Mac question

Patbos · Post by **Patbos** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 9:52 am

Hi!

I am a PC person today... but thinking in investing in a mac.
A 12" or 15" powerbook. 1.67ghz i think the new one´s are.

But i have heard that live 5 dont work that good with mac G4 processors.
compared to a PC, especially if the pc laptop have a Pentium Mobile processor.

another question, can the mac run VSTi´s as usual, or it ther Vsti for PC and vsti for mac?

I off course want to move all the things i use to the mac, and some freeware might be PC only if a mac cant run a vst for pc.

minimal · Post by **minimal** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 10:08 am

yeah, another thread which is likely to start a mac/pc war.

Well, in order not to be the first one I won't tell you what I know, but you can check it out by yourself typing in the search field "Live 5 Performance Test" and you will see NUMBERS, not opinions.

I find NUMBERS much more effective to judge a computer performance related to a given OS, Hardware etc than opinions.

Sure, OSs are different, some plastic boxes doesn't look so fancy as others but...........................

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 10:09 am

But i have heard that live 5 dont work that good with mac G4 processors.
compared to a PC, especially if the pc laptop have a Pentium Mobile processor.

True. One doesn't buy a Mac for power.

another question, can the mac run VSTi´s as usual, or it ther Vsti for PC and vsti for mac?

Yes - VSTs aren't cross platform.

I off course want to move all the things i use to the mac, and some freeware might be PC only if a mac cant run a vst for pc.

You'll have to do your research there... generally, there's less freeware for the Mac than for the PC cos there are fewer developers...

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 10:57 am

noisetonepause wrote:You'll have to do your research there... generally, there's less freeware for the Mac than for the PC cos there are fewer developers...

I definitely haven't found this to be true. There's plenty of great freeware for the mac, in both standalone applications, and plugins. Just take a look on apple's site for the former and kvr for the latter.

I think that the amount of PC freeware is quite overrated. Sure, there's a lot more "freebie" downloads, but they're all annoying shareware installs with weird demo limitations and other problems. There's no such thing as a free lunch, I guess.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 11:09 am

There's less volume of it, but the good stuff is really, really good... I have two commercial apps on my computer, the rest is freeware (well, I use Apple Mail, iTunes, Terminal and developer tools - don't know where they fit in!).

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 11:15 am

noisetonepause wrote:(well, I use Apple Mail, iTunes, Terminal and developer tools - don't know where they fit in!).

I think they fit somewhere in the $1,500+ you have to pay to get a mac.

Patbos · Post by **Patbos** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 11:21 am

I didint mean to start a mac/pc war.
But many people who HAVE A MAC, have complained about live with i g4.
So i wanted to know if that was better now with v.5 or not!

Thanks for the awnsers everyone! helped me a bit =)

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 12:15 pm

Patbos,
are you unhappy with your PC?

if not, stick with it. spend your money on an AMD64 laptop
i personally can't stomach windows, but if i could i'd still be using my old Athlon 64 3700.

claas · Post by **claas** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 12:22 pm

I use Live 5 in combination with Reason 3on an iBook G4 1,2Ghz. And it is enough power for my projects. Live and Reason works without any bug. On a MAC it is important that you have enough RAM, because OSX needs a lot of it. SO, if you use a MAC be sure to have more than 512 MB RAM.

VSTs needs to be ported on the plattform you use. Most commercial VSts are cross-plattformed but many of the free are PC or Mac only.

greetings, claas

netchaiev · Post by **netchaiev** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 12:55 pm

Yeah, most Mac users don't get one for the sheer "power" etc...
if you need a new computer solely for live, then check the numbers.
Again it depends what you're doing.
For most of us, it's a whole thing, w/ iApps ergonomy and whatelse...
like Adam said, if you need a powerfull, Live optimized box, then get an AMD64.
and if you need a machine for everything else, then get a Mac!

PS: check first all the plugs and instruments and softs that you plan on using, what's the equivalent on Mac, if any.

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 2:40 pm

If you ask me, now is not the time to buy a Mac laptop.

They're obsolete already, and the new Intel gear is around the corner. It would be foolish to spend that kind of money on one now.

You can spend half as much on a PC and it will last you longer with the performance.

Or, wait for the new Apple stuff.... which will be a quantum leap ahead of what's available now.

atomic · Post by **atomic** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 4:42 pm

I would wait for the new mac-tels to come out for sure. I am not spending another cent on computers untill they are out and proven. That IMOP the new generation of intell chips with OSX running on it will be the obvious choice.

Just my two cents.

dm_hawk · Post by **dm_hawk** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 5:17 pm

i heartily agree with subterfuse- powerbooks have been pretty much the same, with periodic nudges in speed, hd capacity, etc. since the tiBook in 2001 and there's a lot of talk about something new happening in the next couple of years, though i don't know the specifics.

if you decide to go mac, it may save you some future anguish if you start acquiring the software you need right now, especially the freeware plugins. they are hardly ever cross-platform, but many of the ones made for osx are damn good - particularly those from the smartelectronix ring, and can likely replace any pc-only free plugs you're currently using. if given a choice, go for audio unit instead of vst - au's always seem to be more stable on my system.

you should also know that software cracks are much more difficult to find for mac than for pc

here's ocp's listing of music software for osx that includes some top-notch open source and freeware:
http://ocp.pt.vu/ (click on "software links")

dm_hawk · Post by **dm_hawk** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 5:24 pm

BTW, there was no perceptible change in performance on my pb after upgrading to 5 - i only get dropouts and slo-mo if i use several beefy plug-in instruments at once - and that's with only 768 MB of ram

inis · Post by **inis** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 12:45 am

ive got a 12" powerbook with 1.25g of ram. works liek a dream. never had a problem. ive got 3 midi controllers, two hard drives, and a firewire interface, and a shit load of effects on each track. Its awsome. Once you go mac, you'll never go back (lol, spare me, if some of you have gone back).

HERE CHECK THIS OUT
If you really want to see how it performs. Get a bunch of music, vst's, whatever else you want, go down to the apple store and download the live demo to one of their powerbooks and play around with it for a couple hours. lol, i love the apple store, its like you own the place. They dont give a shit what you do there.
I was there for almost six hours one time with my copy of reason re-wired to the copy of logic they had on the G5. Just makin beats and shit, lol.

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