Recommended system requirements

[Adrian Delso]

Hi, I'm a newbie with Metro, although have some experience of Logic, Cubase, Tracktion, etc. etc.

I have the Metro 6 demo and am impressed. However, I have been suffering the old coloured beachball and the occasional crash/Force Quit.

My question is: is my setup adequate - G4 450mhz DP, 1.256Gb RAM, Emagic a6|2m interface? (I know the page on the Sagan website, with the amended system requirements, says 450mhz, but is that the minimum or the recommended spec.?)

[Jerm]

I have been suffering the old coloured beachball and the occasional crash/Force Quit.

If you can repeat this we would love to know exactly what you were doing. If you are using 3rd party plug-ins that is very useful information to include.

Your machine should easily meet the minimum requirements.

[Scoot]

My question is: is my setup adequate - G4 450mhz DP, 1.256Gb RAM, Emagic a6|2m interface? (I know the page on the Sagan website, with the amended system requirements, says 450mhz, but is that the minimum or the recommended spec.?)

My 450 SP (single) has no problem running it and you also have 300MB's of Ram over my machine.

It runs happily on a imac 350 in Panther with 128MB's of Ram but doing menu tasks is a little slower. Perfectly fine as a midi machine.


The major enhancement you could do if you haven't already is throw in another hard drive and spit all the audio tracks out to that.
A 7200rpm or above drive which is clear of clutter will add extra performance to the situation.

[Adrian Delso]

I have a brand new hard drive, 7200 rpm Maxtor which is clean and uncluttered. I archive material to CD, so really there's only work-in-progress on this main drive.

I'll take note of what I was doing next time I get the ol' ball, Jerm! Usually, it seems to arise when the track is playing and I try to access a button or alter some parameter - Select, Cut, Copy, etc. Is it recommended to Stop or Pause, before working on something like that?

It hasn't arisen with plug-ins - I use VSamp, which works fine with Metro.

I also use Doggiebox, which seems to have problems with file lengths/tempos.e.g. I write a 4-bar drum pattern track in Doggiebox, Export it as an .aiff (to the Desktop for simplicity), Import it into the Metro demo and it only occupies half the space it should - at the same tempo! This isn't the case with Doggiebox and Logic. It's a pity because there are some fine drum samples in Doggiebox - perhaps I can load them into VSamp????

[Jerm]

it only occupies half the space it should - at the same tempo!

If the data is there then Metro will show it. Try dragging the audio region handles.

[Jerm]

However, I have been suffering the old coloured beachball and the occasional crash/Force Quit.

Unfortunately I have found this serious bug that has plagued Metro since 6.2.1.8. The reason I have not seen it before is because it does not occur in debug builds only in releases. This has been fixed in 6.3 and will probably move up the pre-release date.

[Adrian Delso]

Thanks for the reply, Jerm. Hope I helped in some small way.
I am seriously impressed with Metro, but should I now wait for 6.3 to be released?

[Jerm]

I think this bug only plagues multi-processor systems. I am not sure but did you say you were experiencing this on a single or dual processor system?

[Scoot]

>My question is: is my setup adequate - G4 450mhz DP

[Adrian Delso]

Scoot beat me to it! It's a Dual Processor.

Yesterday, I recorded a MIDI bassline, using a VSamp sample and looped it; imported the Drums120.aiff and looped it; wrote another drum pattern in Doggiebox, imported, stretched and looped it, and recorded a scratch vocal over the top - with FX - again, looping it.

I think I'm getting an idea of how Metro works!

But...I experienced two spinning balls/Force Quits, mainly while fooling around with changing the number of bars in each piece of audio, while the song was Playing.

If v6.3 can definitely address this stability issue for my kind of Mac, I will buy MetroLX in a heartbeat.

[Scoot]

Have you mentioned the OS version you're running?


I've just played a piece of midi and changed the bar length and nothing happened. Is this part of the Dual CPU bug?

Is this with or without the USB interface connected?
(I assume the emagic is bringing in the midi and recording audio tracks?)


Most USB audio devices can cause problems (with all apps....not just metro).
If you have a means to switch to firewire you may be happier....then again 6.3 could be all you need.

[Jerm]

If v6.3 can definitely address this stability issue for my kind of Mac, I will buy MetroLX in a heartbeat.

Definitely!

[Adrian Delso]

I'm running OS X.3, with one upgrade.

The MIDI was input with a mouse.

The Emagic interface is permanently connected and powered up.

Vocal was via an AKG and a ART Tube preamp into the Emagic box.

I am not 100% confident about the interface (see my thread in "Audio").

Connection to the Mac is USB 2.