Ableton for music production. PC vs Mac

[leedsquietman]

Without doubt Macs have the stability benefit of using common hardware. There are so many possible hardware configurations out there that it does mean that some PCs do, unfortunately, never live up to their billing for pro audio work.

I think that your friend was unlucky and either had a duff machine, which ideally could/should have been replaced, or it was just an unfortunate combination of hardware causing the problems. Sometimes Macs arrive DOA or with component failure issues too.

However, most PCs can be optimized, even though some need more work than others. I have never had any issues with any of the Dell laptops or desktops I've owned, except for the firewire chipset in the XPS1530 being RICOH, and it does not perform like the TI chipset in my older Inspiron 9100 (it works, but only at higher latencies and with less channels), which will probably lead me to having to sell my nice Alesis IO14 interface which never let me down on my older TI firewire based machine and replace it with a USB 2.0 interface - I will definately not be buying Tascams or Toneports though. Yes, some people can get them to work OK, but their performance never matches certain other manufacturers.