Buying a Mac
- Thread starter onmoris
- Start date
vigormusic
New member
I'm going with a mac on this one, cuase I have one. Powermac G5, dual 2gig, 1 gig of ram.
well i'll just comment on this crazyness.
my personal bias as a computer engr is for value for money - amd 64 all the way. or an amd 64 laptop.
someone called henchman on another forum who i respect highly is using an emachines/gateway amd 64 laptop and reporting superb performance for a mobile daw.
this does not stop me respecting however apples ergonomics developments.
my personal bias as a computer engr is for value for money - amd 64 all the way. or an amd 64 laptop.
someone called henchman on another forum who i respect highly is using an emachines/gateway amd 64 laptop and reporting superb performance for a mobile daw.
this does not stop me respecting however apples ergonomics developments.
giraffe said:
An insult would be "you're an asshole". "You're an assclown". "you're an ignorant fucking moron". "You're so damn stupid, it's painful to read your posts".
Just so you know.
It seems many forums have had trouble with the definition of name calling and insulting.
Glad I cleared that up for ya.
elevate said:
Here Elevate cleverly lets you decide if it's an insult or not
Besides, saying someone else should buy something because you have it is a dumb reason. Surely there's more merit to the product than that?
I think you should buy a Carvin 7 string in mahogany and walnut. Because I have one.
vigormusic
New member
I didn't say buy a Mac because I use one, I just said I'd rather have one and that's just my opinion.elevate said:
StarvingEyes
New member
i didnt read all the replies. i use a mac g5. i think it is great. the price is crazy. i am 16 years old and still paying it off. around 3,000 after we added alot of things...but now we can run 3x the plug ins (and all those REVERBS we couldt use before!) we also dont use it for anything other than protools(no internet) which is advisable.
if you've got the cash, go for it
if you've got the cash, go for it
noodles2k5
New member
StarvingEyes said:
...even though Macs aren't susceptible to spyware or virii (99% of the time).
StarvingEyes
New member
really? great news i guess!
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
Polaris20 said:Dude, I like Macs (ask Elevate
Yeah, 2:1 is probably an unreasonable expectation. But CPU speed is inherently nonlinear. A 3.8 GHz Intel box won't be much faster than a 3 GHz Intel box because the CPU pipeline is so long it's unholy, so at some point everything else is so fast that the huge pipeline flush penalties start to be the driving factor in performance.
By contrast, a 2.7 GHz dual G5 is pretty close to 35% faster than a dual 2 GHz G5. So at the extremes... say a 4GHz Intel and a 2Ghz single G5, for some applications, the G5 might end up being faster. Hard to say without benchmarking a particular application.
As for whether a Dual G5 (starting at 2 GHz, IIRC) will be faster than a single 2 GHz PC... if there's any question about that in anyone's mind, that's just sad.
I would caution that you should consider that you'll have to get all new software, including those plug-ins, and that not all VST plug-ins are available on the Mac. You should go into it with your eyes open. Figure out what you use, figure out what's available, and make sure there are no surprises. (At least for effects, I've almost always found equivalent plug-ins available for anything interesting, though sometimes they were from different companies. Don't know about virtual instruments.)
That said, I suspect you'd be very happy with a G5. It's a seriously nice piece of hardware. I use a dual 2.0 myself, running MOTU Digital Performer. No regrets (other than maybe my choice of sound card...
).
Chris Shaeffer
Peavey ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lots of opinions- very few have hard facts about which system works better, if only for the simple fact that very few people have the resources to have 2 hot-off-the-presses computers. I don't have hard facts, either, but I do have some experience with both systems.
When I jumped from a 2G PC to a 1.25G Mac G4 (both laptops) my computer got way faster and my plugin and track counts went up. My computer also became a bit more stable and required less time to keep running. No more pre-session reboots, no more unhook-from-the-net-and-disable-antivirus before a session, and even less defragging. It works better with less effort on my part.
I have no idea how current top of the line macs and pc's compare, but I have read that not many programs fully support the dual processors in the macs. They can usually separate audio app and OS functions to different CPU's but I'm not sure which programs can effectively use more of the second CPU- I know PT LE doesn't and that's what I use. You'd have to do your own research on that one.
Good luck.
Chris
When I jumped from a 2G PC to a 1.25G Mac G4 (both laptops) my computer got way faster and my plugin and track counts went up. My computer also became a bit more stable and required less time to keep running. No more pre-session reboots, no more unhook-from-the-net-and-disable-antivirus before a session, and even less defragging. It works better with less effort on my part.
I have no idea how current top of the line macs and pc's compare, but I have read that not many programs fully support the dual processors in the macs. They can usually separate audio app and OS functions to different CPU's but I'm not sure which programs can effectively use more of the second CPU- I know PT LE doesn't and that's what I use. You'd have to do your own research on that one.
Good luck.
Chris
RhythmRmixd
New member
Chris Shaeffer said:
Digital Performer has utilized multi-processor support since DP3, and since DP 4.5 can serve as the front end for Digidesign Core and HD systems, I suppose I can get close when I'm ready to upgrade.
MichaelM
New member
Top of the line PCs and top of the line Macs will both do recording without any hassles. My AMD XP2000+, 512MB DDR333 (which is only 1.67Ghz anyway) will do 16 tracks of 24bit 44.1Khz, say 4 commpressor plugins and a couple of reverbs etc without a flinch, I haven't had the need to bump up the track count but I might to test it's limits. Anyway what I'm trying to say is for most (maybe only some) a completely top of the line PC is overkill, and in real recording you might not even drive it anywhere near it's limits.
Without worrying about the performance of two fairly well matched platforms, there are other things to consider.
The Windows and Mac OSs are very much different and you'll need to consider that when buying as well. Sure OSX looks pretty, but there are some things about it I just can't stand (after using windows for so long). I borrowed my cousin's mac laptop and I seriously didn't know where to start to do things with it.
Hardware flexibility and expandability will also become an issue but I don't really know enough about that aspect of macs to comment, unless you are buying a mac mini
Without worrying about the performance of two fairly well matched platforms, there are other things to consider.
The Windows and Mac OSs are very much different and you'll need to consider that when buying as well. Sure OSX looks pretty, but there are some things about it I just can't stand (after using windows for so long). I borrowed my cousin's mac laptop and I seriously didn't know where to start to do things with it.
Hardware flexibility and expandability will also become an issue but I don't really know enough about that aspect of macs to comment, unless you are buying a mac mini
giraffe
i love negative rep
i run a 933 g4 (single) with only 512megs ram,protools le, and i easily get 24 tracks at 24bit 44.1K with many (don't bother to look) compressors/limiters more eq then i need and up to 4 (with everything else going on) waves trueverbs at one time.
(native power pack is worth looking into)
an upgrade wouldn't kill me but i can live with that for now.
oh, i pulled this computer out of a house fire (my house, for real) the monitor above it was melted (the cpu being on the floor probably saved it) it had massive smoak and water damage and after cleaning it out the only thing i had to replace was my dvd (internal) burner.
i'll keep useing a mac.
(native power pack is worth looking into)
an upgrade wouldn't kill me but i can live with that for now.
oh, i pulled this computer out of a house fire (my house, for real) the monitor above it was melted (the cpu being on the floor probably saved it) it had massive smoak and water damage and after cleaning it out the only thing i had to replace was my dvd (internal) burner.
i'll keep useing a mac.
To those interested:
I did purchase a G5. I think its a great computer. However, after setting up everything, my pro tools wouldn't open! So I consulted with the digidesign website to discover that there is NO version of pro tools LE currently available that is compatible with the operating system of the newest macs. therefore, i'm SOL until the end of June/early July when digidesign comes out with a software update.
I did purchase a G5. I think its a great computer. However, after setting up everything, my pro tools wouldn't open! So I consulted with the digidesign website to discover that there is NO version of pro tools LE currently available that is compatible with the operating system of the newest macs. therefore, i'm SOL until the end of June/early July when digidesign comes out with a software update.
vigormusic
New member
onmoris said:
are you talking about the new Tiger OS? or Panther/all of them
im talking about the new tiger 10.4. digidesign says there is currently no version of pro tools LE 6.9 or anything earlier that works with 10.4 however they should have an update ready at the end of june/early july. does anyone if i'm going to need to buy anything to even be eligible for the upgrade? i feel like i have to pay something like 70 bucks to even move up to 6.7...
back to the pc for now...
back to the pc for now...