PC or Mac ?

[vijayan]

Hello Everyone,

I am selling my old PC laptop to get a new computer (it will be a desktop) Was wondering if I should go for a PC or a Mac. I am a PC user, but I can get around a mac. Is there a reason why most musicians prefer mac ? I've been using the cracked version of cubase sx on windows xp for the past few months and it is terribly unstable. I own cakewalk home studio xl, which seems to work fine. What is special about a mac ?

Thanks for any info.
Swamy

[elektro80]

First you gotta know that the mac these days is a unix box. The GUI is a mix of new, of old NEXT and the Mac as you might remember it.

Hardware wise the mac has gone thru some changes. And there are a lot of interesting ideas behind their GUI.

Now and then Apple hardware has had good specs compared to PCs.. and other times ( like these days.. ) not so kool. But the perfomance is very good.

The whole mac layout is pretty easy to understand.. ecven the hard parts.. and the unix parts are easy to learn too. In many ways you could say that the existing Mac OS X platform is far better documented than the wintel platform. Most Linux geeks love the mac.. it is basically what they already know.. but with a GUI and some very kool ideas thrown in that actually work well.

When it comes to audio and midi Apple has made these a part of the core in the OS. Apple is very into toolboxing... creating OS modules that provide tools for applications.. this means that in the case of the new midi and audio implementation.. Logic, Cubase, DP4 and others use the basic tools provided in the OS. Which resolves to a lot less mess.

If you are not a gearhead who is very very very into the MS Windows - or want to be a victim of wintel demons.. Apple is an option.


Apple is soon to use IBM Power 5 chips. These are monsters which will really kick ass. But I guess you will survive well with a current model. Anyway.. I recommend you wait till after the june 23rd announcements. Apple will show their new roadplan then.

When I say the specs are not so good these days.. this is ... well.. not exactly true. The computers are really designed a bit different from the wintel breed and the CPUs are different too. In real world the macs compete very well.. and often wins with a good margin when doing tough tasks.

Another issue is that Apple products are pretty well made and they are really a different breed.

I am not saying that macs are best. But I think the current Apple Macintosh platform is sensible and smart and provides all the power you might need. If you wanted to do some very high end video and 3D stuff I might suggest other computers.. but then just the license for a software suite would probably cost more than your car... I am talking badass computing here.

I have worked as a sysadmin and computer grafix expert for nearly 20 years and use the a of different stuff. I am not sure I would dare to recommend anything else than an Apple Macintosh to ordinary users these days.


The ideology behind a mac will empower users to learn more about their machine.

Ahhh... another issue... any new mac will be OK for audio. The same is not true for PCs. But do get a tower model with card slots and room for more internal disks etc.

The laptops are kool.. but I guess i will wait for a Power 5 driven laptop.
A problem with any laptop is that disk bandwidth is lower.. very intensive harddiskrecording will not work on any laptop. So if you plan to do a major piece involving 60 tracks or more.. no laptop will do at the moment.

I guess you have guessed I use macs at home for music making.. and you are right.


But.... one obvious thing here is that a supply of "free" software might make it easier to decide. If all your friends have PCs and they will provide you with everything you need... then well,, you know.. But if you are into paying for it all I suggest a mac. The latest rage is Linux anyway.. and with a mac you can join that crowd and still have a mature OS with a nice GUI.

[mosc]

Great comments by Electro80, as usual.

Good postings, Swamy, and welcome to electro-music.com. Glad to have you participate.

I've been a PC user for many years. It's getting better and better, more and more stable. I'll probably stay with PC's because I have a huge software investment and I'm pretty good at working with the stupid operating system.

If I was like you, and asking the question, Mac or PC?, I'd go Mac. There is a program Max/MSP that might make it worth it just for that. This program isn't available on Windows yet. Also there is Supercollider which is very good I hear and only runs on MAC.

From my experience with laptops, Apple has a much more stable and reliable product. I've had 5 or 6 Windows laptops and the get really flakey after about a year. The worse thing about Windows is you can't really upgrade the OS with out reinstalling all of your software. I hate that.

[elektro80]

The old layout and the new UNIX layout allows for a much better understanding of what goes on. On mac you can change and edit OS behaviour in a way which is unthinkable using any MS Windows version out there. This means it is a lot easier to fix problems than on Windows. If something acts up.. you can probably fix it. Only serious issue is that you have to do some harddisk directory maintenance now and then.. but this is the same on Windows anyway.

The pretty good build quality of the macs allows for a much longer lifespan than most PC can ever show. An old laptop never really dies.. it just ends up doing simple tasks. I guess I have most of my mac portable/laptops still. Many are in dailiy use

The insane use of helpful wizards in XP are often more destructive than ... well.. helpful..

I am a networking guy really... and I am extremely annoyed by the network setup wizards in Windows XP. All the nice stuff is hidden.. and ordinary users SHOULD be able to get to the good stuff.

[vijayan]

Gee, I didn't know mac was cool. I thought mac was for dummies who didn't want to learn the intricacies of an OS. I was obviously wrong And seriously now that I think about it, it always takes me a few weeks to get a software running on windows, with all the driver screwups and changing settings, resolving conflicts and stuff.. its too frustrating. I've had to reinstall windows 3 times already, not to mention the innumerable times I've used the system restore. Guess I've gotta take a better look at a mac now.

I don't have much experience with a mac (except that I use one at work for word processing and internet). What specs should I be looking for to get a descent home studio ? The cheaper the better. I do not plan to do any fancy stuff for the time being. More like getting started with 8-10 tracks max.

Thanks for the help guys. Ill start looking into mac's more seriously now.

Swamy

[elektro80]

Apple will officially announce the new roadmap.. the migration to Power 5 driven macs.. probably on June 23rd.

You can get away with a G4 1Ghz laptop... and you might want an audio interface from M-Audio or Roland.. or... Motu.. and max RAM.. I guess you might go for the 15" LCD model.

Anything less than a G4 is not smart. You will then end up with a G3 cpu which is not that suitable for audio and video tasks. The G3 is comparable to the scaled down CPUs used in inexpensive PC laptops.

If you want to do only midi.. any of the smallest iBook laptops will do. But I promise that you will love harddiskrecording using virtual synths.

Your most important choice is which DAW suite to go for. You have stuff like Reason and Storm ( http://www.arturia.com ). These are somewhat similar. You also have apps like Motu DP4 ( http://www.motu.com ), Logic and Cubase.

Apple has this new audio plugin standard called AU ( audiounits). Motu will support AU in the next update but things are a bit unclear with Cubase. Cubase uses VST as the plugin format.

Logic is now Apple and yes.. Logic does AU very well.


All these are very good. Motu DP4 is interesting. And it has this very smart feature called track freeze. THis means you can "freeze" a virtual track.. including effects and whatever is on it.. also if you have a virtual synth on the track. When frozen a track will sound like it did before freezing but it is actually turned into an audiofile on disk. This means that you do use the CPU for any of the efx or the instruments.. Unfreezing lets you edit the track. This is an effective way to work. You can basically do exactlythe same in other apps.. but MOTU has hidden the dirty work in a "freeze" button. A real timesaver. MOTU DP4 is excellent for laptops.

The built in plugs in DP4 are very good.. and you might just need a few virtual synths when you start out.


But.. all the major DAW suites on the mac are very good... And you also have ProTools ( http://www.digidesign.com ). ProTools is a bit special and honestly.. you can do without it... the big thing with ProTools is the high end stuff. The lower end apps have currently a track limit at 32 ( which is absolutely silly ) and you also need external Digidesign hardware in order to use the aplication. The main reason for buying ProTools these days is that you think you will get the high end stuff eventually.. and you start at the bottom just in order to get started learning the suite.

Cubase SX is OK.. very good.. but then you have to live with the choice AU vs. VST. ( Which is silly.. Steinberg should implement AU ASAP..) . Noone knows when and if Steinberg will go AU. ( Mind you.. there is not much wrong with the VST format - it is quite OK.. but.. AU should be supported by Cubase.. ). CUbase SX has a few nice VSt virtual instruments included in the license.. so Cubase is a good start anyway.

Logic ( emagic.de ) is now owned by Apple. The suite is mature and very good. Logic supports AU.

In your case I will suggest that you take a hard look at Reason and Motu DP4 using an Apple Titanium 15" powerbook.


Ahhh.. forgot... harddiskrecording is not that CPU intensive. You can have MANY tracks.. ( and I mean MANY ) without torturing the CPU. Many tracks IS diskintensive. but you will probably get more than 20 tracks on a laptop before you get into trouble. If you get a new laptop with firewire 800 support - you can use external firewire 800 disks for even more tracks. If you do this you can probably have more than 100 tracks running..

A desktop workstation has faster disks. And if you get into trouble you can use SCSI disks instead of the ATA disks. An ATA disk will in fact use some CPU power. SCSI does not in the same way.. and SCSI disks are hardcore pro stuff.

The best deal is the "smallest" dual cpu Apple Macintosh stationary G4. You get a lot for less. But.. a laptop is a... hehe.. cute.... !

Wait until june 23rd. Then you will probably know a whole lot more about the future of the Apple Macintosh.

ahhh.. right... "just 8-10" tracks.

You will want to record in stereo. 10 tracks will then resolve to 5 stereo tracks. Hmm.. this is not much. A good point I would like to stress is that using many tracks might be smart and might make it easier to be in control of what is where. This is not really a matter of having shitloads of voices running at the same time.. but structuring the project using many tracks..

Hmm... do check out http://www.macosxaudio.com

[mosc]

[elektro80]

You might check this track out which is done almost entirely in Cubase on a G4 400mhz single cpu workstation ( a pretty old machine )

http://elektro80.trash.no/loopz/The_WIld_Blue.mp3

The noise and distortion is caused by the MP3 encoding. Keep in mind this is a quick export of a project. No real mix or anything. Realistically you can do the same piece on a modern Apple Titanium laptop anytime.



( the linked file will be moved within a few days )

[vijayan]

Hiya Electro !

I'll wait till june 23 and ask you again for advice That was an amazing piece (the wild blue) ! I only use absynth as a disk streaming soft synth. But most of the time I use the vst version triggered by midi. There are too many synths out there and I was totally confused for a long time. Now I restrict myself to FM7 and absynth, along with my hardware sampler (ensoniq eps 16+) and synth (casio cz 3000). For rythm/beats I use fruity loops and rebirth. I'm also beginning to play with Live, which is an amazing piece of software, though quiet restrictive for what I want to do. My influences are Kitaro and Steve Roach. I like minimalistic uncluttered pieces with lush sounds in the background. Well, I do know what I want to do, but haven't figured how to do them so far. I'm learning slowly. I have a looong way to go Ok, I already learned a lot from you guys here. I understood your point about multi tracking to help structure the project. It makes sense to break down things rather than attempt a one shot full recording.

Thanks very much,
swamy

[elektro80]

I have a suggestion for a virtual instrument you might find inspiring. It is called Atmosphere and is really a sample player with a huge lot of structured content. You can tweak the sounds a lot and it is quite expressive. I am not using Atmosphere myself, but a friend of mine showed it to me and he is a big fan of Roach and Kitaro too.


OK.. June 23rd it is.

[DES]

Hi Swamy!

I personally recommend PC's - I just feel you get more bang for the buck. I use 7 in my studio for various functions - recording, mastering, softsynths, business, etc.. MACs are good computers but they have their problems as well.. I have been working on PC's since the first IBM PCs came out (also C64, TI99's and Apple II's, Mac's..) and believe me they ALL have issues. I just feel that for say a reasonable amount of money you can get a real good basic PC that can do recording and such. Also - you will more then likely find more local sources for PC support then MAC. The trick is to know what needs to be done to optimize the PC. Most PC's come configured for business or gaming which is not what we need. There are plenty of online sites and forums to help you tweak your PC (and if you can always contact me). The more important thing to consider is what do you want to use the computer for and then find an application that does it for the price you can afford. That in itself may very well dictate what you get. If you do go PC - go with the XP Pro operating system - not Home and definately NOT windows ME (perhaps the worst OS Microsoft ever put out!) For Mac - if you buy a new MAC made after I believe Jan 03, you HAVE to get OS-X - and there are not many applications at this time that run under OS-x. OS 9 on the other hadn works on most of the later MACs which can be had for a reasonable price. One other thing - put money in your budget for a decent sound card. Sound Blasters are "ok" but do not have that great a fidelity. A decent sound card with basic i/o will start around $150 give or take and then the sky is the limit. But you can always add that later when the next tax return comes in!

Dave

[elektro80]

I first decided not to answer this one because I believe that PCs can be OK for music too.. no prob really.. but... I still think you might get the most pleasure from a mac.. but this again is based on how I perceive your relationship with computers is at the moment. A mac might make you feel like a hight tech guy pretty fast.. and you will probably become very pleased with the experience. A lot of extremely cool software is coming for X now.. so that is not really an issue. When it comes to Mac support, the online community is excellent... and there is always a lot of guys out there how has solved your problem weeks before you encounter them. And the mac hardware platform is a lot more .. well.. less. fragmented than the wintel platform.. so there will be fewer issues.. and many app vendors and third part hardware vendors will have bugs sorted out before the products are shipped.

[flavio]

I still don't see much reason personally to go with anything but a PC. I do like the new Mac OS X but there's still way too many benefits to having a PC to consider anything else.

Macs are still just too expensive, don't have the number of software options, and are difficult and expensive to upgrade.

I build my PC's myself picking out each individual part. I decide how much money I can put into the videocard, how big a hard drive i want, the soundcard, the ram, the cpu, which case I like, and whether I need a DVD player and/or a cd-rw.

It's not that hard and it's just not an option with a Mac, and if you want to upgrade something later on the Mac you're usually stuck with Apple parts and they are pricey.

There's also nowhere near the amount of software available for a Mac that there is for a PC...not to mention the fact that just about any PC software title can be found easily for free lately with the advent of P2P sharing...although you take what you get that way (probably why your Cubase is unstable). For the most part though it works great if you need it. I use my computer for many different things including music, gaming, web developement, graphics, etc and I think I would really feel limited with just a Mac.

As for the OS I'm using Win XP Pro, but I'm triple-booting that as well as Win98 and Mandrake Linux. I use Win XP for most things but I boot up Win98 to run some older software (mostly older games) and I run Linux because I'm setting up a webserver and studying for the Linux+ certification.

[elektro80]

[vijayan]

Woo... guess I sparked the age old PC-Mac debate on this forum. I did chek out Mac's extensively this past week. I actually visited the apple store nearby, and they pretty much convinced me to buy a mac. I also cheked out the the music department e-music lab here (they have a dual processor g4 with a digidesign firewire interface) They are awesome beasts ! But man are they pricey ! I decided they were definitely out of my budget. (I am still in grad school ) Especially because I could build a PC with similar specs at a third of the cost. I guess for now I'll have to forego the stability of the mac's and settle for a PC untill I start earning money. I checked out the older Macs too, and they were unimpressive. And I also found some sweet deals on PC's ! Here's the PC I'm drooling over : Intel P4 2.2 GHz, 512 MB DDR RAM, 120 GB 7200 RPM HDD, 6 USB2 ports, 3 firewire ports, SB Live 5.1, and windows XP preinstalled . I get all this for $500 inclusive of shipping ! Well it is a refurb unit, but I'm willing to risk it.
I might probably end up buying it, Cus for the price, I needn't even sell my laptop. I'll have 2 computers to make music on and I can do 50 tracks !!
I might have to buy an audio interface though. I guess I could run the hardware synths through my Behringer mixer ---> SB Live for a while.

Well I did not record my flute pieces over the weekend I did have lots of fun playing it though. I hooked up my midi saxophone to the Ensonique EPS and played the flute and clarinet samples with effects (sweet sweet dual delay Was tooooo cool. I'm gonna wait till I move to my new apt (july 1'st) to redo my studio again, it's a colossal mess right now.

Tata,
swamy

[elektro80]

I am glad we are above the "You are EVIL" approach to platform discussions. Truth is any OS and any computer can be a wonderful experience. Old gear like the Atarai ST is still around. .-)

You not only choose an OS but you also get a community and nice friends who might supply you with shitloads of software and support . It is not uncommon to choose what your friends use.. and then you reap the benefits. But.. this brings software piracy to mind. This is a real problem. OK.. admittedly it is nice to get your hands on unrestricted copies in order to get the feel for what the software can do. But when it comes to the stuff we do.. making musi..c we all rely on a lot of great, smart and nutty people and they all deserve an income. Even companies like Steinberg and Emagic needs income. It is not that many years ago when music making meant rooms full of expensive hardware. Software and computers have changed things a lot and software piracy has sort of become the smart thing to do.. possibly because it is more convienent than running off with a Hammond B3. but these days you can.. burn a CD ! Voila.
I am a bit concerned with available "free" software being a decisive reason for choosing any given OS/platform. It is like..

aspiring musician: "man.. I go for patch cables these days!"
friend: "huh? "
aspiring musician: "yeah.. sure.. gotta buy those.. I need them for all the modular synths I steal"

Well.. just wanted to share my thoughts on this subject. I am not trying ofend you guys.. but especially when it comes to computer music making.. all those small developers deserves some support and a decent pay.

[invisibl]

But.. all the major DAW suites on the mac are very good... And you also have ProTools ( http://www.digidesign.com ). ProTools is a bit special and honestly.. you can do without it... the big thing with ProTools is the high end stuff. The lower end apps have currently a track limit at 32 ( which is absolutely silly ) and you also need external Digidesign hardware in order to use the aplication. The main reason for buying ProTools these days is that you think you will get the high end stuff eventually.. and you start at the bottom just in order to get started learning the suite.

Best description i have ever read.

My (virtual) hat is off to you sir!

Kudos.

[elektro80]

Huh Did I write that? Kool!


THX invisi..

[seraph]

I had Digidesign hardware without using ProTools:
I was driving a Digi001 with (Emagic) Logic
I think Logic is much better as a front end

[seraph]

I think Digidesign is more interested in selling hardware than developing software. I know many people using high end Digidesign hardware (not MBox or Digi001) driven by Emagic software.

Off topic:
Have you tried to lift a G5? It's heavy, much more than any G4, by the way, I read somewhere that Steve Jobs is trying to talk the International Olympic Committee into including a new sport next year for the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad in Athens: G5 throw

[elektro80]

Well.. yeah.. or rather Digidesign is aiming upmarket. Yes.. a lot of people are using Emagic software with Digidesign hardware these days. Frankly, Pro Tools has its merits but the low end bundles makes little sense. But.. I see they are reconsidering their market strategy. If you check out their website at http://www.digidesign.com you will see they now are selling very nice bundles with third party software. This is of course a way to recruit new users. i imagine they need new users

... and fast. but I will in no way give the impression that I think PT is a bad application.. it is not..

[elektro80]

I guess some will find this little interview interesting. Bill Joy talking with Wired magazine.... http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/billjoy.html?tw=wn_tophead_3

Bill Joy is cofounder of Sun Microsystems and, until he quit in September, its chief scientist.

[mosc]

OSX asside, there are many techies that prefer Free BSD to Linux. I've been using Red Hat Linux on this server for some time. They have recently announced that they are going to stop distributing Linux for free, but will charge $350 a copy. Ouch. I'm going to look at Free BSD. OSX is not attractive to me for the server because of the expense.

Unix and Linux are OT, on this thread, but that's the way these threads go, I guess.

[elektro80]

Well.. yeah... OS X is tied in with Apple hardware. In your case a secondhand dual 500 mhz g4 would perform just fine with 3 tims the hits or way more. But you hafta get that box anyway- BSD/Free BSD computes better because you already have some PCs.

[elektro80]

Some issues are... well.. anyway...

http://www.bullguard.com/pamelaspeak/Movieclip.aspx