Ableton Forum

leedsquietman wrote:Hey Russ, I am one of the Dell Inspiron generation My Dell Inspiron actually rocked and my XPS stacks up well too

The reason Dave why Apple has a strong foothold in pro audio is because Microsoft have conceded it to Apple years ago. Microsoft gear everything to the Office and Gaming communities. They don't give a crap about Pro Audio, it's a tiny market.

Apple have written core audio, core MIDI and AU plugin infrastructure into the heart of the o/s at a low level with OSX and revised it with most major updates.

In Windows, we have Steinberg to thank for providing ASIO and VST, because Microsoft's offerings (DX and WDM) are just very poor and aimed only at the gaming community where low latency and pro audio performance is not required. Thankfully ASIO and VST are good protocols which pretty much match Apple's equivalent protocols performance wise.

Microsoft's MIDI protocols were last updated with Windows 98, and there are 2 competing standards MME and DirectMIDI. They did introduce WaveRT with Vista, which is better than DX but not as good as ASIO and not supported by many vendors.

What does this mean. Well yes, you pay more for Apple, it might not do Halo 4 as well as a PC, but it is easy to set up and has much fewer driver issues. It's not flashy but 'it just works'. Most professional studios run Mac, and Protools HD in pro studios is about 75-25 in favour of Mac. High end interfaces such as Metric Halo, Apogee etc are only available on Mac. So in terms of pro recording Mac is a very good platform with very few performance differential issues.

This is not to say a PC doesn't have some advantages or can't be set up to be a great system, but it requires a bit more effort and a bit more careful selection of devices to make sure driver issues and performance is not a problem.

As good as an operating system windows 7 might be, it still has MIDI from 1998 and it's native audio system is lacking compared to OSX. However much dislike people have for Steinberg, they cannot deny that without ASIO and VST, windows would not be acceptable as a pro recording medium at all.

leedsquietman wrote:This is what I mean about drivers though - Traktor may well have great drivers, but if you use some other application or hardware device, it varies. More so on PC because of having 2 MIDI protocols and audio driver formats. It's much easier to develop for Mac, it's one standard protocol for audio and MIDI.

PC has more freeware VST plugins available, often made with PC based apps such as Synthedit, but when it comes to quality paid plugins, they always come with audio units as well as VST. VST can also be used for Mac too in some programs such as Live. Until VST3 is widely implemented (just starting to pickup but Live only offers VST 2.4 at present), AU is a better plugin format because it supports native sidechaining and multichannel audio better.

I was hoping Microsoft would release their own low latency audio protocol and especially standardized, improved MIDI protocol with win 7, but alas, it was not to be.

BTW - I agree that the IPad is pretty meh.

UKRuss wrote:See what I mean? Now you want to turn this thread, in which you clearly have no interest yet insist on spouting your anti-apple nonsense, into a mac vs pc flame war.

Just stop jumping on other peoples threads to spout bollocks and inflammatory remarks.

Nobody gives a fuck that you don't like Apple products, we're doing fine thanks. We don't need our eyes opened, we're grown men who can make sensible choices.

To say that Mac are not compatible with the music making world is just shit,utter shit.

nothing more, nothing less.

andydes wrote:

UKRuss wrote:See what I mean? Now you want to turn this thread, in which you clearly have no interest yet insist on spouting your anti-apple nonsense, into a mac vs pc flame war.

Just stop jumping on other peoples threads to spout bollocks and inflammatory remarks.

Nobody gives a fuck that you don't like Apple products, we're doing fine thanks. We don't need our eyes opened, we're grown men who can make sensible choices.

To say that Mac are not compatible with the music making world is just shit,utter shit.

nothing more, nothing less.

Since the thread as a not very impressed with the ipad, this comment doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Perhaps the apple fanboys should be the ones to gtfo. But then I'm not interested in platform wars either. It's just like all the sega vs nintendo, C64 vs amstrad, Amiga vs ST bollox we had in school.

But now I'm here, i think as a lemer alternative, it'll be great. But that's not exactly what it's intended for. As a general web browsing, multimedia device, I'm far from blown away so far. Perhaps it will take off, but it had better have a lot more functionality than an iphone. Can you, for instance, actually download anything that doesn't come through itunes?

Johnisfaster wrote:It's amazing how little imagination people have, as soon as someone writes a customizable ipad app that communicates with max4Live over usb every ones gonna be drooling watching youtube vids of it. But until then all they can say it's "it's just a big ipod touch"

davepermen wrote:
it's actually fun that we in here have the highest chance of having great usability of this device (lemur replacement) and still all "meh" it

LoopStationZebra wrote:So, so much anger from the Dell/HP/Microsoft users. lol. Better luck next time, lads. Uh oh. What's that I hear? Nothing coming out of your speakers!

Check those drivers! lol.

By 'we' do you mean you and the 2 other twits that have no imagination?

UKRuss wrote:here we go...

Dave's 'dut chit dut chit' music sounds the same as mac users 'dut chit dut chit' music to me.

but he's a young PC Geek and he doesn't care! He does whatever wants, he's a rebel! He'll post where le likes and say what he wants and knock one out over PC Weekly magazine shouting, 'I wish this was a mac, I wish this was a mac, then the touching would stop!'

UKRuss wrote:here we go...

Dave's 'dut chit dut chit' music sounds the same as mac users 'dut chit dut chit' music to me.

but he's a young PC Geek and he doesn't care! He does whatever wants, he's a rebel! He'll post where le likes and say what he wants and knock one out over PC Weekly magazine shouting, 'I wish this was a mac, I wish this was a mac, then the touching would stop!'