What Computer Do You Use for Music?

[Anderton]

>

 

Indeed, and what they've invested in. I'm sure they have plenty of Mac-specific products, and to convert them ALL over to Windows would be a costly pain in the butt.

[Blackbelt1]

I'm a television director for a living; over the years I've done everything from live news to commercials to dramatic productions. These days, I'm working mostly on live network sports telecasts, and doing some production work at home.

 

All of the work I do on my own is performed on a PC. I'm running all Adobe stuff - PhotoShop, After Effects, etc., and Boris. I built the PC's I have primarily for cutting video and noodling with some personal music production. One of my clients is a gaming company though, so the gaming rig aspect is there too.

 

On the network sports side, most of the trucks/facilities I work in seem to be PC-based, with the exception of the post-graphic art departments. For live character generation, even the Deko is PC based, as are the Sony 8000 and Grass Valley Kalypso switchers. I see very few Macs on hand in any of the network studio/post facilities I work in.

 

~Blackbelt

[UstadKhanAli]

I use both computers extensively, but only use a Mac for recording music.

[doug osborne]

 

Originally posted by Blackbelt1 ... On the network sports side, most of the trucks/facilities I work in seem to be PC-based, with the exception of the post-graphic art departments. For live character generation, even the Deko is PC based, as are the Sony 8000 and Grass Valley Kalypso switchers. I see very few Macs on hand in any of the network studio/post facilities I work in. ~Blackbelt

 

 

I think you're on to something. I work with post-production and music recording facilities equally. The pure music studios don't see this, but for every other audio application PCs have the majority share.

 

Limit it to music-only, and I agree Macs have a much bigger presence (Lee has that concept covered well), at least much bigger than their overall worldwide market share. A large number of studios and composers with Mac-based Pro Tools (or even native Logic or Digital Performer systems) use PCs for Gigastudio or other high-level music uses. They just don't like to talk about it!

 

I should have checked both, but my blue 'n white G3 has seen no use since Logic went Mac and I stayed PC - I just kept upgrading my PC from the same era.

[Lee Flier]

 

Originally posted by Anderton Indeed, and what they've invested in. I'm sure they have plenty of Mac-specific products, and to convert them ALL over to Windows would be a costly pain in the butt.

 

 

Yeah, exactly. Given how far PC based native processing has come, I feel kind of sorry for studios that had to invest in all-Mac, all-TDM rigs. They got seriously reamed and continue to get reamed on upgrades, etc. Yet a lot of them wouldn't be able to stay in business if they didn't have this stuff, because of lingering customer perception and compatibility issues.

[Alndln2]

Like Phil, I used just about everything starting from a C-64 on up, eventually building my own AMD based machines since 1998. I doubt that'll change anytime soon, but who knows what the future brings. The main thing is were all able to have some equivilant of a recording Studio now, which in the ealy 70's I though out of reach for most. So for me, it's been icing on the cake for the last 15 years.

[reclude]

I use one of the early Athlon 64's (3000 I believe) with 1.5 gigs of ram and Cubase SX3, and 2 UAD cards, I tweaked everything just a bit and see great stability. Never had any problem that a restart couldn't cure, and rarely have to do that since all the bugs are worked out. Those UAD cards are really the key, I still cannot believe how cheap that DSP technology has gotten compared to what digidesign is still raping people for.

'''

Does anyone know the difference between UAD plug-ins for the card and for the plug-ins they made for HD Pro-Tools are?

'''

But besides the uad stuff, I have done mixes with reason attached via rewire, waves plug-ins, various other vst plug-ins and effects and could do pretty nice mixes in upwards of about 70 tracks with that sort of power, and no glitches. I have a mac running alongside everything (g4, approx 933 mhz) that really doesn't do a damn thing except download torrents, hold my itunes library, chat with babes online all day long (and during boring sessions), etc. Nothing against macs, but it seems they are going to have to step it up a bit somehow to get people to switch. Though I feel that this vista thing may drive some people away if it takes too much overhead and gives programmers a headache. I think if it gets a little too bad, maybe linux use will rise drastically.

[DiegoE]

I just bought my first Mac, a Macbook Pro, using

[DiegoE]

Just got my first mac, a Macbook Pro, using it with Logic Express.

It works great !

[jamesp]

 

Originally posted by Anderton Maybe it's just that we don't have enough data, but the number of people specifying both is waaaay down compared to the last time I ran this poll. Wonder what the significance of that is?

 

 

"In your professional music work..."

 

Hopefully us homeys aren't skewing your sample.

[blue2blue]

Lee's got an excellent point about the cost and hassle of switching platforms.

 

Right at the end of the 90s I knew I would be facing an upgrade to 24 bit hardware soon and decided I should consider ALL the options, so I started investigating what it would really be like to switch to a Mac. I called vendors, talked to people and searched the net.

 

I decided that -- given the previous 4 years of Windows DAW work [which was a very productive time for me] that the advantage of switching would have to be clear cut and "lasting"...

 

But what I found at that pre-OSX time was that -- despite the obvious and clear cut advantages of the Mac in the early days of personal computer music -- that by the end of the decade Windows had, at the OS level, some solid advantages: system level MIDI (where Mac folks had to depend on the old 3rd party OMS standard), system level multichannel audio, as well as a system level FX plug-in API.

 

All of those things eventually made it into OS X 10.2-10.3 but -- at the time -- I was pretty shocked that the "advantages" of pre -OS X Macs were often bordering on the intangible -- not that they weren't real for people who prefered the Mac or wanted to avoid Windows, just that, on the balance sheet of practical, technological advantages, I didn't find many in the Mac column -- which, at the time, I found quite surprising given the near-religious certitude of superiority of some Mac advocates.

 

Nowadays, of course, it's clear that the Mac, with new hardware sources that allow Apple to concentrate on the UI and human engineering issues they do best, is a very solid competitor, more or less top to bottom, at least for standalone/workstation use. (There ARE some issues with the way the Darwin layer interacts with the Mach 3 kernel that adversely impact heavy multi-thread use. But for standalone work or use with network app software designed to work with OS X, it shouldn't be a problem.)

[Brittanylips]

Mac

 

-plb

[nat whilk II]

Dell 8400 running XP.

 

Always been PCs since 1st computer, always had business software to run. Macs never an option, really, because of cost. I used to feel deprived, but since PCs turned the corner on music and audio software/hardware availability, I see no compelling reason to switch now, even if money was no object.

 

So as an at-home-studio and at-home-office guy, I use one computer for everything, internet included. Viruses, etc, aren't much of a problem, but stability is, 'tho much less now than with earlier Win 3.X systems.

 

I don't spend enough time tweaking out my system, really - not enough time to go around. But I do get stuff done, and compared to 5 years ago, I'm definitely happier with almost ALL the software and hardware I use, for whatever purpose.

 

Windows is still a bloated, sloppy, spoiled, neurotic, lazy, obsessive/compulsive, ego-maniac, control freak, bag-lady of an OS. But hey, she's getting better (slowly).

 

nat whilk ii

[Myshell]

Mac all the way, baby!

[bp]

I recently fired up the old Atari Mega 2 with Notator to see if it was as good as I remembered. It was! I just love the sequence/arrange setup on that. I wish someone would take that style into Logic or Samplitude.......

 

[chipmcdonald]

Win/XP.

 

 

Was thinking about trying Linux again "soon", but since I've started using Reaper I don't see any reason to change.

[Raymar]

Originally I was an Atari kinda guy using EditTrack, now I'm a Windows(AMD)/Win98 user and when my motherboard bites the dust I'll update to XP or Vista. I'm not overly tricky in the recording process, I prefer to keep it honest as if I were going to play it live without extensive studio trickery.

 

Steve

[DJDM]

My studio machine is a homemade PC running Win XP on an Athlon XP 3500 with 4 gigs of RAM and a {censored}eload of storage.

 

I was running a Mac IIsi for midi up until '99 when I made the switch to the dark side. Living in Seattle with friends at both Microsoft and Adobe meant that over the years I didn't have to pay much for full versions of soft and it was easier to get licensable versions of Adobe stuff for PC, due to demand for Mac versions, so it was a no brainer.

 

Now I just stick with it because I'm used to it and functionally speaking with XP the differences between the two platforms have shrunk to negligible sizes. Plus there's all of that money I've saved on equivalent tech. I'm just sayin...

[Rubber Lizard]

I've been PC all the way. I think it was the mid 70's when I heard that Paul McCartney had recorded a whole Wings album on a 4-track at home. I never verified that statement, but somehow it was important to me. I knew I'd never be able to afford a studio. When I began to study computer science (and CD players became common) I realized that home computers were going to make home studios possible. Eventually I had a 486 and Cakewalk 2. I was syncing midi to a cassette mini studio. Immagine how much I love having an up-to-date computer and Sonar 5! Having always worked in the "business world", I am a PC guy. I know people with MACs, and they can record music too (amazing) but which platform is such a small factor compared to musicianship and creativity.

 

-mark lacoste

[wwwill]

I use an Asus A8V Deluxe/AMD 3500 Venice w/1GB (2x512) RAM running Sonar 4 Producer, Samplitude 6 Master (soon 8), Premiere 6, Blender 3D (don't sleep), and DVDLab.

 

I was raised on THEE IBM PC. I'm used to MS-DOS and found the PC very economical and robust compared to Macs. My mom worked in (elemetary) education and got to bring home a Mac during the summer of '87 or '88, somewhere around that time. After spending about 2 hours on it I thought "how do you configure this thing?" No config files, no customization or tweeking I could figure out. I equated it to putting a Fisher-Price kiddie toy steering wheel on a nuclear sub: power for people to lazy or dumb to learn how to use tools properly. Needless to say this fueled my Mac vs. PC positions for years to come.

 

I started doing graphics /DTP in '94 and at the time Mac software was years ahead of the PC; there was no Windows version of PhotoShop, Illustrator, FreeHand, PageMaker, and Quark. The best thing on Windows, and what I considered the most underated and underexposed graphics app, was Deneba Canvas. The most popular was CorelDRAW, which was a joke compared to the Mac stuff. IMO, this was the strongest argument for the Mac in the Mac vs. PC debate. Of course being a Mac user was costly. I could upgrade my CPU, RAM, hard drive, video card, etc. how and when I wanted/needed. A Mac user could... buy a new Mac.

 

Nowdays things are drasticly different. Macs are now very price/performance competitive with Windows boxes. Windows versions of Adobe, Digidesign and other apps allows for more freedom of choice. I feel like one should figure out what app(s) they want to run and build the platform around that.

 

Now Apple seams to have an advantage in that they can run OSX and Windows. Very tempting!

 

The thing I do dislike strongly (not HATE) is Apple's marketing claims and the attitude of some Mac users that fall for Apple's marketing BS; Mac user have the state of the art machine that is VASTLY superior to anything else. Apple's attitude fosters an idea that Apple Motors makes cars that never need oil changes, never need tune ups, and they just simply work, completely different from all other cars. You don't need to know proper maintenance or operation of cars.

 

My favorite: Apple comes with iLife and Windows comes with a calculator and clock

[Karma1]

I use a fairly new G4 Powerbook with ProTools LE.

[joel Oporto]

started in 91 with a 286AT and SPgold

 

Been dreaming of a mac since studio vision until last year when I discovered I didn't even have to tweak or OC my athlon XP 3200+ venice to mix my 50 or so tracks.

 

There's nothing that can be done on a mac that can't be done in a windows machine just as well or even better.

 

With the new conroe processors and quad processors, windows machines will be much more faster than the OSX machines.

[blue2blue]

Well... don't forget Macs have those same processors so it will ultimately come down to which OS supports apps better or offers features that make developing apps easier or allows things that can't be done in the other OS.

 

 

I was talking with a 3DW pal about Vista (he's been running a beta for a while and is pretty enthusiastic about it but he is, by and large, a pure geek, and not that much of an end-user).

 

I asked him about the rescaling graphics engine and he said he thought it was cool.

 

And I said, yeah, it's cool but it's also going to -- unavoidably -- be a drag on resources. Have you seen or heard of anything promising that uses it?

 

And he said, yeah, windows can be transparent.

 

And I said, well, they already can in Windows XP. I happened to be running a skin that uses irregular sized windows (on my laptop which is no longer my primary -- so I can do goofy things) so I pointed that out to him as we sat in the coffee house.

 

He said, yeah, well, that's silly.

 

And I said -- yeah, that's kind of my point.

 

What, I asked, has anyone done with the rescaling graphics engine in OS X /Aqua -- besides "the swoosh"? (The "swoosh," of course, is the animated tornado effect as a window "swooshes" down onto the task bar -- I mean, the Dock.)

 

Anyhow... not sure what that has to do with anything except to reiterate once and for all (are ya listening Redmond?) that I am VERY much not interested in Vista or any unnecessary changes to my stable, happy computing life.

[Fendercaster]

I have a very small studio, basically an all in one recorder, a Tascam 2488. I've done most of my editing and mixing on it, but I just bought a Toshiba laptop, running XP. I upgraded it to two gigs of ram, hopefully it will do the job if I can find a decent inexpensive editing program. I plan to use it primarily for music applications, I'll continue to use my PC for the internet.