Mac or PC for music production?

Discussion in 'Mac / Hackintosh' started by Dave McBoof, Nov 6, 2020.

  1. The Freq

    The Freq Guest

    Both use Intel processors these days.
    Each has benefits.

    Most DAW's work the same on both platforms other than Logic which is MAC only now. A lot of RAM, a good SSD and/or nVme and a good-sized second Hard disk modern CPU, M/B and quality audio hardware are available on both and perform the same functions. Don;''t be fooled by the graphics card not making any difference, it does.

    Myths:
    True: Both MAC & PC can get Audio hardware errors. A dropped audio driver in Windows does not guarantee that you cannot get it working without rebooting but a DAE error in Mac guarantees you can only reboot.
    False: Saying either O/S never fails is total BS.
    True: Protools has AAX wrapper facility which accommodates VST's. Natively ProTools does not support VST's.
    Mostly True: - VST's work on both MAC and PC. They are wrapped slightly differently. True: Some files are identical in both platforms, some are different and non-transferrable.
    False: 32bit plugins only run on MAC. Latest O/S only 64biit on both. 32Lives and jBridge (PC) accommodate non-rogue 32bit vst plugins.
    False: One DAW is better than another. The best DAW is the one that fits your workflow, music style and needs. Whether that is Reaper, Cubase, ProTools, Logic, Ableton, Studio One, Fruity Loops...so on and so forth, all offer similar things and each is great in its own way.

    Ten years ago I would have said MAC hands-down but not anymore. The MAC vs PC is almost a myth now because both are using similar architecture. The MAC is using Intel CPU's now. It was inevitable doing this that the two operating systems would eventually become more compatible with interchange.
     
  2. 23322332

    23322332 Rock Star

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    Dude, you are little behind in information.
    Intel Macs are about to vanish very soon, they will announce new models with ARM architecture this November, so basically their computer/phone/tablet stuff will probably be interchangeable (I guess).
    "The Apple Silicon Mac event will take place on November 10 at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET."
     
  3. Moonlight

    Moonlight Audiosexual

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    might be pita on a notebook

    hm macOS updates quite oten and even exclude Macs after some years.
    They force you to update Harwdare and Software to be able to run teh latest versiion of Logic for example.
    Might be good and bad, good is that probably they rewrite things optimized for the new OS ?
    Downside is that computers are quite expensive, maybe just lease one ?

    The core of Hackintosh is to choose supported parts which workks vanilla.

    How ? And will turning off allow me to still get the latest updates ?
     
  4. Moonlight

    Moonlight Audiosexual

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    relative soon , in about 7 Years ?

    Thats why I would wait at least for this event to buy a new Mac
     
  5. JMOUTTON

    JMOUTTON Audiosexual

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    ARM doesn't just power phones some pretty powerful servers/clusters/cloud architecture platforms and workstations run ARM. There are workstations from Avantek and ASA Marvell use more heavy duty arm processors with 32-64 cores for specilized engineering modeling duties. They aren't for everyone but for what they are built they do a pretty damn good job. It's not a TFPS argument to point to a phone ... I digress, might as well be pissing straight into a hurricane for all the good it will do.

    Anyway back on topic.

    Use what you like and what you can afford you are not marrying a computer and when/if you decide to dump it, it's not going to take you to court to get half of all your shit.

    You want to get the most for your money now and are not worried about 3-5 years down the road, like to tinker with stuff and mess around with settings and try new stuff all the time, you like to play games, you want to have all the hax and warez as fast as possible, get a WinPC.

    If you have different priorities you should state them, but from what I can glean you would probably be happier on Windows.

    At some point when those things stop being fun, we will live in the future and you can reevaluate then, who knows what the future will be like.
     
  6. Bitmonkey

    Bitmonkey Producer

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    You quote two words of my paragraph out of context there though. There are massively far less issues with Mac standard updates bricking hardware or causing major issues for end users than there are on Windows. You can happily watch IT news sites like TheRegister and every couple of weeks there's a story of one Windows update or other either blue screening one brand of PC, disabling someones network altogether or some other random issue.

    This is not a common occurence on Macs in fact I can't remember the last time I heard of one.
     
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  7. Rawx

    Rawx Member

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    I work everyday in music, and I often switched between windows and osx in the past. I can say that I prefer osx for music production because of coreaudio, which is a perfect audio engine. Also it's more personal but I prefer the ergonomic of osx and the input devices, magic mouse which allow to scroll smoothly in all directions, excellent for daw. All the windows substitutes I tried to compete with osx are inferiors.
    Mac is expensive, so I've made a hackintosh, like an imac pro 14 coeurs which perfectly work.
    That said, a good pc with solid drivers, like rme could also be great, even if the ergonomic is less smooth for working on a daw.

    For a laptop, I would recommend even more a mac, the global "protection" is better, and macbook pro are top.
     
    Last edited: Nov 7, 2020
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  8. Moonlight

    Moonlight Audiosexual

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    totally agree, but Windows Supports way older apps , just fact no judgements. I dont need old stuff so its ok for me :)
     
  9. 5teezo

    5teezo Audiosexual

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    You didn't get the Metaphore of what is meant by Bluescreen. Library is a completely different thing than a Registry. Library is more like Documents and Steiings. Up your macOS knowledge before making these false allegations.
     
  10. Bitmonkey

    Bitmonkey Producer

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    It's important to quantify here though Apple force you to upgrade every couple of years to support the latest version of Logic X for example but you don't necessarily have the same issue with other DAWs running on OSX. The only big change was Catalina and forcing everyone to 64-bit which IMO was a good thing anyway.
     
  11. r4e

    r4e Audiosexual

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    Ye, I probably should. But most apps save their files and settings/.plist config files into the library folder and subfolders.
    On Windows most files go to Program Files or ProgramData (the data folder with access for all users) and the Documents folder is mainly
    for documents and user libraries. 90% of the settings are stored in the registry and you get one editor to edit them all if needed.

    So as of my interpretation the Library on MacOS is kind of everything together (Registry/ProgramData/AppData/Program Files)
    and therefore it's not completely wrong to call it an equivalent to the windows registry.

    You mean Error screens because of software/hardware issues that don't appear on MacOS because the OS was especially designed to work with provided hardware? Ye, in that case you're right. But for me it's more important to have options to customize my system
    (hardware and software) no matter if I get errors or bluescreens and if one appears, I can read the error code, google for it
    and solve the problem on my own.

    I think there's a reason why almost all hardware modders and enthusiasts do their work on PC's and not on a Mac.
    It's because a Mac is a ready to use machine for the end user and a PC is for everyone (end users, builders, enthusiasts, hardware junkies, overclockers,...).
     
  12. Bitmonkey

    Bitmonkey Producer

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    It's really not the same at all - the registry is literally Window's achilles heel on both desktop and server editions and is often the single point of failure for most major O/S issues. This is not the same thing at all when you have thousands of plist files in Library in OSX (which are just normal text-based files and thus simple to remove without major impact to the whole system) and therefore as mentioned before not a single point of failure in the same way.

    Plus on Catalina the system Library directory is on a special read-only system volume as well which protects it even further from malware and similar software which could try and access it.
     
  13. Valnar

    Valnar Rock Star

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    i think the plists in mac are the same as registry entries in windows maybe?
     
  14. Ozmosis

    Ozmosis Producer

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  15. Recoil

    Recoil Guest

  16. Moonlight

    Moonlight Audiosexual

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  17. luxxenator

    luxxenator Member

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    What hasn't been stressed enough here is dpc latency. DELL XPS is notorious for having lags. If someone can suggest a decent Ultrabook alternative in that regard, I would gladly switch. I use my mac for live performances, so I just can't gamble on dpc.

    I hate everything about being locked in with Apple.
     
  18. 5teezo

    5teezo Audiosexual

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    So you come round here with a comparison charts from 2010 comparing 2 completely Differnet CPUs? I have nothing else to say as well… ;)
     
  19. tomazzzi

    tomazzzi Member

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    The only question to ask you is :

    Do i plan to use hardware ?

    If the answer is yes then the most suitable platform is MacOsX. You can aggregate audio devices to expand your system. It's just impossible to do in windows.

    If your setup is software only then Windows. You ll get faster systems with Windows.

    there are also Hackintoshs :) best of both worlds imo :)
     
  20. CMAudioz

    CMAudioz Member

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    Go for what you think you like, Windows are much better value for money, Windows 10 is rock solid! Note that should you need to repair a Mac, you'll need to sell some organs!
    If you go for a Windows laptop, perhaps look outside of Dell, you can get a proper workstation type of laptop with a desktop CPU, they'll be heavier but they can truly act as a desktop replacement.
     
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