Pc Mac newbie question

Studio & Gear
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I’ll be honest, the first Mac I have bought because of Logic.

I remember clearly why I did that, although it was more expensive. Because of the beautiful and logical interface of Logic and Mac. I remember too, how Cubase turned me totally off, I couldn’t figure anything out without going back and forth the manual. Hated that. Never had anything like that with Logic. That was the only reason.

Only later I have found out, that it was the best decision due to updates and upgrades. At least, the older MacBooks were still upgradable. Today, Apple only does it with Mac Pro. iMac will be the same as the MacBooks. I don’t like it, no one does, but Apple clearly tells us why. You want to be “Pro”, go for the Mac Pro and custom it the way you want, and most importantly … it will work.

Windows computers? I feel like I need to search if an Acer, Asus, or whatever is there will work with my interface, the plugins, the software, etc. It’s just my feeling, as of course, I have colleagues who are “pro Windows” and hate Macs, but always tell stories about what doesn’t work.

There are studios, professional studios who went back to Windows, and it works for them, because they work with professionals who know what components to buy in order to make a powerful machine for less money that will work for ages IF no updates or upgrades are being made. That’s what the companies tell: “Don’t upgrade without asking US if that was already checked before.”

It’s an old discussion that will never end, and I don’t want to share something I don’t understand or know about. I just share my experience that’s it. I am not for or against Windows, nor Apple. I want to use stuff that “just works” without headaches. I’ve chosen Apple. If someone else has a Windows and it’s working superb, so isn’t it great? That is, so enjoy it! :slight_smile:

Besides Apple marketing tricks, they HAD to do something right in order to have that success. If something went wrong, bad machines, people would have stopped using them – obviously. And now we are witnessing a new era of personal computers – talking about the new M1-Chip. I am pretty sure, that this will be a huge financial success for Apple in the next years to come, as there is no one right now, who is performing like them. I’ve checked out some reviews, long-tests, etc. and it’s totally mindblowing. Apple didn’t play that stupid move, like “we are better, so pay more”. Instead, they’ve reduced the prices, as Intel chips were as we saw “quite an expensive thing”.

At the very moment, there is no competition at all. The M1 for music is of course not ready yet, but in the next years, with the next upgrades, it will be an amazing computer to have, again money-value-wise.

The only thing that is quite dangerous is that Apple becomes too powerful. And it’s not good for all of us. To evolve we need to have competition. And if there is no competition, people and technology stop evolving and moving on, as we saw with the iPhones. Apple didn’t do anything “new” in the last couple of years, only to realize that other brands have now better technology as they do with their iPhones that have new chips that save 0,1 seconds of our lives to open an app. They just ran out of “innovation” on their iPhones. So at least now, we see what other companies are capable of!

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22

Well explained @jlx_music it’s good to see you!

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23

If you don’t have much experience with components and operating systems, have too much money to spend and/or need to use logic, get a Mac. The apple ecosystem is closed so it’s kind of dumbed down for smoother user experience, anything difficult to understand is either hidden or something you can’t modify, so if you need to do some in depth adjustments, you might not be able to do that. I like to be able to fiddle with stuff under the hood so I use windows pc’s and android phones instead of apple.

I’ve used windows computers since the 90’s and I’ve never had any major problems with any components so either I’m the luckiest guy in the world or it’s a bit exaggerated to say that with windows pc’s you run into hardware problems and with macs you don’t. Personally I can’t justify the price to get a mac, double the price for the same components coming from the same factories, also the software selection is more limited for macs, most major software packs are for both operating systems, but not all, so since I also make other things with a computer, I would need to find alternative software to replace the ones that aren’t available.

Windows 10 is the best windows version I have ever used, it’s fast and I rarely have any problems with it, if I do, it’s usually my own fault. Viruses are also not an issue, windows’ own virus scanner works just fine. The last time I’ve had a virus is probably something like 15 years ago when I still used some pirated software. I don’t know how it is today since I haven’t used macs for a few years, but earlier macintosh computers became junk faster, old windows pc’s still worked just fine but old macs were barely usable. I hear M1 is a great processor, but keep in mind that many audio software companies still say you shouldn’t upgrade since their software is still not compatible.

Mostly I think the choice between windows pc and a mac is about you, what kind of user experience you appreciate, how you like to work, what software you need, do you want to do also something else with the computer and so on. For music production both are good in the end.

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24

I have more or less the same experience as you. Never had any problem what so ever. I raised the question of pure interest. I believe it’s always good to explore and dig. I’m starting to investigate these matters cause I’m thinking of building one the next time in the future. It will most definitely be pc. But I think it will be a while cause my currently run like a clock.

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Have a look at this Fredrik!
It’s crazy, up to 64 cores. I’ll wait until komplett.se has configured some workstations, but the cpu will be released in March.

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Ah. Thank you so much for the link. I’ll dive into it this evening.

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I’ve been using Macs since the eighties, but I’ve also done plenty with pc’s (and the Atari 1040ST, and C64, and hardware sequencers as well). I built a PC some time ago to host plugins via VEP. It was great - once it was built and debugged.

At the time I was billing hourly, as I was doing ProTools editing but also throwing down keyboard parts when needed. And here is what I found: the time it took me (as someone familiar with the components in a PC, and comfortable with Windows) to get a stable system for the abuse I put it through, when I added it up, made it more worth it to have bought a Mac at the time. Easily.

If your time is worth money, as in downtime specifically takes income from you, it’s worth thinking of it that way. If you make, say, $50 an hour, $500 a day, then if you are down two days then you could have just bought a Mac. I will say that once I got the Windows machine settled, it just sat there and did its thing, very well and reliably. I began thinking of a PC as a college roommate who was on the football team, who I would call to help me move a couch and he could do it by himself, but I wouldn’t ask him to design the house it was being put in.

And that is completely unfair. Because running Cubase or ProTools on a PC isn’t any different in terms of operability from doing it on a Mac. And this year I have seriously considered using a PC as my primary machine because I could build it (or have it built and troubleshot beforehand) to my hardware spec, and run everything from one machine - but I just don’t like Windows that much - just personal preference. It works fine - but my ecosystem is Apple-based, and I don’t want to change that - and I also don’t want to have to remind myself of all of the issues associated with that being my main machine - it would mean a security review and various other things, and I would lose the use of Logic and a few other things.

Also: if one is looking at the 2019 MacPro, the last Intel machine they may make at that tier, it is fairly equivalent to the Dell workstations of similar capability. Almost always the markup is overstated when one looks at components and an utterly stable combination of components. It’s not that I can’t cope with the “depth” of Windows as an OS - it’s that I don’t have time. I’ve had issues with Macs in the past - really frustrating ones - but nothing that took as long to deal with as the PC ones. That would likely have been prevented had I had one pre-built - though the Carillon-built PC I used years ago was dicey too. So if one is looking at a preconfigured Windows system to equivalent spec to a Mac Pro or even iMac Pro (sad to see those gone), one will find the prices fairly similar. Laptops may be different - there seem to be some limitations on the Apple ones that don’t exist on the custom PC side. But I’m not getting one of those for my use anyway. Small and portable I don’t need.

Anyway, good luck, everyone. Who knows? Maybe the new Apple Silicon Mac Pro will be so fast that it doesn’t need much RAM. Or maybe it will just not suit our uses in the first round. Maybe it will force innovations in the modeling realm because it’s better at that than playing back a ton of samples from RAM.

For some reason this recalls how the old Digital Performer situation used to be - where it’s awesome until you use it in a large pro setup at which time you discover it seems to have been designed for hardware that hasn’t come out yet.

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28

I considered going Mac last time around, but their top models at the time were single CPU Xeons with ridiculously low clocks, adding up to about half of the power I was looking for - at the usual ridiculous prices, of course.

I also considered buying a factory overclocked turn-key DAW PC, and in hindsight, maybe I should have - but it’s still Windoze…! Even a perfectly configured and tuned system like that wouldn’t have saved me from the recent major M$ f***up, which had me troubleshooting for countless hours, until I realized it’s suddenly no longer possible to run an RME UFX+ on the same USB root hub as anything else. Fortunately, my monster motherboard has two additional USB 3.2 root hubs, so I didn’t have to buy additional hardware to work around that one.

The fundamental problem here is that both OS X and Windows are general purpose operating systems, running a lot of third-party device drivers, and out of all the companies involved, it’s basically only the audio interface manufacturers and (maybe) Apple who care at all about low latency audio. nVidia will happily block the PCI bus, if that gives them 1% better results in gaming benchmarks. Most WiFi NIC drivers will apparently roll their thumbs in interrupt context for several milliseconds every now and then, effectively freezing the whole OS. With rubbish like that going on, it’s actually amazing that we ever get any DAWs working properly at all.

What I’d really like to use is Linux, and/or dedicated DSP hardware. An OS that isn’t a black box timebomb waiting to break my rig without me (even as a senior developer with driver/kernel experience) being able to do anything about it. Or, running all the audio stuff on an actual RTOS that never has to deal with web browsers, or dodgy third-party drivers. All this already exists, but it’s irrelevant as long as it doesn’t run the “industry standard” DAWs and plugins. 99% of my libraries are Kontakt, and that still doesn’t run on any proper platform.

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I wish there was a way for the consumer to decide the focus of the OS. For example, a setting that makes “low audio latency” the single most important focus. Or assigning Logic Pro (or your DAW) as a prioritized software.

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You kind of can with Linux (there are build-time kernel options, so you can boot with different kernels depending on your needs), but that only really works because most drivers are part of the kernel source tree. Even there, third-party closed source drivers (such as the infamous nVidia graphics drivers) can cause problems that the kernel can’t do anything about.

The main problem for any OS is that drivers can usually disable interrupts on the CPU (easy but ugly hack for safely accessing shared data), hold locks on central kernel structures for too long (much better than disabling interrupts, but still problematic if one does time consuming work while holding locks), cause the hardware to block the PCI bus (save some cycles in the OpenGL driver by not checking if there’s space in the command buffer, for example), and various other things that can prevent other drivers, kernel code, and applications from getting their job done when they want to.

A millisecond here and there will never be noticed by a typical user, so stalls of that magnitude are not considered problematic. However, for our use case, that renders the machine useless for anything but offline rendering!

Basically, the overall system requirements for low latency audio are very strict and harsh, and this whole thing is still mostly something that only control engineers and embedded systems developers deal with. Your average programmer isn’t even aware of the term “hard real time,” and does not understand the requirements, or the reasons behind them.

So, what you do is get rid of the whole desktop/server OS, and run a proper RTOS on the hardware instead, and while you’re at it, ditch the flaky PC hardware as well, as that’s not designed for real time systems either, and… you have Pro Tools HDX and similar DSP solutions.

Basically, we’re all dabbling with dodgy tuner cars that were never meant to go fast in the first place, when what we really need is proper race cars, purpose built from the ground up. The only proper solution is to replace literally everything.

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31

I know the thread is old but I wanna add that the Asus Rog comes in at around $1000, which is pretty reasonable for a powerful PC. However, the MacBook is a bit pricier at around $2300. MacBooks tend to have a sleek design and are known for their reliability, but they do come with a higher price tag.
When it comes to music production, both systems can get the job done. It really boils down to personal preference and the software you plan to use. If you’re leaning towards the Windows side, you can find some windows 10 key cheap to save a few bucks, if you catch my drift. Just make sure to do your research and buy from reputable sources, like the one you mentioned from Reddit.

1 Like