KVR Audio

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 12:14 am

I just thought of something - OSX is 64-bit but a P4 is only 32-bit so how is all this gonna work? Surely they'll be sourcing Itanium-based CPU's? So why bother benchmarking with a P4? Unless the're happy to admit that the whole 64-bit thing was a marketing sham? Curiouser and curiouser.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 12:24 am

machinesworking wrote:
BONES wrote:OK, so yeah, last week when I saw him he commented about how he didn't have to use tape, because he was using macs, no blue screens etc.
Strange considering he only recently got caught with a vocal track on his backing tape and freely admits on the DVD that they use a backing disc. Of course, I hear he now has two extra keyboard players on stage so that probably leaves little enough that a Powerbook or two might be able to cope.
the man doesn't have a day job because he actually makes a serious income off his music?
So did Milli Vanilli, what's your point?
Chris and Cozy use powerbooks on stage as well
So do KMFDM. In fact they have two in case one kraps out on 'em. More than that, all they do is run ProTools with lots of audio tracks - no real-time synths or sequencing, everything is pre-recorded because their Powerbooks couldn't handle it any other way. And they only do it that way because they've always done it that way, since before you could get ProTools on Windoze.
I couldn't care about whether or not you use PC, but I think it's absolutely retarded that you think you have "the answer".......
Of course I have the answer, why would you think otherwise?
in my opinion Windows is a f**king joke.
Care to elucidate? Rationally, of course.
Exactly the reason why you think laptops are for studio work.

No, laptops are for travelling, workstations are for studio work [except my workstation, which is for both].

Borogove · Post by **Borogove** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 12:42 am

BONES wrote:I just thought of something - OSX is 64-bit but a P4 is only 32-bit so how is all this gonna work? Surely they'll be sourcing Itanium-based CPU's? So why bother benchmarking with a P4? Unless the're happy to admit that the whole 64-bit thing was a marketing sham? Curiouser and curiouser.

Apparently part of keeping OSX portable is having it able to build on a 32-bit architecture - IOW, PPC-OSX is a 64-bit OS, x86-OSX is a 32-bit OS. I'm sure they can roll out x86-64-OSX as soon as they're ready to roll out the corresponding machines.

Backing down from "64 bits better" is no harder than backing down from "PPC better". Probably easier because some smaller fraction of people know that OSX is 64-bit.

Borogove · Post by **Borogove** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 12:48 am

slasi wrote:1) Altivec optimized stuff will a lot harder to port. Which is most audio stuff. My guess is emulation of altivec instructions won't be fast enough.

Looks like they don't even try to emulate Altivec in Rosetta - I'm guessing Rosetta presents to the OS as an CPU which does not support Altivec, so well-behaved apps that check for Altivec support and fall back to straight FPU sequences should be OK. (I think emulating PPC FPU on x87 FPU would be faster than emulating PPC Altivec on any combination of x87/SSE).

Jeremy_NSL · Post by **Jeremy_NSL** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 1:06 am

BONES wrote:I just thought of something - OSX is 64-bit but a P4 is only 32-bit so how is all this gonna work? Surely they'll be sourcing Itanium-based CPU's? So why bother benchmarking with a P4? Unless the're happy to admit that the whole 64-bit thing was a marketing sham? Curiouser and curiouser.

AFAIK, all the new P4 chips (maybe even released now?) contain 64-bit extensions, exactly like AMDs Athlon 64. And Intel has abandoned Itanium - yes a huge backpeddle, but it just wasn't protitable.

Anyway, all that is moot because Jobs said OSX has been built in parallel on x86 for years. So even before 64-bit x86 they had it running somehow.

And yes, obviously 64-bit is/was a sham.

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 1:24 am

He sounded pretty horse when I saw him last week, pretty dammed sure it wasn't prerecorded.

Powerbooks are pretty weak right now, it's the reason for the switch I'm sure, but really, if you think wisely about it, it doesn't take much to run a show. I use Live 4, Reactor, Absynth, Zebra, B4, etc. in a live set right now. Usually two or three soft synths, plus audio tracks, and vocals fed in for FX, on an 800Mhz powerbook. Next year when the Intel macs come out, the real advantage will be using the powerbook as a workstation and live tool.

XP? I helped a friend who is a windows expert set up a driver for his machine, the instal wizerd is joke, took us far too long, and it just didn't work, and yes, we did try bypassing it . Some of that is the driver of course, but the audio card manufacture I'm sure tested it on plenty of machines, just not his particular combination, tough shit for him.

the fact that the whole OS is catering towards fat ass secretaries with it's little search dogs, and folder directory structure. The fact that exe. files are able to be sent over the internet, and cause the kind of damage they do, that Linux and OSX do not allow the kind of invasive tampering that Xp does is no joke IMO. That M$ sell information gathered from your instal to third parties..... The fact that I've never had the OS crash on me, that I've already seen the blue screen on XP four times, and I hardly see XP.

Don't get me wrong. I'm just messing around here, I could have easily been a PC person etc. it's just a matter of personal preference. I'm sure you have XP finely tuned, and I'm sure I would too if I used it for audio, but I know that the amount of maintenance behavior related to XP VS OSX is huge. Powerbooks, while behind in the speed game, are always ahead in reliability tests. when the new machines come out, laptops and powerbooks will be the same speed wise, and the price of PC VS mac in laptops has always been similar, so what will be your argument against powerbooks then? Especially considering it seems that Apple isn't going to do anything to prevent the end user form partitioning the HD and installing a copy of XP on it. hard to beat a machine that can triple boot.

Anyway obviously I'm just bored, I couldn't give a f**k what you use to make music, as long as it doesn't suck. I would hope that you feel the same.

stefankuhn · Post by **stefankuhn** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 1:30 am

BONES wrote:I just thought of something - OSX is 64-bit but a P4 is only 32-bit so how is all this gonna work? Surely they'll be sourcing Itanium-based CPU's? So why bother benchmarking with a P4? Unless the're happy to admit that the whole 64-bit thing was a marketing sham? Curiouser and curiouser.

The newer P4's have the EM-64T extension from AMD, so that should be no problem.

And even older P4's can do 64 bit computions already, it's just slower.

The only thing 64-Bit is really good for, is addressing more than 4 gig of RAM. So everything will run on an older P4 still, you just can't go over 4 gigs.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 1:59 am

machinesworking wrote:I use Live 4, Reactor, Absynth, Zebra, B4, etc. in a live set right now. Usually two or three soft synths, plus audio tracks, and vocals fed in for FX, on an 800Mhz powerbook.

We don't use any audio tracks live - we run up to a dozen synths/drums/samplers, but mostly CPU-hog SE synths, without any hassles at all. We used to run it on my Dell lapptop when I had it but now we do it via my mini-PC workstation.

XP? I helped a friend who is a windows expert set up a driver for his machine, the instal wizerd is joke, took us far too long

I much prefer that to the MacOS magic wand and its done approach - I like to know what's happenning and where things are being put. Whenever I've installed stuff on a Mac I have felt totally not in control of the process. OTOH, I've never encountered the kind of probelm you describe.

The fact that exe. files are able to be sent over the internet, and cause the kind of damage they do, that Linux and OSX do not allow the kind of invasive tampering that Xp does is no joke IMO.

Only idiots have those kinds of problems, and only if they use IE and Outlook which I never have.

The fact that I've never had the OS crash on me, that I've already seen the blue screen on XP four times, and I hardly see XP.

I don't find Mac any more or less stable than PC, I get rare crashes with both. The only BSOD I've seen on my current PC was hardware related - dud RAM.

I'm sure you have XP finely tuned, and I'm sure I would too if I used it for audio, but I know that the amount of maintenance behavior related to XP VS OSX is huge.

Not really - I just installed it from CD-ROM and customised the look to suit my tastes. I have never tweaked a damned thing and it all works perfectly well.

when the new machines come out, laptops and powerbooks will be the same speed wise, and the price of PC VS mac in laptops has always been similar, so what will be your argument against powerbooks then?

That they won't support professional graphics chips, same as my biggest gripe about the G5. Then there's the fact that only one application that I use regularly will run on MacOS, making the switch utterly pointless.

kuniklo · Post by **kuniklo** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:03 am

BONES wrote:I just thought of something - OSX is 64-bit but a P4 is only 32-bit so how is all this gonna work? Surely they'll be sourcing Itanium-based CPU's? So why bother benchmarking with a P4? Unless the're happy to admit that the whole 64-bit thing was a marketing sham? Curiouser and curiouser.

Surely they'll launch with an x86-64 version of the pentium.

FaX · Post by **FaX** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:19 am

They'll have too in all reality seeing as you can download the beta of XP64 already .

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:20 am

BONES wrote:That they won't support professional graphics chips, same as my biggest gripe about the G5. Then there's the fact that only one application that I use regularly will run on MacOS, making the switch utterly pointless.

True enough, I couldn't give a shit about graphics, and don't you design some Synth Edit synths? No reason to go to mac if you do. It would be like somebody who's used Digital Performer for 20 years moving to PC and SX, the decrease in productivity due to learning new tools would far outweigh the speed/cost ratio benefits.

AFA install process on a mac is concerned, it's simply because 99% of the apps for mac don't install anything but the application!There aren't hardly any places to look for things to uninstall.

AFA build quality, it's a matter of statistics, and macs always win that one. though a roll your own made with parts that are of high quality could easily last as long as any mac out there I'm sure.

Anyway, if I had the time, I would use both PC and mac, f**k the whole argument. There's too many decent PC only, and mac only pieces of software that I like to really truly care which is best.

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:24 am

kuniklo wrote:
BONES wrote:I just thought of something - OSX is 64-bit but a P4 is only 32-bit so how is all this gonna work? Surely they'll be sourcing Itanium-based CPU's? So why bother benchmarking with a P4? Unless the're happy to admit that the whole 64-bit thing was a marketing sham? Curiouser and curiouser.
Surely they'll launch with an x86-64 version of the pentium.

OSX is not 64 bit. basically the advantage of the OS being 64 bit is far outweighed by the disadvantage. Applications can be written to use 64 bit chips inside a 32 bit OS..... and the OS can take advantage of the memory that a 64 bit chip can use.....

PhoenixNine · Post by **PhoenixNine** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:34 am

BONES wrote:
stefankuhn wrote:Apple users will and have always been taking the drawback of higher prices for the opportunity to work with an operating system and software they consider to be superiour over anything that is available on x86 right now.
In my industry [film/broadcast graphics/vfx], most Mac users couldn't give you a valid reason for using it if their life depended on it. They are Mac users simply because they don't know any better. Its what they used at art school in 1990 and they have never questioned it. Apple's biggest marketing advantage is their users ignorance. That's why their marketing claims are so outrageous - they know that their target market will accept it without question. The G5 is a couple of years old now and still only supports DX-optimised gamers video cards and none of their user base seems even slightly concerned. And when they can't get cross-platform performance parity on heavy-duty graphics software like combustion, they blame the software vendor.
To summarise - Apple users are dumb f**ks.

Making a statement like that is retarded on your part.

The issues can't be summed up like that. I'm a mac user and am I a dumb shit? No. I just perfer it over windows because its easier to use.

Don't be a dick to be a dick. If your going to make stupid statements like that, just leave the boards.

jdg · Post by **jdg** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:56 am

everyone deserves a boooooo

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 5:11 am

jdg wrote:everyone deserves a boooooo

f**k off! We're trying to have an adult conversation here.

Apple ditches IBM power PC chip and will use Intel.