Ableton Forum

if you a hobbyist go with a pc.otherwise........

john gordon wrote:if you a hobbyist go with a pc.otherwise........

oh no you didn't

I haven't read the whole thread but all I can say is that I never have been able to go below 10ms latency on my PC using either my old EMI2|6 usb soundcard or my new PCMCIA EMU 1616M. Once a song becomes more heavy even 20 ms won't cut it --> realtime NIGuitar Rig has never been an option for me.
When I take my old EMI2|6 to a 'friend with a Mac' latencies of 3 ms are no problem , even with the mac's built in soundcard.
This was true in the days of PIII 800mhz and is still true today.

On a sidenote , I must admit my PC's have always been equipped with the bare minimum of RAM (laptop with 512 Mb at the moment). But just creating an empty ableton project with monitoring for the soundcards input turned on already creates pops & cracks.

^ Sorry for your experience. I've been using PCs for about 10 years, and I've been at sub=10ms latency since the last millenium, back when 512mb of ram was a luxury.

Currently, I can run my PC at 0.7ms (yes, less than 1ms latency, less than the latency of most hardware synthesizers) on my RME Multiface, under XP, using a PCI (very old) bus/interface.

If we're gonna talk about Macs vs. PCs, I have no problem admitting Macs looking nicer, having better design, having better working hardware, or OSX being better than Vista. But let's not disseminate disinformation that writes off an entire platform. That's just not playing fair.

mr-e wrote:I haven't read the whole thread but all I can say is that I never have been able to go below 10ms latency on my PC using either my old EMI2|6 usb soundcard or my new PCMCIA EMU 1616M. Once a song becomes more heavy even 20 ms won't cut it --> realtime NIGuitar Rig has never been an option for me.
When I take my old EMI2|6 to a 'friend with a Mac' latencies of 3 ms are no problem , even with the mac's built in soundcard.
This was true in the days of PIII 800mhz and is still true today.

On a sidenote , I must admit my PC's have always been equipped with the bare minimum of RAM (laptop with 512 Mb at the moment). But just creating an empty ableton project with monitoring for the soundcards input turned on already creates pops & cracks.

thats got a lot more to do with the manufacturers writing decent drivers for windows. Its really nothing to do with XP as an audio platform. and yeah, 512mb is very little for Live these days.

nebulae wrote:

john gordon wrote:if you a hobbyist go with a pc.otherwise........

oh no you didn't

ahhh.you kill me.

latency rarely has anything to do with the operating system or Apple or Windows.

in fact, quite often, mac users complain about latency being higher on their systems, especially the mac book pro.

Truth is, certain companies are better at writing drivers for one platform over the other. MOTU for example, typically write much better drivers for Mac than PC (and in addition, firewire audio interfaces are sometimes more problematic on PCs as there is no real standard, whereas every line of Macs uses the same TI chipset and they use the 6 pin port that allows bus powering, whereas most PC laptops only include the 4 pin FW IEE1394a which cannot power the interface and requires an external power adapter). RME's Mac drivers are not shoddy, but their PC drivers usually give slightly better performance. And as Vista is still new, many interfaces have stable and good drivers on XP but the vista drivers are almost beta and often poor in comparison at the moment - that's if they exist at all...

john gordon wrote:if you a hobbyist go with a pc.otherwise........

I make a very good living by making music on my PC.

How about you?

Dr Dub wrote:you can by a KILLER Windows Desktop with Quadcore and 4 Gb Ram plus two 500 GB HDD for really small money.
This Computer for about 800-900 Euro will smoke every Mac under 3 or 4 thousand Euro.

i just did exactly that - and it fucking flies...


I thought my CPU meter was busted 'cos it didn't move for three weeks. I can just keep piling on the hungry plugins now and I never exceed 50%.

nebulae wrote:^ Sorry for your experience. I've been using PCs for about 10 years, and I've been at sub=10ms latency since the last millenium, back when 512mb of ram was a luxury.

Currently, I can run my PC at 0.7ms (yes, less than 1ms latency, less than the latency of most hardware synthesizers) on my RME Multiface, under XP, using a PCI (very old) bus/interface.

If we're gonna talk about Macs vs. PCs, I have no problem admitting Macs looking nicer, having better design, having better working hardware, or OSX being better than Vista. But let's not disseminate disinformation that writes off an entire platform. That's just not playing fair.

Damn, makes me regret shifting from RME to 1616m. I like the sound better and the stand alone option but might get RME again unless EMU gets finally better drivers. If someone cant get EMU under 4ms then it is probably cheapo components , too common by pc manufacturers
Probably the only real advantage of Apple you know what you get hardware wise, with pc you never know where the manufacturer decided to cut costs, unfortunately it is mostly on components that are relevant for music making.
Regarding the looks, Vaio SZ looks better and is better build then any currently available Mac, one of the reasons ( and PCMCIA or its absence) I didn't buy MBP.

you could always pray for a faster development of [url=http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html]ReactOS[/u], and stick with pc. since ableton wont release a linux version, and since noone is good enough to make it work under wine -.-

if only i could. ohwell.

What I'm now struggelign with a bit is that RAM thingie.

If I go for such pc with a motherboard with a FSB of 1333mhz, would there be an advantage of using 1333Mhz RAM and not 667mhz RAM?

Most people say no, but then I wonder why some guys would pay more just to have 1333mhz RAM...



and last but not least, is there any issue to run a 64bits OS with ableton and/or some vst's?

Tx a ton guys

how on earth could I possibly ever get by making any decent music at all on a 32-bit OS, using a 32-bit mix engine, with only 2gb of RAM on a (gasp!) single-core CPU?!?!?!??!

how?


HOW?