Ableton Forum

Hey guys,

My PC is about to die and I'm thinking of getting a Macbook pro. The problem is that I religiously use some windows only VST's in my live setup, especially Db Glitch.

I can live without the others, but I use glitch so much that if I get a Macbook pro then I'd want to be able to use it in my live gigs.


As far as I can tell my options are VMware Fusion, Bootcamp or parallels. Does anyone have experience using any of these to play gigs? I've read in a few places that you shouldn't use a DAW in virtual machines, so I don't want to waste my money to find out that it simply isn't stable or fast enough.


any and all advice is welcome Smile

Bootcamp isnt virtualisation, its running a native windows boot on its own partition.

It will work as well as any PC, but personally I think its a waste of money to buy a mac if youre not going to be running MacOSX most of the time. If you want a hybrid solution, it works very well.

How about using a different glitch plug-in that works on Macs? Livecut, The Finger, Artillery, Effectrix, and probably others I can't think of.

beats me wrote:How about using a different glitch plug-in that works on Macs? Livecut, The Finger, Artillery, Effectrix, and probably others I can't think of.

Basically because DBGlitch is free and I love it

AL_X wrote:

beats me wrote:How about using a different glitch plug-in that works on Macs? Livecut, The Finger, Artillery, Effectrix, and probably others I can't think of.

Basically because DBGlitch is free and I love it

Well, it's rare that I say this, but I agree with mr. pants that it's probably a waste of money to get a MBP to run Windows most of the time. I'm sure there are plenty of fine and cheap PC laptops out there.

AL_X wrote:Hey guys,

My PC is about to die and I'm thinking of getting a Macbook pro. The problem is that I religiously use some windows only VST's in my live setup, especially Db Glitch.

any and all advice is welcome Smile

First off why you thinking about getting a Mac? Why not get a new PC? If the reasons (aka rationalizations) for getting a mac are more important than the Glitch plug in (which I hadn't herd of before your post so thanks for the heads up it looks great) the drop the on average $800-1k extra and get a mac my man.

Classic. I've seen this question asked many times, and always people have to rag about why run windows on mac, or they tell you to get mac equivalent effects, or to get a pcetc.
Well, some of us have been working on music for a long time, and for some reason decided to switch (or to try) the alternative computer OS and build, yet have many unfinished projects that where started on a pc. I'm hoping to eventually fully adapt to OS X, but for a while, i suspect that I'll be needing to access some sounds and tweak some windows VST's that have been part of my toolbox for a long time.

So, I too want to know, before I spend any more money. Does anyone have experiance with bootcamp and or Parallels? VM?
Anyone?

B.

Hi i migrated from windows to mac aprox 1.5yrs ago,I used my "windows setup" for a few months before going fully to osx, i tired both vm fusion and parallels and in my experience neither worked properly not even close, nightmare is a word that comes to mind!bearing in mind the specs of my macbook a modest to say the least,you may have better luck with a more powerful machine, however bootcamp works absolutely flawlessly,although on a macbook you have to kill a little process in task manager that drives the f7 to f12 transport buttons as for some reason they cause terrible audio glicthes and cpu spikes in live and or any other daw? have no idea why? but its no big deal, other than that bootcamp is the way to go (well it was for me) lately just for a change of scenery i've been using fruityloops via boot camp to do bits and pieces then rendering to wav dropping the files into the sharing folder rebooting into osx and loading them into ableton etc

buy a good PC, buying a mac and then running shitdows on it is about the stupidest thing one can do, absolutely ridiculous and utter stoopid,
the whole and major point owning and using a mac is OSX.

SubFunk has the right advise for you

neetusharma wrote:SubFunk has the right advise for you

seriously, there are so many real good high quality, proper specced PCs around and fairly cheap. running shitdows on a mac is an utter waste,
a mac is not about the shiny alloy like many people think, it is ALL about running OSX.

if you buy a mac, run OSX, everything else is really, really stupid.

if your already a satisfied shitdows user, then don't look further. get a good PC.

You're a funny lot.

I'm running both configurations on the MBP and both are running smoothly.
I need windows for things such as testing my own software, a wee bit of gaming and odd software that really doesn't have have proper OSX equivalents.
Windows runs like it would on any other machine with similar specs. You don't have to search ages for drivers, they're all on the Snow Leopard dvd.
The only thing that could make this setup even sweeter is a nice SSD drive.

hoffman2k wrote:You're a funny lot.

I'm running both configurations on the MBP and both are running smoothly.
I need windows for things such as testing my own software, a wee bit of gaming and odd software that really doesn't have have proper OSX equivalents.
Windows runs like it would on any other machine with similar specs. You don't have to search ages for drivers, they're all on the Snow Leopard dvd.
The only thing that could make this setup even sweeter is a nice SSD drive.

of course if you need to run both it makes sense, but windows only, ESPECIALLY for audio is just nonsense on a mac. a PC does in this case the same job, much, much cheaper.

needing windows for graphics or games and stuff, fair enough... it is a different story, but ones you have the choice between running audio via OSX vs Windows, then it is a no brainer what to go for...

Basically, when you buy a Mac laptop, you are paying a premium for three things:
1. Solid OS (OSX)
2. Solid support (Applecare)
3. Sexy, user-friendly hardware

OSX is solid. It's a great OS and does what you want it to do.
Applecare is solid. If you buy a Mac and you don't buy Applecare, may god have mercy on your soul.
Apple hardware is really nice. All the extra little features come at a premium, but it's totally worth it.

I have an XP partition on my MBP just in case I need it, rarely use it. I also just built a gaming rig running 7. Windows 7 KICKS ASS (so far), and if it's still good in two more years when it's time for an upgrade, and there is a machine out on the market that is comparable hardware-wise to an Apple machine, I'll probably go for it.

Plus, Bootcamp still feels... A little dodgy for lack of a better description. It seems like there is another layer of software between the hardware/drivers and Windows, and there are a few really weird bugs. It does, however, run some games just fine.

So if you want to run OSX, get a Mac. If you don't, spend the cash on a kickass PC laptop and run Windows 7.

the_planet wrote:So if you want to run OSX, get a Mac. If you don't, spend the cash on a kickass PC laptop and run Windows 7.

this is what i mean, the whole sense of a mac, especially for audio is to run OSX, otherwise get a good and decent PC.