MAC Pro or PC for a DAW?

[Tone Deft]

3phase, you're a lunatic. you know that, right?


I'm really not as inclined to follow up on your question.

[heavensdaw]

Hey Tone .. I reckon we're all bloody lunatics.. but thats another thread *for the lunge maybe..

Anywayz .. does anyone think the OP had any idea of the 'can o worms' he was opening here!? hmmm sucked in me thinks.

Hd

[Tone Deft]

HDAW-

I have 20,000 reasons to doubt my sanity.

the OP was probably a forumite taking the piss. I wish a mod would call those people out.

[dothedru22]

I could easily build a Nehalem based PC computer that could run MacOSX flawlessly for less than half of what you payed for a mac pro. I mean $2500 for 3gb of ram and an xeon. That's outrageous. 1 640gb hard drive. I could raid 0 2 750gb with 2 1tb's in raid 1 for that price. Just get a nehalem based i7 920. It's the same freaking thing. It just doesn't have dual qpi capabilities. Overclock it to 4ghz(they do this easy) and call it a day. And you can overclock it because pc's have bios. gt120. Yuck. I could put in a ati 5870 for that price. Anyway build a pc for $2500 and I can tell you the parts to get that is guaranteed to run MacOSX.

As said before, no selfbuilding..
Go in a decend computer shop and buy a professional ready build xenon pc.. how much cheaper as a mac is it than?

Oh I'm sorry. In that case you are correct. You usually will not find anything on the pc side for less money than a mac(mac pro wise). We use macs extensively at my job. iMacs, Mac Pros, and Mac Book pros(which I use). I've priced out tons of things and when it comes to server based towers. Mac is usually the way to go, even if you really don't want to run mac osx server or mac osx. I am the primary purchaser when it comes to our computer equipment. I build a lot of computers though for our regular employees(those that don't work in the print shop) because we get out much cheaper..always.

Whatever you do though do not buy into the whole Apple has better hardware because it simply is not the case. I've built tons of systems and seen the insides of mac pros, mac book pros, and iMacs(those are fun) and I will tell you they are not any better then the insides of dells and hps.(apples hard drives are usually a little better quality). The thing with building computer is that any of the Gigtabyte, Asus, MSI, or Evga boards you buy are 1000 times better than the OEM intel crap that comes with dells,macs, and hps. Any memory you buy: corsair, crucial(which apple tends to use sometimes), g.skill is way better than the crap they put in oem systems. I only use the best power supplies: corsair, pc power and cooling, antec. Whatever you get with an oem system is the worst you can get. And this is what powers the entire system! Its the life of your computer.

You can use better quality motherboards, memory, hard drives, power supplies, etc and get out way cheaper when you build a system. That's why I like building systems. Better for wallet and better in the long term. I don't worry about warranty's because everything I buy has at least 3 years warranty's and the corsair psu's I get have 7!

That's my 2 cents.

[Outwest 2008]

WOW!!! I sure opened up a can of worms! I thank you all for your invaluable input on this matter. I will certainly mull over the information at hand as well as continue to talk to others about what computer to buy. God bless all of you.

[ze2be]

anyway.. there are drawbacks..the new models dont have a firewire port.. i really hate apple for allways abandon important ports before theire time.. that actually makes apples expesiv.. that you constantly need new interfaces...

I build what I need, I get what I want, and im out`a here!!!

[H20nly]

apple is market leader again regarding modern computers...

there are no i phones or i tablets in sight from the competitors...

have you ever asked yourself why? Apple has bought lots of key patents.. they will become even bigger the next years..

rumor is that they also bought teh patents foron eye projektion of the display picture..

they are very much into future technology.. It looks a bit like that pc´s will soon do the office servers part again while apple takes over the home and creativ pc market again...

be careful what you wish for.

pigeon holes are cramped spaces. iLife comes at a price...

[UncleAge]

To the OP: Choose the software you need and then choose the hardware you need to run it. Truth be told, the differences between the experience with these two OS'es isn't that great. And you will learn to live with the idiosyncrasies of either.

I have used/programmed pc's since 1984. Its a box that let's me get to where I need to go. That's it. I recently bought an iMac because I really wanted to use Logic. After about a month of use I really can't see what all the fuss is about (hardware wise). Its a different experience but I wouldn't necessarily call it better. The one thing I will give the nod to is CoreAudio on the Mac side. ASIO was never a friend to me so I won't miss it. I also enjoy the reduction of noise in the room. But those two things are small items and I wouldn't hinge my purchase on them.

You can research it to death if you want. Keep posting the question and you'll get a ton of responses. Take long enough and another wave of faster/stronger/prettier stuff will be on display and you can start your research all over again. Or you can just make the purchase. With the speed of the computers today it really is hard to make a bad decision. And you'll find much more support online in forums than any of the mentioned companies could afford to offer. Go ahead and make a decision. And then come back and tell us what you decided on.

Unless you actually want to read more opinions that may/may not relate to what will happen with you and yours...

[Carl Lofgren]

Ex-PC user here. I went Mac last winter and I am still living in a land of magical unicorns. Not looking back. I have way less problems than with my last PC - but in all truth that was a Dell (an expensive one too), so that might explain the all possible fcuk-ups.

[H20nly]

To the OP: Choose the software you need and then choose the hardware you need to run it. Truth be told, the differences between the experience with these two OS'es isn't that great. And you will learn to live with the idiosyncrasies of either.

I have used/programmed pc's since 1984. Its a box that let's me get to where I need to go. That's it. I recently bought an iMac because I really wanted to use Logic. After about a month of use I really can't see what all the fuss is about (hardware wise). Its a different experience but I wouldn't necessarily call it better. The one thing I will give the nod to is CoreAudio on the Mac side. ASIO was never a friend to me so I won't miss it. I also enjoy the reduction of noise in the room. But those two things are small items and I wouldn't hinge my purchase on them.

You can research it to death if you want. Keep posting the question and you'll get a ton of responses. Take long enough and another wave of faster/stronger/prettier stuff will be on display and you can start your research all over again. Or you can just make the purchase. With the speed of the computers today it really is hard to make a bad decision. And you'll find much more support online in forums than any of the mentioned companies could afford to offer. Go ahead and make a decision. And then come back and tell us what you decided on.

Unless you actually want to read more opinions that may/may not relate to what will happen with you and yours...

UncleAge FTW!

[leedsquietman]

Dell's expensive machines are just as good as Mac, they use the same components for the most part.
Not the budget range - but the XPS and higher priced range and the Alienware range which Dell owns.

Talking about warranties - Dell's Complete Care warranty is the best out there. Covers spillages, accidental drops, etc.

ASIO vs Core Audio - very boring and dull debate. Until recently (say 3-4 years ago), Core Audio couldn't touch the lowest latencies available on some ASIO devices (mostly from PCI based cards). However, USB and firewire interfaces don't seem to handle ASIO as well as PCI/PCI-E cards so currently Core Audio rules although there's only RME getting amazing latencies out of it. The simple fact is both coreaudio and asio allow low latency. With asio it's more dependent on the driver, so make sure you do your homework before buying, RME can go down as low as 32 samples (1-2 ms) on ASIO dependent on the host machine's processing power.

As for MIDI, This is very dependent on the vendor of the MIDI device, more than the protocol. CoreMIDI gives a good protocol to begin with, most PC MIDI makers have to write a good driver and that can get good MIDI performance. It is certainly possible to have good MIDI performance on a PC so long as the gear and the driver are quality.

As for Mac Pro Towers - they are ridiculously overpriced for the standard DAW user. A big part of this is using Xeons and ECC Ram - server configurations. Apple should release a new range of computers that utilize the i7 quad core and standard DDR ram. That could come in at around $2400 and they would make a KILLING in the market, instead of releasing underpowered Mac Pros at $3600 with no monitors. AT least the new quad core Imac is one step in the right direction for a decent performing DAW computer. However, the Imac is based on small factor laptop equipment, a real powerful tower unit which was affordable is more than doable.

For less than $2900 you can get a quad core i7 3.2 Dell with 9GB trichannel DDR3 1066mb ram, ATI HD5750 1GB graphics, TWO terabyte HDDS, win 7 64 pro, 24" UltraSharp monitor, DVD writer etc. Or for 900 dollars more you can get a slower Mac Pro tower quad xeon (2.66), with 6GB ram, ONE terabyte HDD, apple 24" display, worse graphics (ATI HD4780 512mb) and no o/s. Hmm, tough choice ... Apple seriously need a range of i7 computers in the 2-3k range and they will slay PC sales, instead of the tired Mac Pro servers looking underpowered and vastly overpriced. At least the Mac Book pro is more competitively priced, although it could use a couple of hundred of dollars off too.

I use PC and Mac and using PC at home, I achieve all the things I want to do with a Core2Duo DELL laptop. My projects are heavy too. I like Macs and they are easier to set up and require less optimization but people should just get on with making music and choose what suits them best.

[3phase]

As for MIDI, This is very dependent on the vendor of the MIDI device, more than the protocol. CoreMIDI gives a good protocol to begin with, most PC MIDI makers have to write a good driver and that can get good MIDI performance. It is certainly possible to have good MIDI performance on a PC so long as the gear and the driver are quality.
.

Is that really the case? could one of you pc experts with the well tuned machines please proove that?

Because the bad miditiming was the biggest downfall in the moderen hard disk recording DAW for many years and only since max 2 years the situation finaly went wright again..

for many years the best you could hope for was a clock jitter of 1,5 to 2 ms...

good enough for many styles.. but when you have a modular system running nice and tight on its own.. and than slave it to a bad midiclock.. and experiancing the feel suffering so much that you don like to record it anymore... than you really start hating bad clocks


It would be really nice if the windows world would have hacked the goal of having midi like on an 80´s computer aswell..

But sofar it don looks like.. It would really change my position if one could proove clocktimings in the 0,1 ms range are possible on windows pc´s...

[leedsquietman]

This is a handy guide for anyone experiencing MIDI problems on a PC

Caveat - remember that Live (unlike other sequencers) only has timestamp on and no way to change it.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec07/a ... h_1207.htm

[esky]

, give and take.

but esky i seriously owe you a beer, for making my day and probably the whole next month, every morning when i get up i will think of this thread (and what you wrote) and have a smile on my face... that will get me with utter joy through the whole day... THANK YOU!!!

you see, my contribution gave fuel for another 4 pages of debate. As a background information i have to tell that before my switch to win i had serious fights with two Apple Service Centers in Berlin (Gravis and M&M) who both cheated me . That made me say Apple-never again in my life. In practical work i don't feel a difference between my old mac and my win pc. Live 8 runs smoothly with just a very few problems even with old driver technology and aged interfaces (Motu). So what can i say...?
Glad you had fun with my words and you know...Übertreibung macht anschaulich...nicht wahr...?!?!
I'll have the beer on the next User Group Meeting...

[SubFunk]

you see, my contribution gave fuel for another 4 pages of debate. As a background information i have to tell that before my switch to win i had serious fights with two Apple Service Centers in Berlin (Gravis and M&M) who both cheated me . That made me say Apple-never again in my life. In practical work i don't feel a difference between my old mac and my win pc. Live 8 runs smoothly with just a very few problems even with old driver technology and aged interfaces (Motu). So what can i say...?
Glad you had fun with my words and you know...Übertreibung macht anschaulich...nicht wahr...?!?!
I'll have the beer on the next User Group Meeting...

count on the beer at the next ALUGB meeting...