daboking Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 I have been a professional audio editor for almost 20 years for multiple international radio programs, and do a little video editing as well. I was recently laid off from my job, where I did all my editing on a mac pro, but all I have at home is a 6 year old pc clunker. I also do a radio program on the side using digidesign pro-tools, but ALL my archives were saved at my old office in mac format... and I cannot open them now on my pc using pro-tools (I should have saved them dual format... but it is 4 years worth of shows where I never needed to do it at home until now.) Obviously, I have no job and am looking, but this part time radio show must go on... so I MUST get myself working on the mac side of pro-tools within a month without spending the money for an equivalent mac-pro at home that was in my office. Fortunately, the radio supervisor is willing to do a trade... work for equipment, but I must keep my budget to around $1500 or so. I am a noob at hackintoshing... this is my first endeavor, but I want to find hardware that will provide the least amount of hurdles to get it running stable. This is what I come to you all asking for advice about... what hardware makers seem to be most issue free based on the specs I am looking to use. I have looked at the osx86wiki, but it lists everything under the planet and is like reading greek while trying to simply find a successful piece to consider adding. Anyway, please allow me to list what I am wanting to try making, and if you have suggestions, I would be SOOOO grateful. at least a 2.4 quad core with 8 gig of ram, 2 1T hard drives, a fairly powerful graphics card for video editing (if I want to run final cut pro in future), wifi, and working sound. Please forgive my very long post and if I posted in the wrong place. My layoff has put me in a bind, and I must find a working solution on the cheap within a month, so I am turning to you all for advice. Thanks SO MUCH in advance for any advice you can give this noob. I really appreciate it ALOT! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rocksteady Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 I have been a professional audio editor for almost 20 years for multiple international radio programs, and do a little video editing as well. I'm heading the IT infrastructure @ production house and our backend is based on (90%) Macs and (10%) SGIs. Since you come from a similar environment I'm sure you understand the reliability factor. However being laid off is a royal pita so you gotta do what you gotta do.. ...I must keep my budget to around $1500 or so... at least a 2.4 quad core with 8 gig of ram, 2 1T hard drives, my Asus P5Q-EM/Core2Quad Q6600 does all that out of the box (i guess you're looking for a full ATX mobo though). a fairly powerful graphics card for video editing (if I want to run final cut pro in future), most pro ATI/NVIDIA are known to work, what specs are you after? my 8800GT works fine with P5Q-EM (FCP-tested) wifi, wireless is a bad joke, better stick with GigEthernet on audio production environment and working sound. built-in sound is a moving target (and the quality won't fit your needs anyway), any decent external sound device that works with Macs would be your best bet. That said, I'd keep an eye on second hand Mac Pros w/ AppleCare if the machine in question would be the one that'd put bread on my table. Keep in mind that while X on whatever may be fun, if your production machine fails, you're on your own. Also from one release to the next, compatibility is not guaranteed (though the same stands for most production systems). I am a noob at hackintoshing... I'm a noob @ hackintosh too (registered here a few days ago) and i gave it a go just for the funk of it. Took me less than half an hour to set the cheap pc Mac-style. Thanks to some really talented people here, most of the noob questions are already answered. HTH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bryscomat Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 rocksteady has some really good points. if you are still wanting to do this, then definitely go with an external sound card. other than that, a good motherboard to look in to would be a gigabyte board, from the p45 i.e. the EP45 or EP45T. they work right out of the box with everything (after changing sata to AHCI in bios). you'll want to stay with an intel chipset, and an intel cpu. onboard sound is always an issue, not really production-ready, which is why you'll have to find an external compatible. other than that, when you're ready to do it, if you run into any issues, just post back in here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick14 Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 Try finding a Used PC here on market place or on Ebay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daboking Posted April 18, 2009 Author Share Posted April 18, 2009 thanks so much for the advice... you all have been very helpful. I really appreciate it alot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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