no real difficulty & the little Mac Mini stood up to everything I threw at it.
However, it is pretty obvious that Logic is very much designed to work with the Mac and the Mac OS pretrty seamlessly. I think Reaper is fasr better on a PC.
So now I have this Mac Mini and am not sure what to do with it!

Still on the "spare" monitor for the time being but really need to get back to my 2 screen setup in Windows without having to reconnect all the time.
My daughter has been hinting that the Mac would be ideal for video work...

Geoff Waddington · 06-04-2017, 01:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ivansc

Been a while, so here is an update on my Mac experience.

I have been working in Logic P{ro9 on the Mac because "our drummer" and I are involved in an album project for the singer in our band, who has terminal cancer.
Sadly Paul passed away a few weeks ago but not before he had managed to record all his parts and leave us notes critique`ing what the rest of us had done!
Paul the drummer is now mixing the album, although two tracks were played at Paul the singers funeral service, at his request.
All very emotional but so glad he got it finished.
As to the Mac, everything went very smoothly even though I started out knowing nothing about Logic.
I was moving stuff back and forth between Reaper and Logic with no real difficulty & the little Mac Mini stood up to everything I threw at it.
However, it is pretty obvious that Logic is very much designed to work with the Mac and the Mac OS pretrty seamlessly. I think Reaper is fasr better on a PC.
So now I have this Mac Mini and am not sure what to do with it!

Still on the "spare" monitor for the time being but really need to get back to my 2 screen setup in Windows without having to reconnect all the time.
My daughter has been hinting that the Mac would be ideal for video work...

Boot Camp !!

Then you have a dual boot system, Mac and Windows.

That's how my mac mini is configured

ivansc · 06-04-2017, 02:07 AM

yeahbut yeahbut....
Main studio windows machine is way more powerful and has a lot more ram and extra hard drives and and and....

I am afraid I am still not a convert to Macs. Eye candy aspects are nice, but there is a combination of inferior Reaper performance (seat of pants not tested properly) and inconvenience to factor in here.

Tempted to keep the Mini, but it IS a lot of money tied up in something I will probably only wind up using as a boys toy.

I may list it on Gumtree or Ebay after the summer season lull is over.
In the meantime anyone looking for a unibody Mac Mini i7 server on here PM me and you can have it for what I paid. Including full retail Office and Logic Pro9 with dvds.

Win Conway · 06-05-2017, 12:00 AM

Reaper is terrible on Mac compared to PC, some suggestions from me...
Affinity Photo
Affinity Designer
Hitfilm Express
The first two are payware but cheap and the third is free, you will have a great design/video set up with those on the mac mini, if you are in to any kind of web/animation then Tumult Hype is pretty much king of that too right now (HTML 5 animator)

ivansc · 06-05-2017, 12:46 AM

h my daughter is already a seasoned Youtuber, so she already has her own preferences for video editing, plus until a year or two back she was using a Macbook to do it all. That went belly up and she couldnt affor Apples prices to replace it, hence the switch to windows, which she gets on with really well.
Plus pretty much all the PC video software she is using is either free or dirt cheap

Twangothan · 06-06-2017, 08:02 AM

I've got that base unit but I upgraded the RAM to 16 gig. I've never run out of resources. I have a Dell monitor - an Ultrasharp...

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/pr...hs1&l=en&s=dhs

I originally bought an Asus with a webcam built in but it won't work with Apple....welcome to the Apple world...

I don't use the Apple software other than email/browser. For video I'm experimenting with NCH Video Pad - iMovie is incomprehensible and I can't get Reaper to work for video. Not concluded whether I'll buy it yet.