Mac vs. PC ?

[xtjdx]

The only configuration I had to do was setting up the Delta drivers and Cubase. This system has not crashed or hinted any troubles yet, and neither did my PIII. I guess it all depends on how much experience you have with setting up the system in the first place?

 

[manning1]

cloneboy . with respect its only the lazy or incompetent that have pc problems. just go on some of the forums around the net and watch
the flood of studios turning to amd 64 and opteron processor based systems as well as big media companies. go read nuendo.com for a few hours or cakes forums. you were correct in the era of the 80's//90's.
being a puter oops - computer engr i lamented the crap my industry was putting out. today is a different story, and i should say only going to get even better and better.
peace.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

Actually I'm fairly computer knowledgable (ex-computer engineer). While things have improved there is still the Microsoft Windows bloat to contend with... and corrupted this and that.

Myself, I'd rather have dedicated hardware. Give me a DXB, Radar Project D, some Focusrite ISA 428's, a Firewire Powercore, two UAD-1 cards, and some additional VST plugins and I'm happy.

 

[manning1]

well we do agree on one thing. yes windows is bloated but so is everything
else. until linux multitrack solutions become available in force there are no other options for the home studio with a small budget. and dont say radar standalones. yes its a good product.
but its expensive and proprietary. beyond the budget of the average home studio. also i could go into a nice tirade about proprietary solutions ive bought in the past when i owned a bigger studio that let me down badly or digital PROPRIETARY multitracks that people i know paid a quarter of a million bucks for which they never got the investment back from and then had service problems. when your dependent on ONE COMPANY , if that company goes down the tubes you could be dead in the water. whereas with the pc you can always get replacement parts.
i really think you need to spend some time running a native amd system like i do cloneboy, and really understanding the great power of the amd 64.
for a computer engineer i'm amazed your not excited about the new amd processors. every pro engr i know is gaga over them.
they are selling big time into all sorts of industry areas.

 

[Bulls Hit]

Personally my opinion is if you are working with paying clients they don't want the inevitable downtime a computer based system will have.

Inevitable? Hardly.

In the 10 months I've had my P4-based daw, it hasn't ever crashed on me. Not even once.

I don't undrstand this 'downtime' you speak of

 

[manning1]

i agree bh. no downtime for me either and same for all my friends.
the only cases i see of problems is where kids have been allowed on dads daw and all sorts of junk got on it as a result. ive had to clean up a number of these messes over the past year. each time it was down to the kids
not knowing what they were doing, and thus all sorts of spyware and junk
getting downloded from the internet. my main recording daw never sees the net.
anyway if your a big studio and paranoid about downtime ,
800 bucks for a back up pc in case the main pc goes down your
tracking on, is chump change compared to the price of other studio toys.

 

[Ingoloid]

OK, my 2 cents worth. I'm still running my PIII Xeon 600's. There is nothing on this box but XP and recording software. i run a resident app. called "inf-filter." What this does is it allows my to assign all hardware interrupts to the second processor. Windows and all software (there are a few exceptions) only recognize the first processor. What happens in effect is windows runs on the first and all my hardware runs on the second. I've also been in the computer business for a long time. I still rememeber using the commoder 64!

I also have other systems ranging from a 1.8 (good family box) to a 3.0 (desktop publishing, etc.)

My Xeon's are my babies, though. Rock solid, no crashes to-date.

My only gripe right now is, I want to gwt a new audio card. looking at the delta's.

 

[Ingoloid]

Oh yeah...I have to mention the point obout other folks using your recording computer.

NO ONE but me is allowed on my system.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

Inevitable? Hardly.

In the 10 months I've had my P4-based daw, it hasn't ever crashed on me. Not even once.

I don't undrstand this 'downtime' you speak of

Look I don't know you well or familiar with your work, or what you record so I won't make any assumptions about you or your situation. Please don't take this personally but I record for MONEY and I have a particular method of recording that is... pretty intense compared to most people.

However, when I record I put equipment THRU THE GRISTMILL. I punish my gear with massive simultaneous recording. This is the simultaneous track list from a recent session:

1 Kick drum mic 1
2 Kick drum mic 2
3 Kick drum trigger
4 Snare mic 1
5 Under snare mic 2
6 Snare trigger
7 R Tom
8 R tom trigger
9 L Tom
10 L Tom trigger
11 Overhead L
12 Overhead R
13 Overhead C
14 Room mic L
15 Room mic R
16 High Hat
17 scratch bass track (to be discarded, but still recorded)
18 scratch guitar track
19 scratch vocal track
20 click/time code

That's 20 simultaneous tracks at 24 bit/96khz! Each track is going to be about 16 megs a minute... 320 megs total a minute. Roughly 5.4 megs a second write to disk.

The cost of converters to run such a system on a PC would be very pricey indeed. The RAM and processor speed to run a Windows XP system to handle that is expensive. The software environment, drivers and disk properties have to be immaculate and error-free. The disks *MUST* be 10k RPM, plus you need--and I mean need--a second disk to record to (which any PC daw user knows).

By the time you add all that up you could have gotten a hardware DAW that can handle that without a single hiccup.

Don't even get into plugins for digital mixing. I'm the kind of guy that is running a compressor and EQ on all channels. My average track count is 32-40 for a rock song because of the overdubs I do. Even bussing subgroups to effects, like guitars and so on, creates an amazing load on the processor with all that information to process. Then add in the reverb stereo bus, the drums to compressor bus, the additional vocal processing that has to be high end plus the reverb dedicated to the vocal line...

Trust me, I always have ended up pushing too hard against the computer's glass ceiling and it completely ruins my engineering vibe. When I press play I don't want to hear silence while a buffer builds up, or hear the CPU stutter because of what's going on, and I can't tolerate any screw ups while tracking.

Hardware is the only solution CURRENTLY that can meet my needs.

By all means if you are only doing a pansy mono or stereo track at once, or a relatively wimpy 8 channels simultaneous recording... get a computer. It will probably fit your needs. For me it just doesn't cut it.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

Oh I forgot to add:

You probably also never lost a 2000 dollar session because a computer went down for the count. My G4's PRAM up and died on me right after the drums were setup and tuned for a big session when we were running test tracks.

Total disaster.

Lose one big job like that because of a computer system and you suddenly realize that the high cost of hardware is worth it in non-home recording environments.

If you are recording yourself or buddies for fun a computer system is great. Nothing can match the power vs. price. If you're doing voice overs for rap or other types of music that don't involve drums it can work great too.

You DON'T want to tell paying clients that you are 'tweaking some drivers' or 'rebooting' during a session at 40/hour. Even if you discount them the time your vibe and initiative get lost, especially if the problem takes more than 5 minutes to solve.

Then word gets out about it, and you lose clients and money.

Once again, maybe you're recording professionally and have great luck. Myself I'm cursed with computers when it comes to music. I just have no patience with them when creating.

 

[Bulls Hit]

Oh I forgot to add:

You probably also never lost a 2000 dollar session because a computer went down for the count. My G4's PRAM up and died on me right after the drums were setup and tuned for a big session when we were running test tracks.

Total disaster.

I guess the moral of the story is... don't buy a Mac

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

I guess the moral of the story is... don't buy a Mac

Actually the moral of the story is use reliable hardware if you're getting paid.

I'm assuming you conceded on your computer being able to keep up with my tracking requirements.

 

[thehouseofshawn]

I'd say go and test them out. Comp USA carries both so you can see what they can do. If you don't want to mess with it, a dedicated non-computer can really do you well. And if you really want a mouse and keyboard but are willing to part with the actual computer, there's the Mackie HDR24/96 and many like it. Those, of course don't offer the ability for multiple software choices and plugins but provide their own way of going around that.

That is your third option.

Just go try something out. Tell someone at the store (unless you're really specific, they won't know...usually) what you're looking to do...look around here and homerecording.com's resources for what you probably want, and see what matches up with a PC and a Mac.

God this is like a political debate.

Both have their pitfalls. Both have their beauties...otherwise musicians wouldn't be using them. Musicians use all three.

But it really falls into what you want to do (or not do at all) with the computer.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

But it really falls into what you want to do (or not do at all) with the computer.

Precisely.

My computer was great when I was home recording. As soon as I started doing projects for other people the limitations became frustrating.

The tools you choose are wholly dependent on your goals, and your budget. There's more than one way to record skinning a cat.

 

[pipelineaudio]

www.studiozpro.com

the sample mixes on there, probably 9 out of 10 were done on a pc

and most long before the nice current stronger ones

some on da-88's for converters, some on better stuff. And then there are a few Studer A-827/SSL ones on there and some neve 8108/Sony 3348 ones to boot

my PC frustrates the HELL out of me, but you want, it lets me do things I couldnt before, and make bands that suck total ass dongles almost sound like they can play. in a way none of my traditional hardware couldve.

Everyone likes to say its cheaper, but bullshit. Its WAY more money to record on my PC setup and mix than on an SSL/Studer, but the bands just arent up to doing the hardware thing...theyd need this lost art called " practice"

 

[Bulls Hit]

I'm assuming you conceded on your computer being able to keep up with my tracking requirements.

Not at all.

I take your point about recording for money. It's a lot different than home recorders messing about in the back room. To do it properly you would want to maintain a rigorous backup regime, lots of redundancy, mirrored disks etc.

However, as for recording 20 tracks, at 5.4MB/sec, my setup could do that without breaking a sweat, using my standard SATA 7200rpm drives. They will do 55MB/sec continuous, so plenty of headroom there. In a professional situation such as yours however, yes 10K rpm drives would make sense.

I record 24/88.2 and typically end up with 25-30 tracks and similar number of plugins. The only thing constraining me is cpu grunt for the plug ins. In your situation, that would be alleviated with the UAD1 cards you mentioned.

So a setup for you?
Here's what I would recommend

Asus mobo
Fast (3.4GHz+) P4 or amd cpu
1GB low latency memory
40GB OS drive
2x10Krpm mirrored raid audio drives
8x AGP video card etc. etc.

That lot is bog standard gear you can build yourself on newegg.

Then to 'professionalize' it

your choice of outboard a/d/a convertors, digital interface
UAD1 cards for dsp effects

 

[Turkey]

Thanks very much for all of the posts guys

Turk