• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Mac or PC?

For recording should i use a Mac laptop or PC laptop?

  • Total voters
    84
#61
People definitely do have different experiences and I guess that also depends on how computer savvy or un-computer savvy you are. I've had my PC desktop since I built it in 2004 and it's running perfectly and it has never crashed on me. The only bad that really happened was the motherboard as it was probably defective from factory, but they sent me a new one and it's been perfect since. And my 4 year old desktop still runs faster than most newer laptops and I don't have what was considered to be "top of the line" stuff back then.

I've been trying to decide on getting a Mac myself like I said above, but reading the Apple support discussion boards really scare me. Problems that really shouldn't be allowed to leave their factory like the whole thing with the battery charge connection melting, the computer giving you problems when trying to complete shut down instead of just going into sleep mode, the DVD drive not working when trying to use playback or what not while watching movies. I've also heard that there were inconsistencies with the display on the Macbooks and with the computer waking up from sleep mode randomly while the laptop is closed and compared to a lot of other pc laptops, macs do get very hot and waking up from sleep with the lid closed can be a big problem from heat generation.
 
#62
Would a Mac-mini be sufficient for recording at home? I don't have a clue about Macs. Just started reading about them...here. What else would I need with a Mac-mini?
I just got a computer with Vista and what a nightmare it has been.
 
#63
Mikeyd74 said:
Would a Mac-mini be sufficient for recording at home? I don't have a clue about Macs. Just started reading about them...here. What else would I need with a Mac-mini?
I just got a computer with Vista and what a nightmare it has been.
Click to expand...
I would not recommend a mac-mini for recording. Personally I think the mini is kind of ghetto. The mini costs $600 and I look at the specs and I think $200. It may use Agere firewire as well (I can't find confirmation if it's Agere or TI, my guess is Agere). If you're gonna use a USB interface or someone can confirm the firewire chip, go nuts.. If I desperately needed a mac in that price range I would look into building your own "hackintosh".
 
#68
hunta said:
I would not recommend a mac-mini for recording. Personally I think the mini is kind of ghetto. The mini costs $600 and I look at the specs and I think $200. It may use Agere firewire as well (I can't find confirmation if it's Agere or TI, my guess is Agere). If you're gonna use a USB interface or someone can confirm the firewire chip, go nuts.. If I desperately needed a mac in that price range I would look into building your own "hackintosh".
Click to expand...
So the main reason you wouldn't recommend it is the firewire? I thought the point of a Mac was that they were all uniform?
 
#70
hunta said:
I've noticed a lot of educational faculty have a strong bias for Mac. I think it's mostly because they don't understand PC that well (and historically Apple heavily advertises to the educational market). It's really just as easy to get things going on a PC as a Mac, you can run into speedbumps on either platform. Reaper is a free/cheap alternative to Garageband, and honestly if you get a PC you can afford to drop a few hundred bucks on a good sequencing program because you save that much by not buying a Mac.
Click to expand...

First off let me say, I'm not for or against macs / pcs...both have their strengths and weaknesses but for his application I think the mac would be the wiser choice.
The main difference between macs and pcs that I have found is the way they allocate memory and use it. The way windows based machines do this makes them a less stable choice for memory heavy programs and when you quit programs in windows they still have some memory open until you restart
You can take the same version of photoshop or whatever program and setup a mac and a pc with the same hardware specs and the mac will make better use of the hardware due to memory usage. Same thing with servers..at the office I have a mac server and a windows server both are up all of the time. I have to reboot the windows server about every 2-3 weeks due to slow serving of files, programs running slow and such. The mac server I never have to reboot with the exception of an update...it's been up for 120 days straight before. That being said...I won't want to use a mac server for say email....
 
#71
Mikeyd74 said:
Would a Mac-mini be sufficient for recording at home? I don't have a clue about Macs. Just started reading about them...here. What else would I need with a Mac-mini?
I just got a computer with Vista and what a nightmare it has been.
Click to expand...
You might try wiping Vista and putting WinXP on.

A Mac Mini should be fine for recording as long as you're not using the onboard drive. Don't expect to use a ton of plugins or any realtime processing but it'll handle the basics without too much trouble.

And you don't need a TI firewire chip to make recordings.
 
#72
brianmharrison said:
The main difference between macs and pcs that I have found is the way they allocate memory and use it. The way windows based machines do this makes them a less stable choice for memory heavy programs and when you quit programs in windows they still have some memory open until you restart
Click to expand...
This is extremely variable, and doesn't depend on the OS as much as the way the OS and the programs interface. If you're using the latest warez instead of paying for your software and are running a million things on it while trying to record, you're going to have problems regardless of which platform you're using. I've been doing audio recording in Windows for years now and have never encountered a show stopper issue like the one you describe unless I've been in the middle of a session and decided to start watching some Xvid DVD in Winamp. And you know what? The same kind of thing has caused me issues with Macs in the past.
 
#73
xkimsungminx said:
People definitely do have different experiences and I guess that also depends on how computer savvy or un-computer savvy you are. I've had my PC desktop since I built it in 2004 and it's running perfectly and it has never crashed on me. The only bad that really happened was the motherboard as it was probably defective from factory, but they sent me a new one and it's been perfect since. And my 4 year old desktop still runs faster than most newer laptops and I don't have what was considered to be "top of the line" stuff back then.

I've been trying to decide on getting a Mac myself like I said above, but reading the Apple support discussion boards really scare me. Problems that really shouldn't be allowed to leave their factory like the whole thing with the battery charge connection melting, the computer giving you problems when trying to complete shut down instead of just going into sleep mode, the DVD drive not working when trying to use playback or what not while watching movies. I've also heard that there were inconsistencies with the display on the Macbooks and with the computer waking up from sleep mode randomly while the laptop is closed and compared to a lot of other pc laptops, macs do get very hot and waking up from sleep with the lid closed can be a big problem from heat generation.
Click to expand...
Mac problems are rare. They are pretty darn good quality. I worked at Apple and they dont have an IT dept per say. You are expected to support your own machine. A Mac will last yo ualot longer. i just got rid of my 5 year old iMac. It still rocks. I gave it to my niece. Also, you can run XP on the Mac with Parallels/VMware Fusion or Apple Bootcamp. Just get a mac.
 
#75
Mushroo said:
Hackintoshes (Hackinti?) are in the news today... just search your favorite news website for Psystar :)
Click to expand...

My hat's off to them. Thanks for the info.

This kind of stuff seems so obvious ... later.

Fedex couldn't always send overnight letters. Post Office didn't like that. If the Post Office had it's way we'd pay for each email.

Read the history of modems and look at the guys besides the phone company who started making and selling modems.

Even just look at Linux, or PC/Dos/Windows - they wouldn't be where they're at without bold moves by some individuals (good or bad as it may be)

Win or lose Phystar has got some guts!
 
#76
msquared said:
This is extremely variable, and doesn't depend on the OS as much as the way the OS and the programs interface. ...
Click to expand...

Agreed

There is one big difference between "Windows" versus a *Nix (Mac OS-x, Linux, ...)

"Windows" on *nix is run on top of the OS. The UI is an application itself - a "Shell". You can boot a *nix - and do work without a GUI.

Windows on the other hand the Windows are tightly engaged in OS. It's not a shell - it's the OS itself. You can't run windows without windows. And the sneaky thing is Windows has separate "Interactive" and "Non-interactive" heap spaces. For "normal" use, it's usually not a problem but it could be for some:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

I wish there were choices - XP is still a clear choice for me. Apple holding tight to their OS, and Windows being ubiquitous, both with a big paradigm shift for programmers of things like Music applications. I still see a lot of start-ups opting for first release on Windows with a Mac OS-x version in the promise. And if/when the Mac version does release, it's not a big feature or performance improvement over the Windows version.
 
#79
Nurb said:
Get a mac, less time spent for solving issues, more time for creativity.
I'm not an Apple fanboy, but OS X is a much better user experience than Windows, especially Vista.
Click to expand...

After buying a really powerful Dell computer(all we could get last summer was Windows Vista OS)-and have my Ipod killed,having to totally redo my music collection(30 gig worth),having tried multple computer recording interfaces without succes do to "incompatibility with windows Vista problems", recent problems with adobe crashing my computer because of incompatibility with windows Vista, having to buy a new printer because my previously new printer-fax-copier was incompatible with Vista, and now my software program for my newest recording system won't download(Sonar Home studio 6.0 XL, nor will my new Presonus Firepod interface because today Dell says there are so many bugs in my OS that I need to RESTORE my computer(yes-back up all my files)...and wipe out my computer and start over... and hopefully this time Windows vista will accept my software and hardware programs-somehow I doubt it will happen that easily-but here I am at 2:45 am backing up my computer when I should be sleeping...and I don't know if I'll ever get Vista to to work with my recording software and hardware...Whew-I wish I'd got an Apple...Peace...DAcat :cool:
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back