Will a MAC be better than a PC for home recording?

[AndyR]

How old's your PC Johnny? And what other guff have you got installed on it?

And... three DAWs?? I wouldn't dare install any other recording software on my laptop in case it blew my Cakewalk installation. A few years back I decided to experiment with my POD XT Live's ability to act as a soundcard and allow re-amping and wotnot - NEVER again :lol: It took me a day or so to get my DAW recording again...  It was just driver problems, but life's too short...

Get yourself a brand new PC with as much power and disk space as you can, then only ever use it as a dedicated music workstation - only ever install stuff on it that you want for music . You can do emailing, novel-writing, web-surfing, etc, on the old cr@ppy one.

I'm not completely prejudiced, but I do fondly remember the mantra of one of the techies I used to work with - "the only decent Mac is a Big Mac..." :lol:

Also, I reckon you are an obvious candidate for something like a Boss Micro BR. For what it does, its cheap, very cheap. It's like a high octane version of an old 4-track cassette recorder with Abbey Road, George Martin, and Ringo Starr built into it... and unlike old 4-tracks, you've got unlimited bouncing capability. If you just want to get creative and bang out a few tunes, and learn about mixing and EQ, it is an excellent piece of kit.

The only drawback is it doesn't have midi implementation, so you'd need to use something else for sequencing, and get all the sequenced parts down as audio first. But as a recording scratchpad, to get you recording instead of @rsing about with drivers and continually wondering whether your soundcard's as good as the next man's... I don't think you can beat it. I haven't used my DAW at all since my missus got it for me for christmas, and I've done more recording in the last 5 months than I have in the last 5 years of owning a DAW!!

[jibidy]

Mac owns.

No right click??

I can right click fine.

+ Logic is awesome.

Mac + Logic or even Garageband is all you need.

[indysmith]

Sort yourself out an iMac, some Adam A7s, Logic Pro, and an Apogee Duet and just be done with it!
Awesome set-up.

[FELINEGUITARS]

Johnny, if you're close to one of the Apple retail stores book yourself a seat in one of their workshops if you want to see and try the stuff first. http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/workshops/

I've occaisionally gone along to the lectures at the regent street store and really enjoyed them
Sometimes they have special themed lectures on stuff like logic pro and intarfacing guitars etc

[_tom_]

I dont know if the Mac Pros at our uni are just trashed or what, but they run Pro Tools on Windows way better than on the Mac side of things :lol:

I do keep considering a mac but then I realise how expensive they are compared to a similarly specced pc and thinking "hmm, probably not worth it"

Let us know how you get on though, Johnny :)

[Johnny Mac]

Thanks for all the advise.

Andy my Desktop is from 2004 a P4 3.2, 1g ram and 2x 200g hd plus a terrabyte external. The sound card is a E-mu 1820 pci which is probably where all the aggro is. I've had it working fine before but I did a driver update and it just seems to have a mind of its own whether its going to work or not. Your right life is too short for all this, i've wasted days on this now. I only use it for recording and linking up with my ipod, i have a laptop for net use. I cleared out all the stuff on it i don't use. De-fragged it, that took nearly 2 days. Treated it to an external drive. Updated the drivers and I still get no audio signal, or it won't play midi externally. I think E-mu patchmix dsp software, as good as it supposed to be, is too overly complicated. I've read a ton of stuff on it but its not getting any better. The 3 daws are 2 copys of LE cubase one is 4 one is VST and Reaper. The same midi and audio problems are present in all of them.
I've thought about buying a new pc just for recording but if i'm going to buy a new machine i may as well get a mac. I have a few friends who use them and they never suffer the problems I'm having on any applications.
I have that claim for personal injury still pending so if things go well there than I'll get a mac. In the meantime it would be nice to get something working but I'm spent on this poxy desktop. I did my bkp clips on it and its been really good, even with lots of tracks. Now i don't even want to look at it! Anyone else get like this? Could it be an IRQ conflict? They remind me of trying to get 28k modems to work in the mid 90's!

[Muttley]

Andy my Desktop is from 2004 a P4 3.2, 1g ram and 2x 200g hd plus a terrabyte external.

That P4 is a little long in the tooth, and dependent on the OS you're running 1GB is probably woefully inadequate.  Another thing to consider with PC recording is the hard drive speed.  I suspect with the age of the CPU, they're normal IDE drives, which are quite slow compared to the newer SATA drives.

Dependent on the OS, maybe you could enable Remote Assistance and I could dial in and have a look at your settings (if you're willing).  Can't help with Cubase unfortunately, as I moved to SONAR after using the cut down Cubasis for a few months and haven't looked back.

As to the Mac issue, I've lots of friends who love Macs, but I've never got on with them myself.  The main thing to be aware of with Macs is that you're paying over the odds for the styling/brand.  You'll get much more bang for your buck with a carefully chosen PC configuration.

[Johnny Mac]

Andy my Desktop is from 2004 a P4 3.2, 1g ram and 2x 200g hd plus a terrabyte external.

That P4 is a little long in the tooth, and dependent on the OS you're running 1GB is probably woefully inadequate.  Another thing to consider with PC recording is the hard drive speed.  I suspect with the age of the CPU, they're normal IDE drives, which are quite slow compared to the newer SATA drives.

Dependent on the OS, maybe you could enable Remote Assistance and I could dial in and have a look at your settings (if you're willing).  Can't help with Cubase unfortunately, as I moved to SONAR after using the cut down Cubasis for a few months and haven't looked back.

As to the Mac issue, I've lots of friends who love Macs, but I've never got on with them myself.  The main thing to be aware of with Macs is that you're paying over the odds for the styling/brand.  You'll get much more bang for your buck with a carefully chosen PC configuration.

Thanks for the help Muttley. How would I enable remote assistance? I didn't realise windows had that. The OS is XP Pro with Service pack 3.

I know Macs cost more but if it means not wasting my weekends clicking around in the dark then I'd gladly spend more cash on a mac! I've been having grief with it all for years!

[gwEm]

i feel your pain johnny... have a look in the apple online store for refurbished models, you can sometimes get great deals.

MIDI is a proper pain in the arse, I'm not sure a mac will help with the axon issues you've been having, but just about everything else you mentioned is much more of a breeze on a mac - the operating system has less 'edges' and its designed for creative people rather than business men.

[Muttley]

Thanks for the help Muttley. How would I enable remote assistance? I didn't realise windows had that. The OS is XP Pro with Service pack 3.

There's a bit of information here on how it all works: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/remoteassist/intro.mspx

It basically lets you allow someone to connect to your machine remotely.  Used quite a lot in the IT industry (or rather, the alternately named "Remote Desktop") for managing servers the other side of the country/world.

As you're running XP, I know for a fact you'll get a massive performance improvement by upping the memory from 1GB (and memory is cheap these days), but let's solve your other problems first.  ;)

[tomjackson]

If you want to spend double for the same thing buy a MAC.

Truth is now you can get an average PC for peanuts and it will run cubase without breaking a sweat, the hardware has moved on so much that almost all desktop PC's will run all that you will ever need.

I recently bought a laptop for £400, the almost equivalent MacBook had 1gig less Ram and was £700.

I do like Macs and Logic but they are so expensive for what you get I always go back to PC's.....

[Andrew W]

There's only one way to sort this out properly.

The short answer is that you can use either to record and properly set up either platform will work fine.  There are plenty of pros and cons to both platforms but I think most of those centre around issues unrelated to sound recording.  If you only plan on using the machine to record sound I'd say save a few quid and buy a PC, if you plan on using it as a general computer as well then the other issues come into play and it becomes a more complicated question.

Personally, I use a Mac for a host of reasons particular to my needs from a computer.  I really like my machine and have yet to use another that suits me better but I wouldn't proclaim that it is right for everyone.

[Adam.M]

My PC which I built last year cost me £650

The equivalent mac at that time? over £1,700, and even then, half the hard drive space.

Mac was good when it was PPC, but now it's x86 I'm still confused as to what it really is, It is essentially now just the same as Dell or Alienware or HP, it's just that they have a different operating system.

But, I love iMacs, Mac Minis, iPhones. I like their design, i love the space saving that a iMac or a Mac Mini gives.

If i had unlimited money though, i'd have a mac.

[Johnny Mac]

If I had the choice i'd go for a mac. Although I would get a pc if it was set up by someone who knows what they're doing and not by me! I just want to record, that is a minefield in itself without having loads of techy problems.

[warpthrone]

My mac has a right click, who told you it didn't?