PC or Mac for recording?

  • Thread starter Thread starter hrn
  • Start date Start date

Do you use PC or Mac for recording

  • PC

    Votes: 343 51.9%

  • Mac

    Votes: 217 32.8%

  • Both

    Votes: 80 12.1%

  • Other

    Votes: 21 3.2%
  • Total voters
    661
cephus said:
I'm not saying you mac guys aren't smart. It's just pretty obvious that you guys are lacking in a certain area of screwdriver logic that is required to keep windows PCs running. Without exception, every ubergeek picks windows over mac (unless you give them the chance to pick *nix).
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Actually, every studio owner I know is an uber geek and every one of the, chooses Mac. These are guys who are unafraid to bust open every single bit of gear and reconfigure it by screwdriver or by soldering iron. This includes their computers. They buy Macs not because they lack the "screwdriver logic" to keep a PC running, rather they realize that their time is far better spent working with the music rather than making their Windows PC work properly.
 
I see it a little differently

Back in the day, when the PC was just going to be used for payroll and things, the studio owners would almost always pick mac's

When sequencers seemed viable in front of customers on a computer, people would buy macs to run logic on

But once software was being used for the audio itself, I saw a quite different trend

The guys who were scared of computers would buy macs mostly used for sample editing for keyboard sounds and of course logic. But the screwdriver types were buying PC's, installing analysis apps, acoustic apps and things like SAW

Later on noob owners and those scared of computers would buy macs for PT setups

The DIY guys were buying PC's and starting to do some two track editing

Today, a lot of noob owners are buying PT systems and macs, but many who are doing a lot of video are buying PC's, with and without PT

It seemed to me that how much outside influence and need for others' reassurance nowdays determines whether a PC or Mac gets purchased. Those worried about what picture is displayed on thie screen in front of their customers are MUCH more likely to pick mac

Those worried about getting the job done seem to be more PC nowdays
 
I'm ripping out my hair. I can barely mix a song without the program crashing over and over again. Luckily, this is the last project I'm mixing before I sell the PC and all my stuff and go Mac.

EDIT: And as you can see from my sig, I'm not a moron, I just can't seem to keep everything playing nice. Too much freeware probably...that crap is unstable.
 
i'm now official a mac user. got sick of having to work hard to keep my PC stable.

And i can now say that OSX is a much better OS than XP is, or at least i prefer it. seems a lot less "clunky".
 
I would prefer Win for Desktop recording. For portable recording I'd choose Mac.
 
Has anyone recorded 7 tracks at once on a 700mhz Windows PC with 256MB RAM? (And not have any crapouts)

I highly doubt it... And that's if I've got my numbers right.

I did so with my old 350mhz G4 that either had 128 or 256MB in it, way back when I first bought my Delta 1010LT.
 
My vegas 3 computer was p2 400mhz, did 24 tracks recording, playback 48 or so (not at the same time heh)
 
Alexbt said:
Has anyone recorded 7 tracks at once on a 700mhz Windows PC with 256MB RAM? (And not have any crapouts)

I highly doubt it... And that's if I've got my numbers right.

I did so with my old 350mhz G4 that either had 128 or 256MB in it, way back when I first bought my Delta 1010LT.
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I only recorded two tracks at once, but I did approximately 32-track work in Mac OS 9 on a PowerBook G3. 233 MHz. Not much (or any, really) spare horsepower for effects, but it could handle playing back all those tracks and recording up to two with only a rare hiccup.
 
I have been using and building PCs as a side income for 7 years and I really don't experience these so-called "crapouts" or "unstability" most people are whining here about.

You guys probably have too much porn or cracked software/plugins on it anyway. I've built two PCs used for professional studio recording (one a Pentium 4, the other a Pentium D. Both running on Intel motherboards) and I've never, EVER, I repeat, EVER had them crap out or hang. There was only one case where my PC setup just refused to work, but it turned out that I had a faulty VIA motherboard, which was mainly used for gaming anyway. And it was known that that particular motherboard really sucks and is crash frenzy and it just decided to stop working one day.

"But I have to spend so much time configuring my PC for audio work"

Bullshit. The total time it takes for me to setup Windows XP and tweak it a bit for audio takes me one hour at most. It's all about knowing what to buy in the first place. Do your homework. Research and find out what combination of hardware works, what doesn't, etc.

But if you're the kind of person who expects to start recording a whole band the instant your Mac and ProTools setup is taken out of their boxes, then it's your call.

To be blatantly honest, OSX is a crappy user interface. I can't imagine how you'd get any work done quickly at all with such a weird GUI.

My two cents.
 
NashBackslash said:
I have been using and building PCs as a side income for 7 years and I really don't experience these so-called "crapouts" or "unstability" most people are whining here about.

You guys probably have too much porn or cracked software/plugins on it anyway. I've built two PCs used for professional studio recording (one a Pentium 4, the other a Pentium D. Both running on Intel motherboards) and I've never, EVER, I repeat, EVER had them crap out or hang. There was only one case where my PC setup just refused to work, but it turned out that I had a faulty VIA motherboard, which was mainly used for gaming anyway. And it was known that that particular motherboard really sucks and is crash frenzy and it just decided to stop working one day.

"But I have to spend so much time configuring my PC for audio work"

Bullshit. The total time it takes for me to setup Windows XP and tweak it a bit for audio takes me one hour at most. It's all about knowing what to buy in the first place. Do your homework. Research and find out what combination of hardware works, what doesn't, etc.

But if you're the kind of person who expects to start recording a whole band the instant your Mac and ProTools setup is taken out of their boxes, then it's your call.

To be blatantly honest, OSX is a crappy user interface. I can't imagine how you'd get any work done quickly at all with such a weird GUI.

My two cents.
Click to expand...

I agree with 99% of what you say too. Takes me around the same to fully setup windows & get nearly everything up & running. I've never ran into problems with my own pc's. It's how you maintain it, well also what quality is the parts to some extent. Sometimes people come to me insisting on building a system with some b/s like a ecs board, or a pc chips with the processor built on (via). And with some 3 layer memory sticks, and wonder why their computer they paid for is like shit, when I suggested a better build. But hey, that's on them...

For Mac's, I'm still getting used to the whole interface, but I'm starting to get the hang of it, and able to breeze through a recording session at the studio. It's definitely different than windows, but after you figure what is what on it, it becomes second nature.

My system is using a Gigabyte DNA board, and another one (my power system) using a EVGA board. Both never hung up, or shit on itself ever. Maintain your system, and it will run smoothly. I do have a problem though, on my evga system, I'm running a raid 0/1 on it, and everytime I click on something it seems to pop up tooooooo fast... ;)
 
Mindset said:
with some b/s like a ecs board,
Click to expand...

Hey, I've been using the same ECS board for over 6 years. I've run 98 and now XP without any problems at all. ;)
 
Lol good for you man! There's some rare cases that crap motherboards actually perform quite well... When I was doing computer repairs for a living, and not the side job I do now, I've seen SO much boards & memory & monitors & HD's come through for repair. The ECS board from combo's bought at Fry's Electronics over here were always going back or being repaired by us. I have a friend who's also using a ECS board, one of the newer ones that what you have lol, and it's doing him well too. On the other hand, I had to replace 3 ecs boards on the same computer until the user just said F it and bought a Asus board from me.
 
Pc all the way. Never had any problems, cheaper, more programs, etc. For me, recording is just a part of it though. I just feel more comfortable on a pc. If i bought a mac, i'd end up running windows on it, all that, what's the point. I just prefer PC. Even if someone proved it to be far superior to use a mac (and actually convinced me), i'd still use a pc for ease of use. I look at it like a Honda Accord vs. a Toyota Camery though. At the end of the day, they are pretty much the same thing with slight differences. But you may like one far better than the other, doesn't make it better.
 
I think a lot of this has to do with marketing brainwashing in the 80s and 90s:
Macs were for artists and PC's were for techies and gamers.
Artists don't want to waste precious creative time monkeying around with configurations. Gamers and techies live for it.
Nowadays, it doesn't matter. I use a PC because eventually Microsoft will rule the world with a digitial fist.
 
the thing is, both make equaly as fine music. I like macs because they are great to use, have minimal problems, are fairly stable, and the OS works in the way that I want to use. I am perfectly fluent in windows from years of use, and it never quite did it for me, even in the days of os 9 for mac, in which I cursed (and still...damn the old mac oses) the very presence of the thing.

THe thing is, use what makes you comfortable. Just how some people like the digital recording in a linear, more analog fashion of "Radar" sytems, and some like the complete non-linearity of DAWs. They are all just tools, and how you use your tools is what the biz is all about, not the tools themselves. A carpenter isn't known for being the best because his hammer is awesome.

Macs will give you LESS problems as a whole. No viruses (NONE!) no spyware, driver conflicts, etc... The OS is pretty slick, and does generally work with you instead of against you (the way windows does out of the box unless you tweak it)... You can tweak windows to run just as well as OS X for audio, but really, why waste your time when you could be making music... but some people love tweaking shit and all that...so it's all what you're interested in spending your time doing.

The answer to the question is, whatever tool fits your hands the best, and allows you to create to your full potential.
 
sonnylarsen said:
Actually, every studio owner I know is an uber geek and every one of the, chooses Mac. These are guys who are unafraid to bust open every single bit of gear and reconfigure it by screwdriver or by soldering iron. This includes their computers. They buy Macs not because they lack the "screwdriver logic" to keep a PC running, rather they realize that their time is far better spent working with the music rather than making their Windows PC work properly.
Click to expand...


this is very true though... much more macs in the industry than PCs. They just do make a bit more sense as far as the ratio of time spent fixing/tweaking and time spent making music.

But as talon said, he's willing to deal with the issues because it's what makes him creative, what he's comfortible with. Some people will be more comfortible with windows even if Mac OS X is actually all around a better made OS than windows (please Bill and CO, just rewrite the fucking thing from scratch... fuck backward compatiblity...it's your weakness. The audio file will be recorded the same and played back the same regardless of what OS it's done on ultimately, and many mac plugs are also windows, so it all just boils down to comfortablitly, and willingness to deal with the ususal windows issues.

He is totally right in the fact they aren't THAT different. They do the same basic tasks, macs crash sometimes too... I even have a windows partition on my macbook pro to run games since they run like crap on the mac partition for the exact same game, and, frankly I don't want to wait around for the two mac game companies to make ports of PC titles (doom 3 was a pretty good port tho...except for the rediculous mouse pointer in the middle of the screen crap that happened untill they finally updated it.
 
Mindset said:
um right sir. That's why the 268 dell servers that I'm ahead of, all run windows xp huh? no wrong, windows 2000 servers. The regular user's computers are windows xp. but I'm always running down the halls fixing someone's computers every day.

but I'm not saying that windows xp is a flop, don't get me wrong. I'm just stating what I've seen. My windows xp is running fine, except when sometimes, it freezes when I have 1 to many programs running. And yeah, much of it has to do with the user's ability to handle their own system & also the quality of the parts inside plays a role too.
Click to expand...

This thread is still alive?
Anyway, I came back to say:
You realize that XP is basically 2000 wrapped in a retarded-looking theme with better hardware and media compatibility, right?
 
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