[mike e]

hi, longtime voiceover guy with studio.. been using a G4 dual-boot and
before that a AGP G4 400 Mac
as my studio's main computer... lynx L22 card.

i still pretty much stay in the os 9 domain using bias peak for most
voice track production (final stage in
is a TC Finalizer; AES digital to the Lynx). Most stuff is either sent
out as mp3 or wav/aiff for Post
elsewhere.

been putting off any sort of upgrade but my old standalone workhorse
Foundation RE2000 is a long-orphaned unit, which i still rely on for my
full-mixed spots and multimedia soundtrax clients.

I'm thinking about protools (tho it's so much overkill for the average
stock music bed/efx-and-voicetrack project).

PT discussion aside, if i wanted to move into Century 21 and commit to
working in OSX from here on out,
how reliable and stable a platform do you guys think a Mac Mini would
be...and likewise or versus.... IMac or MacPro... for my specific
purposes. Again, much of my stuff is simply dry voicetrack and Peak
has served
nicely but there are bouts of instability running 3.1 and even earlier
versions (even better as far as interface
as far as my workstyle preferences go..) so I think i have to at least
step up to OSX and while i'm at it would
consider something newer than the MDD G4 if there's any advantage in
that. Just looking at the nominal self-noise of the Minis and other
late model Mac stuff, it struck me a hardware upgrade could even allow
me
to go back to running a mic in the same room like in my radio
production days of yesteryear... (not that
analog machine and fan noise was ever an issue back then anyway ;o)

Glad to hear any comments pro/con abt. the notion of a Mac Mini, Mac
Pro, IMac for general broadcast
production service. I do realize that were i to go ProTools I would
need m-box or a firewire interface for the
these instead of my PCI Lynx cards... i don't think that would be a big
issue, esp. with the m-powered PT
stuff which seem to be a nice bundle value.

Any perspectives much appreciated,

Seasons Greetings,

MikeE