hello every1 im thinking about making the change to mac. i don't know anything about macs i have been a PC man my whole life.
i was wondering what mac would be best for making trance music using logic. i normally would be running a lot of high end stuff.
need something that's gunna run a LOT of plugins with no lag also something with really low latency on midi keyboard.

 

If you're on a budget and you want a laptop that'll get the job done,Run Mavericks,and you can put together for around $600-800 or so?
Check this thread out as well.Macbook Pro Mid 2010

Only a dual core but when I was done with that particular Macbook in that post I threw the book at it and not one stutter.
The owner is very pleased.Took 2 weeks about,waitin on parts.Only a couple days really actual time.

Was very impressed afterward,it was very slow from stock.

Afterward it seemed equally as fast as my 3.4ghz i5 2500k with 8gb DDR3 on Win 7 64 (Sata HDD) Processing wise,with how much it could handle at once.

But tasks we're much quicker. Click=done with most stuff
Definitely the SSD (Need to get one or 2 for my setup,really impressed with the Samsung 840 Pro)

Not bad considering...

One day I'll Hackintosh my i5 and see what happens.

I don't recommend making a hackintosh if you're not experienced with mac,or don't like heavy configuring and tinkering to get something working right.

It can get tricky getting kext's to work to get hardware working right,if you're not familiar.
But only way to learn is to try and research and try and repeat until you get it.At least that's how it's been from my experience a lot of times

But last time I did one was 10.6.8 Snow Leo on AMD Sempron 4gb ddr2 Gigabyte 7600 GT,IDE HDD

Got everything to work and ran well but was some time ago.

Macs are nice,I miss that Macbook since it left

 

An i7 or better Mac.

 

a lot of plugs are very subjective...we wanna examples...
If you mean really a lot you must check gigabytes server mobos for running 2 Xenons (my next project)
Dual boots or a Second compute running PC
Hackintosh all the way! :dancing:
Remenber: is different language and if I only speaks portuguese I will never find this nest.
Speak many languages and you will be a better musician
Who wanna speak portuguese?

 

really the mac books and imac's are no replacement for a desktop as they use mobile cpus to reduce heat for cramping all the components into a small space and power reduction on the mac books.

so unless you really need a mobile solution the only option is a mac pro you can look on the second hand market for the old one or get the new one.

but as so many have said at there price point you would be better of doing a hackintosh, for example the last pc i built cost over a £1K less than a mac pro 6 core and outperforms it to the point of nearly being as powerful as the 8 core mac pro.

as for the 2 xenons the price to performance gain is not worth it and you would probably better running a Vienna ensemble pro server on a second system.
http://www.viennaensemblepro.com/?_escaped_fragment_=features#!features
but the people that tend to need that are usually doing film score work with big templates.

also with a desktop you will have pcie slots so you can augment your system with uad powered plugins at a later date if you so choose.

you should be more than happy with a i7 desktop cpu and depending on if you use alot of big sample library in kontakt then you will need more ram

plugins with no lag also something with really low latency on midi keyboard.
that is usually down to your audio interface and its drivers
one of the best low latency performance audio interface that has analogue converters is the HDSPe AIO its only beaten by all digital cards as the converters actually add to the round trip times.

but its limited on the analogue io and the analogue expansions are pricey.

as you go to firewire and usb the performance decreases as these put more load on the cpu at low latency and so reduce plugin counts.

so when you make the switch to your new system also consider the audio interface as it has an effect on you plugin counts too.
check dawbench LLP for more info
http://www.dawbench.com/audio-int-lowlatency.htm

also with a hackintosh if you later decide you want to move to another daw other than logic you can throw on windows as most other daws have lower performance under osx.

 

a Mac Pro a Mac Book is Not going to run a lot of Plugins unless you get a UA Apollo or a Waves Digigrid ios Audio interface that runs the plugins internally

 

Xsze has given some great advice. I'd read it a few times ;)

I'm running a 2009 Mac Pro with Apogee Duet and it handles anything that is thrown at it. But it wasn't cheap! it was a long term investment that thankfully has been good for me.
If you've never used a Mac then get some exposure to them and Logic... you may hate it.

A refurb from Apple would be my best advice if you really really really think you have to go Mac.

 

Hi, I've not long made the switch myself from being a windows user for the last 15yrs.. I guess it depends on your budget, I went for the 2.6 i7 mini and I've been very impressed so far with what it can handle.. With the money I saved with not buying a macbook I got a virus snow at the same time and just used my existing PC monitors.. As for logic, well it is nice but tbh I'm still using ableton as I find it works best for me. Overall it took a couple of weeks to adjust to the new os but it really works for me right now and I can't see myself going back to a windows environment anytime soon. I would advise on getting at least a basic i7 CPU on which ever model you do decide to go for.

 

very low latency + loads of plugins WILL give hiccups.
You'll have to choose and balance, but you're not getting both.

i7 + fast ssd (if you use a lot of heavy sample banks) will get you as far as it's usually possible today.

a few notes though (regarding some comments) :
- midi don't give a noticeable delay , monitoring does.
- even on lowest buffer setting, many plugins WILL add some latency to that PDC handle that just fine in most case when playing back, but for monitoring, it'll be delayed , no matter how low the buffer is set (i suggest reaper to see how many buffering is added)
- UA is great. BUT it won't run any lower than 512 samples (even if you set your driver to lower than that). Their sound interface will make some of their plugins working in realtime (<1ms latency) but only in recording : before the DAW (as if you had some gear before the input of your sound interface)
- UA is still great. BUT it's not endless power, check on their website to see how many of each of their plugins you can run.
- UA is awesome. But most of their stuff is analog gears reproduction, and it won't work so well on trance.
- UA is all loving and awesomeness. It put most analog-wannabees vst to plain shame BUT it's f*$king expensive)
- PC aren't much cheaper than Mac, especially if you want a small case or if you shoot for a Hackintosh fully compatible. (I didn't try though, but gaining 100$ for a hazardous, unwarranted box that might not handle some basic devices... I'd rather put out a bit more)

 

its weird... I bought a PC in Oct. '12 with i7-3770K 3.4 Ghz. quad-core with 12Gb ddr3-1600 Mhz 7200 RPM drive ,(and all the Audio optimization known to mankind) and my new Macbook Pro MD101LL/a 2012 w/ 2.4 Ghz i5, 4Gb. RAM 5400 RPM Drive with Mavericks uses less CPU percentage running any plugin compared to the PC (which is Win 7).


Meanwhile, the MAcbook has NO bullshit-fan-sound coming from the thing

 

Depends on the PC, depends on the optimization, depends if you're comparing a new OSX to an old Windows, depends on what stuff is consuming resources in the background on both systems, depends which performance meters you're reading, etc. Overwhelmingly PCs perform better particularly in the audio production level on practically any cross platform DAW, it's not even close. And Windows 7 uses a lot of resources for Aero so if you ran some tests with Windows 8 it would be a very different story.

 

Optimization? Resources? Software? O.S.? Never mind... Hey dude, my answer (non-sense) it's easy: how many money have you got?

1) Low budget -> PC (build it on your own)
2) Medium budget -> An "old" Mac that works
3) High budget -> The newest/powerful Mac (it's old, anyway, but ... who cares?)

 

It's not about money, I'd choose a PC at any budget but that's me.

 

Me too and i own a Mac Pro which was top of the game some years ago
I would never buy a Mac again overpriced overhyped shit

1 Check
Old Core2Duo 8 Gb memory built 2006 now retired but still awesome
I have built a new one i7 32 gb memory and SSD disc it is faster than any mac with same or even better specs

2 Check
Top of the game Mac Pro from 2007 working but 3 party apps crashes all the time (which apple fanbboy said that Mac just Works yes it does if you choose it for internet surfing and check e-mail)
I think it is shit shit shit and my old PC the old Core2Duo was better even if it was not as powerful the Mac Pro which has 2 quad Cpu and 8 gb memory

3 No way
The wise guy buy a ready made pc anyday

Hey i have a Mac Pro from 2007 2 quad core which sounds like hell from the fan compare to my i7 pc which i built myself and have a very low budget case for something like 20$ you can hardly hear it running but my Mac is very load.

That strange thing is that my Mac which was top of the game some years ago and it freezes when i load 3 party apps and/or a few Vst:s

It is strange as before i bought that Mac everyone said it was so quit

Andf it makes me started to think that in this Mac vs Pc war there is a lot of lying coming from those mac fanboys owners who didn´t like that a pc is just better or havent tried a Pc in many many years or maybe not even have tried one and just making statements read from Mac forums..

It is the same in the Guitar community where there is alot of new stuff poping up and old idiots is saying it is shit but they havent tried it or i bet not even seen it or heard it it is just that an old Fender or Gibson is best period even if it sucks when you campare it to a newer cheaper guitar..

And it is also the same when you go to Gearslutz forum where i read a head to head test some years ago where they compared a very cheap Art mic pre amp vs a expensive mic pre which i dont remeber the name of anyway after many readers have listen they wrote thing like this is the expensive one i hear a little bla bla and the art can not have that mojo well it turned out that many prefered the art over the expensive ones and those who made comments earlier said that they had a bad day or wrote wrong and many other excuses which of course they wouldn´t have written if they where right in the first place..

 

Logic is perfect for elecronic music, before spending money on a mac try out Studio One or Ableton if you haven't alredy done. It's not about the tool, is how you use them.

 

Weird... I can't see where OP asked "Are Mac's shit?"