pc to mac help

msticman · Post by **msticman** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:18 pm

i am currently running live on pc, but i am buying a mac in about a month or so. i dont know a whole lot about macs, so im wondering about a few things.

first, will the mac be able to read my project files that i made on the pc?

second, do i have to redo all of my plugins? i only installed the vst versions of my plugins. some i have the dx, but not all.

third, is wav files. will mac read those or do i have to convert them to aiff?

any help would be appreciated. thanks.

CWoodOne · Post by **CWoodOne** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:28 pm

msticman wrote:i am currently running live on pc, but i am buying a mac in about a month or so. i dont know a whole lot about macs, so im wondering about a few things.

first, will the mac be able to read my project files that i made on the pc?

second, do i have to redo all of my plugins? i only installed the vst versions of my plugins. some i have the dx, but not all.

third, is wav files. will mac read those or do i have to convert them to aiff?

any help would be appreciated. thanks.

Hmnn I'll start this, but others jump in!

Yes, Macs can open PC projects, but you may have to make some adjustments, since the file and folder systems are differen

If it's an Intel Mac, you'll need to have universal binary versions of the plugins
Live will take AU and VST - not DXI

.wav files work fine, no problem there

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theshaggyfreak · Post by **theshaggyfreak** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:31 pm

msticman wrote:i am currently running live on pc, but i am buying a mac in about a month or so. i dont know a whole lot about macs, so im wondering about a few things.

first, will the mac be able to read my project files that i made on the pc?

Yes

msticman wrote: second, do i have to redo all of my plugins? i only installed the vst versions of my plugins. some i have the dx, but not all.

You can not install a Windows plugin on a Mac and vise versa. You'll need to see if your 3rd party plugins have a Mac version for VST or AU.

msticman wrote: third, is wav files. will mac read those or do i have to convert them to aiff?
any help would be appreciated. thanks.

Yes. Macs can read wav files.

Michael-SW · Post by **Michael-SW** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:40 pm

You will most likely have to BUY new versions of all your plugs (at least pay to upgrade to universal binary), and a couple of your favorite ones (free or payware) won't be available at all.

Sure, Macs are cool and everything. But think it through if it is worth the hassle.

(Not a Mac-PC argument. Just a comment on changing your whole working environment for a maybe not so well specified reason.)

msticman · Post by **msticman** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 6:10 pm

well im having a lot of problems with live hanging up and overloading my cpu. that is why am thinking about switching over to mac. that is the main reason. i love my pc as i think it is more versatile in adding stuff and what not. i was looking at the g5, i think. and it didnt really seem to have the same ports as my pc. usb, ethernet, pci, etc. i did notice it had the old usb(1.0 ?) does anything use this connection anymore. i may wind up investing in a new pc system with dual core, or maybe the quad core. that is if ableton can take advantage of the quad.

i mentioned that my cpu hangs up in my current system. there doesnt seem to be any pattern to this behavior. sometimes it will hangup with 8vsti and some audio. the other day, i had 1 audio clip and impulse; and it hung up.

i have been playing around with rewiring acid pro into live for midi composition. sony seems to handle the plugins better than live, in some cases. however, neither daw seems to take advantage of the hyperthreading, which is a real dissappointment.

anyway, thanks for the feedback.

happy sequencing!

Michael-SW · Post by **Michael-SW** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 1:30 am

Your PC should be fine for running Live with quite many plugs. Your system has probably bogged down with too much crap. Make a clean XP install and ensure that you have at least 30% free space on the (defragmented) HD. Should run like a charm. Not super fast, but quite decent.

Hyperthreading has been said to be BAD for Live. Don't know if that still is true for newer versions of Live, but you can always try turning it off in the BIOS to see if anything gets better.

If you are buying a new machine, then for gods sake, don't buy a Mac G5. A single core G5 is probably not much faster than your current PC and the newer multi cores are very expensive.

If you are going to buy Mac, buy an Intel mac. They are really PCs. They will give you about the same performance as the equivalent PC, so the choice is really if you want to run just XP (buy a PC) or MacOS (buy a Mac - will also let you run XP under bootcamp).[/i]

rikhyray · Post by **rikhyray** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 1:54 am

.P4 2.8 is a bit outdated but worse has tendency to overheat, if it is a notebook clean it to allow airflow and cooling, you need also real soundcard, even the cheapest USB 1 will be better then soundblaster or realtek which are not meant for using with music making software.
Any second hand Centrino 1.3 or faster will outperform P4 2.8, and such you can get cheap on Ebay.
Any , even cheapest new Mac or pc will perform better then what you have now.

Michael-SW · Post by **Michael-SW** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 2:19 am

I don't think the older Centrinos outperform a P4 2.8 (a real one, not mobile). My almost two year old 1.87 GHz Centrino outperforms my even older P4 2.8, but it is not an extreme difference. 25% perhaps?

I think you will be very disappointed if you buy a 1.3 Centrino thinking that it will smoke your stationary P4. If I remember correctly the older Centrinos weren't nearly as good (per GHz) as the newer ones.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 2:56 am

Yeah though I love my G5, Michael is right.
To me the Apple laptops are simply better, but the desktops are the same.
I would look into your plug ins and see who charges for Universal Binary, who even has UB versions, and who even makes a mac version.

the other reason for the Intel macs is you can run Xp on them, so if OSX isn't your bag for some reason, the computer isn't a waste at all.

pc to mac help

pc to mac help

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