Dear audiosex users,

I am at the point of starting a professional recording studio.
I have got all the gear (dynaudios etc).
But now for the computer.
My budget reaches to 1800 euro's so buying a new mac pro is not really an option.
Is a hackintosh stable enough to run all sorts of plugins/ external drives / sound gear in a pro studio?
Or would you still recommend buying a second hand (waaaaay slower) mac pro?
The mac pro's are so outdated that I can get a computer 3x as powerful as an average second hand mac pro.

Thanks in advance!

 

i did a lot of research on this subject to i have a Mac pro quad core witch works great for me now with producing music i have not came arose any limitations yet even when wile tracking with 10 vst plugins wile recording audio at the same time but i'm on snow leopard 10.6.8 still and a lot of software are going to lion + only and i don't think i can run lion or mountain lion because my Mac is 2006 old and i want to upgrade to Cubase 7 and cant and it is slow when doing video editing a refurbished 12 core is about $4000 and a Hackintosh with the same power is around $2000 but my research is telling me that a Hackintosh is not stable enough to do what i want to do with it so i'm saving for a refurbished Mac just to be safe i cant afford to have any down time with my studio and if you have a client that pay's you a lot of money and you lose all there project file then they want all there money back and then your reputation is Crap'' with them and others thats my out look on it don't go PC to save money it mite work for a wile but something will happen and then you will wish you went with a Mac i have bin using Mac for 20 years i have had 3 mac and all were stable i would not use a PC even if some one gave it to me i would use it for e-mails thats all good luck with your Studio

 

Is a hackintosh stable enough to run all sorts of plugins/ external drives / sound gear in a pro studio?

Yes it is, but it'll be a pain in the ass to get it stable if you're not well experienced with creating them. Though there are lots of tutorials on the net. I made one myself with this site: TonyMac

Would you still recommend buying a second hand (waaaaay slower) mac pro?

Use FL Studio

The mac pro's are so outdated that I can get a computer 3x as powerful as an average second hand mac pro.

My advice

Hope this will help you making a wise decision

 

well you research fail,i have some friends with Hackintosh and they never had any problem,building a hackintosh can be a pain in the ass but when you sort all inicial Hackintosh issues you can have a very powerful Hackintosh,i just built a hackintosh myself,the only problem i have right now is with the Graphics Hd4000 but everything else is working fine "audio,internet,bluetooth,wifi"

 

Then why dont you?

Honestly, it wont make your studio any less "pro" *no*

 

I have using hackintosh since the begining, the only real problem that I go are may audio interface, now I got a fireface ufx and its amazing work with logic, that I use since the notator.
I have 2 machacks and use logic node to work together. With a mac pro will be hard and pricey to have this setup (18tb)
2 sdd to record and boot
4 real sata raid 0 (library and backups
2 spare satas
In ebay you can get 6 cores very cheap (old versions)
Theres a lot of enterpises that can gave you an overclocked computer very cheap.
ALWAYS use gigabyte mobos (they are very similar to mac ones)
Theres a man in man here in brazil that made bios for especific gigabyte mobos that made a pc work like a real mac.
Remenber that the choice of computer depend very much in the program/interface/workflow that you want. If love logic (for example) go to mac.
Mac pros soon will have a new version, so prices will drop in your summer.
Today is very easy to build a hackmac, here in Brazil they cost double than Europe/USA, so no doubt for me.
Hackmac+rme=heaven

 

Thanks a lot for the replies.
I think i'm just going to build one.
I've got plenty of computer experience to solve problems.
An example, the quad core mac pro costs 2500 dollars and contains the Xeon W3565.
Cpu benchmark score: 4796
The cpu I would use in my hackintosh contains the Intel Xeon 2640.
Cpu benchmark score: 10173
+ I have an SSD
+ triple amount of RAM
And the ability to upgrade.
I hear the RME fireface works, so external gear work properly I guess?
Thats my main concern.
( I've used fl and ableton, but nothing so plain simple and extensive as logic. So no other DAW for me.)

 

Well, I think that using a Hackintosh in a pro studio business is not an option because Hacking OSX to be installed into a custom PC violates the license terms...in other words is illegal and it may expose You to any possible consequence...I do use an Hackintosh to track and mix my band, and it's awesome but For business purposes I'd buy all the stuff I need fairly.
You may also be interested in an old Mac Pro dual G5 with protools hd pci. They run protools 8/9 flawlessly and better that any software system even quadcore...they are quite cheap compared to current systems and in a pro environment Protools HD is almost mandatory...

 

when im building a hackintosh i buy OSX from the mac store,i dont really understand why it violates the license terms.

 

Are there laws against using it that way? No.

Could Apple bring a civil suit against you for breaking the EULA? Yes.

Could they actually win that suit? Very good question, no one has an answer. The controversy around it lies with 'shrink wrap' EULAs that have been both upheld, and dismissed in court. Truth be told, I don't think Apple would bother suing you over such a thing. It is a huge waste of money for them.

Hackintosh is an amazing system ... Try it ... Test it ...

http://www.tonymacx86.com/333-building-customac-buyer-s-guide-february-2013.html

 

Thanks.
I was actually thinking of building a hackintosh inside a old g5 case. (If the mobo and stuff fits)
So if anyone is about to check my gear/setup. It will look like I am running a nice G5.
But I dont think I really have to worry about that anymore. Has any of you had an check on your gear/software by the government or any instancy?
I'm more a kind of fuck the system guy.
But I need to be almost sure I wont get any trouble with it.

 

If You are a fuckthesystemguy why use a Mac then? You could use a Linux Daw...why make money over the work of other people? If You don't want to pay For software in your business...get freeware...otherwise You are not fucking the system You are simply stealing...
The daw is part of the studio...so it should be considered just as any other piece of hardware into it...so it should be included in the investment Plan For the business just like a neumann mic or a neve channel strip...if You want to save money there's behringer...

 

I got it all up running here and it is super fast and with a good audio interface you should be able to get a massive workstation to your needs. My point when it comes to stability is that my hackintosh is way more stable as my windows partition. I got a few tips to achieve that. I even got a mac keyboard to be able to use all mac buttons (it's available as an usb keyboard)

First of all get a good motherboard with a good intel processor I have it running on a basic motherboard but gigabyte motherboards are the best for the job and are considered as MAC compatible motherboards the types are marked on all hackintosh forums.

- If you run multiple systems like I am
Try to keep bold NTFS and HFS+ drives separated for each OS.
You can install a app to activate NTFS for mac but the problem is
that it slows down your system because the File system usually isn't compatible with MAC. When you try to get your samples loaded from an NTFS station it is way slower besides that all your logic files like EXS samples are not compatible with NTFS. But when you have enough space installed with HFS+ partitions you should be able to get a monster machine. It's easy to disable your NTFS drives. Also don't run VMWARE Workstations it is a waste and it slows down your system it's better to run a dual boot and why do it when you are not be able to run the NTFS partitions.
Just keep it as basic as you can and use it only for music and you have a hell of a machine.

In windows you should be able to transfer between HFS+ and NTFS with paragon HFS+ or mac drive it's way faster.

I have 2 TB storrage for Hackintosh and 2 tb storage for Windows at this point I use my hackintosh 98% of the time I only use windows for file transfer between the HFS+ and NTFS partitions

@panicoad

Your reply doesn't make any sense to me. I have build my own hackintosh version and bought my own copy. The only point for most users is the expensive hardware! Mac uses expensive hardware and a long time people thought that OSX only runs on MAC hardware but since it is all intell hardware you should be able to make your own workstation. Most DAW's like Reason and Cubase are Hybrid DAW so you can run it on bold OS. and I bought bold 2!!!

You say that when you made your own build Hackintosh from your bought OSX version you automatically a illegal content user?

My friend has a macbook and brought it to a mac service point to repair it. In the end the costs where as much as a 2 new regular workstations!!!! the total of the reparation was 1600 euro my computer was 800 euro total!!

 

Again, thanks for the tips guys.
But i've got most of it figured out.
A fuck the system guy is not really the word for me, but a little bit of 'illegal' stuff does not bother me.
What isn't illegal these days?
Apple clearly squeezes their customers in a little corner where's one thing left for Logic users with the need of a very powerful computer; a hackintosh.
And as I am going to run Mac on my hackintosh only, NTFS problems won't occur to me.(As it is easy to format it to mac journaled)
I am truly happy with my late 2011 macbook pro though.

 

@dynamic force

my reply may do not make any sense to you...but if you carefully read the license agreement, you will find that alterating (hacking) the code is not allowed by the supplier...
even if you pay for the software does not mean that you can alterate it by any means unless it is open source...
you pay to use the software but you don't have any right to modify a single line of code...
complaining about apple price policy does not make sense to me...people always want the best quality for free...
I think that if you can't afford to buy a mac for your business there something wrong with the project itself...starting a pro studio is a quite expensive thing...with or without a mac...
if you can't afford that technology in your business...just don't buy it...there are cheaper alternatives
...but if you do, maybe you also can't afford many other things you may need to meet the quality standards of a pro studio...
...surely Apple will not sue any hackintosh user (including me) but generally speaking I think that in a Business environment software has to be used fairly, just like hardware...
I may agree that Apple is expensive but is also the best quality, and also should be considered the work of the people involved in developement and coding
...how would you feel when you know that people does not want to pay for your work?
...if i were a developer why would I spend hours and hours in studying and work if people just steals the result of my job...

 

Apple clearly does not provide the best quality for these enormous prices.
And as an poor but creative person, the best solution seems an hackintosh to me.
Tell me about your other alternatives to a mac pro then?
I am using logic pro. There's no discussion about that.
Look at the specs of a mac pro. Even after the new ones a here.
They just won't be able to beat a self built computer.
So what about the people with a high demand of computer power?
Even if you customize your mac to the fullest it wont beat a hackintosh.
I hate the closed system of Apple. So if you want to change a thing, go against it.
Aren't laws here to be broken?
And trust me, developers won't starve because i'm not willing to pay the jackpot to them.

 

If I was you I would just stack up some more dough and get a brand new one.Macs belong in every home and pro studio, don't cut your studio short by not having what most pros rely on.

 

- Mac Pros are not overpriced, Apple use high quality components to build their macpro line ( Xeons, ECC memory etc....)

You can check this by taking each part and cutomize yourself a PC with the macpro components, it will cost the SAME or even more !

- hackintoshs are as stable as a real mac if properly built, though you can't compare an i7 hackintosh with a Xéon mac pro, it's not the same AT ALL !

- It's not allowed to use macosX on anything else than an Apple branded computer.

- pro studio are making money so shouldn't use hackintoshs.

 

just finish building my hackintosh,im very happpy,machine is working without any issue.


CPU:Procesador:Intel Core i7-3770K
Motherboard:Gigabyte Z77N-WIFI
Ram:16GB Corsair 1600Mhz DDR3
Case:BitFenix Prodigy
PSU:Corsair 650TX Modular
Hard Drive:Seagate Barracuda\SATA 6Gb/s2TB
Monitor:Samsung 27 inches

 

Nice one nighwalker !

Everything working OTB ?