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I am consideing the purchase of a Pulsar II as the audio interface for a Mac G4 400 in OS 9.2.2

If anyone has any anecdotes or experiences with this kind of setup - Good or Bad - I will be very grateful for your hear of your experiences.

I want to use the CW software obviously and also have the Pulsar II interface with MOTU Digital Performer 2.72 w/ASIO Driver.

Thanks in advance

Ed

Hello Edmann
Welcome , i work with a pulsar 2.01 under os FU1 9.2.2.My computer is an old G3 and my cards works good since 2001 .
I have a pulsar + with xlr outputs .About 700mo ram with a cubase vst 5 sequencer.
I am a basic user just using synths in my tracks.
I have the basic synth setup and i have not try to install some other stuff .
My major prob since 3 years is that i have lost some projects , they don't want to open anymore , the backupcopies don't work too (i don't understand why ? and it happens before my migration from os8.6 ) now i do some screen copies (as related in another thread.)
Advice 1 : Never change the name of the HD where you put your pulsar projects i think it creates some probs for the opening of the projects , (some other more confirmed users will confirm that
Advice 2 : desactivate apple talk during sessions
Advice 3 : in extensions you should find after install an alloc.DLL file , Pulsar driver , Runtime file. A pulsar startup file should appears too in the startup folder (automatic install too )
Advice 4 : in the PULSAR/DRIVER folder i have 4 files :alloc.DLL , Asio pulsar , Pulsar driver , pulsar oms driver
Advice 5 : for the memory allocation the EXE file is in the folder PULSAR/APP/BIN
Advice 6 : Not all screen presets work for me it is a
1024x768, 85 hz
Advice 6 ; when you will launch pulsar also check in the menu View / settings for dual screen etc ...and some options .
Ps/i am not a computer geek but you will surely have some other users that will inform you .
That 's all i can say , enjoy the sound Pulsar Rocccckkkkkkss !
Ah yes i forget check about the last version sfp3.1c it works for mac too.

thank you coc999 -

great advice - I am enthusiastic.

I spoke with a user today who indicated perhaps not to expect too much functionality from the Master Verb without a Pulsar Plus or a more powerful computer than the G4 400.

Do you use the masterverb? any problems>?

thanks again

Ed

hey ed,

i've got a B/W G3 450Mhz here, 3 CW cards (pulsar II and 2x pulsar I), 768MB ram...
SFP 3.01 runs great on OS 9.2.2. i don't know if OSX compatibility for SFP will be a good thing for me with this old machine. i remember having read somewhere you need a G4 processor to run the new Panther, and cpu upgrades do nothing as to that matter... making music on an OSX mac machine seems to be getting more and more attractive every minute... too bad about the G5 not being compatible with the CW cards (yeah, i look at it that way. pulsar and SFP are the only reason i still have a desktop computer).
few probs and the main one isn't even SFP's fault, i think, namely cubase crashes sometimes, but hey... now i'm happy with ableton live.
apart from that: when using STS sampler, i do usually have one crash a session, modular does go down sometimes as well, but not that often as STS.
some functuonality is missing too:
copy function of modules in modular is missing.
no scrolling, which is quite annoying.

there's some really great tweaking info here: http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... 73&forum=3

apart from my guitar, my CW equiped mac is my most used instrument EVER, and still loving it.


i hate vacuum cleaner noise...

I work on a G4/733.
No problem issues here with SFP.
Just Cubase and ASIO sometimes cause a simple crash, but never SFP.
Besides ASIO there's OMS (Open Midi System, Opcode) which is a bit tricky to implement, it has it's own type of interface, not really mac like.
But once you got it working right, it will be fine.

The price you pay to be sure about your hardware (in it's combination also!) is: higher basic prices (though you can doubt that if you read the problem forum and see what people have to invest in their pc's sometimes...), high Apple repair costs in case of, and most important: an unsure future about CW and mac.

There is the question of wether CW will ever make SFP compatible with the superb OS-X, and second, if CW will make the cards compatible with the new PCI slots of the G5, which have a lower voltage than the cards do.

Also you have to accept that the older macs (all of them not being G5) can't compete with pc's of the same time generation concerning the number of MHz, but at the same time you may double it to get the pc equivalent

BUT: you don't have to face the main pc issues of 1. what mobo you should take, 2. the ACPI layer issue, 3. the IRQ issue and 4. HT (Hiper Threading) issue.
Even the very skilled pc users here sometimes have to face desperate making mystery problems, not even knowing if it's the hardware or the software which's causing the trouble.

Mac isn't the port to heaven, but I don't know a better machine for making music, and concerning the OS, it is very accessable and understandable.
In case you like to change or add hardware parts: you can do everything you might want, except change the MoBo, thank God
Join the stupids, Creamware loves the mac

thank you everyone it is good to know that CW SFP works on a mac

as another point of view on the OS issue - it is decidely better NOT to move to OSX unless you have an OSX machine - that wouldbe the later G4's etc. But in truth - for me - OS 9.2.2 is great and regardless of what happens in mac or CW land the CW cards in a solid OS9 mac can be viewed as system that needs no upgrades and is a self-contained unit, and a great way to rescue an otherwise-out of date mac.

So are you using the CW Masterverb? on a G3 w/ 3 cards? No PCI bottleneck issues w/bandwidth?

thanks again

Ed

Running AGP G4 500MHz, 768MB RAM OS9.2.2 with Pulsar2Plus and PowerSampler and all is well, MasterVerb not a problem - in fact i usually run two MasterVerbs with the biggest mixer and STS3000 plus a synth or two with no problems, and that's with 9 DSPs

On 2004-01-30 08:44, Mr Arkadin wrote:
Running AGP G4 500MHz, 768MB RAM OS9.2.2 with Pulsar2Plus and PowerSampler and all is well, MasterVerb not a problem - in fact i usually run two MasterVerbs with the biggest mixer and STS3000 plus a synth or two with no problems, and that's with 9 DSPs

wow Mr. A - this is great! More than I expected

I'm in

thanks!

Ed