My DAW PC hates me though I shower it with nothing but love..time to switch to a Mac?

[tapper mike]

Hey Tim, good to see you.

[starise]

Where you been man? Miss hearing from you over at the other place. Hope you're still making music.

[dupont]

Really bad comparison. You don't have Audi, Mercedes, BMW or Lexus components in a VW Golf.

But you do have VW Golf components in Audi. Gotta love those car comparisons.

Do they share the same engine? I'M far from being a car expert (I don't even drive) but I don't think so.

And that's the main thing we are talking about here: comparing Macs and PCs that share the same engine (CPU).

I work in the automotive sector and I confirm some Mercedes trucks have Renault engines. All the parts for every car brands are made by the same suppliers. Most of the parts suppliers are now located is north Africa or east Europe so you can have Tunisian parts in your Mercedes (the one you can see on TV, made in Germany , well not totally). The margin of some brands on the part price is huge, for example a molded plastic part is sold 5$ by the supplier to the car manufacturer and the final customer, you, will buy that part 150 $ !!! I let you calculate the margin. there is also a psychologist factor with luxury brands, customers expect to pay the price because it is good for their self estim, "I can afford it, I deserve it" it's a wellknown marketing technique. The exact same part will have different prices if it is sold by a luxury brand or not. This is the same technique for Apple products, people want to pay more because they have been formatted by a clever marketing technique based on Human psychologist weaknesses.
I'm sure if an IphoneX would be 100 $ the sales number will be lower.

[dupont]

An imac pro loaded up for serious recording will set you back $5000.
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac ... -MQ2Y2LL/A

I picked up an HP Omen as a second computer to my desktop daw for stage work. i7 cpu, Large 7200 rpm OS drive, secondary 7200rpm HDD, 16gb ram, LARGE 17" screen, lighted keys, Gaming graphics card. Plenty of I/O including usb 3 and DVD/CD player burner. On board sound isn't bad for a laptop. My price was around $1200 because it was a year old model and it was a year end sale. For me I guess it's pure economics.

$1500.00 for a Macbook with an i5 chip isn't really a terrible price. Probably ok for most home studio work if the mixes don't get too demanding. I loaded NI complete and two daws on my Omen though. Just bought my wife a 12.6" iPad pro for her work refurbished for $1000. The pen was $100.00 for it. It's a really nice iPad, but wow. Apple definitely over prices their stuff.

Interesting, I will change my imac in the next months and for the price of the late 2018 27 Imac (near 2500 euros I suppose) I will probably be abble to buy a faster PC + 2 screens + audio cards.

[keyman_sam]

Cost is not the issue here. It's about getting a 1). Stable platform for music production 2). Reliable, with as little moving parts as necessary.

I just had another crash with Cubase when I had 2 projects open and I tried to disable some tracks (needed to bounce some stuff). I've been saying that with increased complexity in all directions, it's been nearly impossible to get a solid, reliable, working setup.

Apparently a reliable solid PC DAW: https://www.odysseyprosound.com/used-ha ... D0EALw_wcB

[chk071]

You know what? Opposed to what i proposed earlier in this thread, i'd say, in your situation, and, because cost isn't an issue here, get a Mac. I doubt you'd get happy with a new Windows computer. And, i must also admit that the current Windows release situation, with a big upgrade every half a year, it's not the most optimal for a workstation computer, which is supposed to "just work". I'm still not sure why your computer messes up so hard, because, my computers mostly work well, but, i also never did really wild things with them. I think, with a Mac, you get a machine which should work well out of the box, doesn't have a crazy "bleeding edge" we-upgrade-you-every-half-a-year stuff, and, you also won't have to worry about installing drivers, and configuring the machine much. If you really want to solely use it as a DAW computer, and you won't have issues with migrating on a Mac (better check if all your audio software is available for Mac, and, that your hardware is well supported as well), then, it should be the best to get a Mac, IMO.

[Sascha Franck]

If you really want to go for a Mac and don't sell a kidney, I'm using a Mac Pro from mid 2010 (I think I mentioned that already). Defenitely not the most powerful processors in there (Xeon 2.66 to 3.something GHz, depending), but you will have 2 6 Core CPUs in there, so if Cubase (or whatever you will be using) is doing well with multithreading, then this, regardless of its age, is still a truly powerful machine. In addition, you can slam up to 4 SSDs (cheap these days) in yourself and update the RAM yourself as well. All this isn't possible on any of the newer machines. You will miss out on Thunderbolt and perhaps on USB3, too (tough to add, unlike in the Windows world there seem to be little USB3 PCIe cards which would actually work with Macs), but in case you don't need to record tons of tracks at very high sample rates, USB2 is just fine, latency doesn't have to be an issue, either (go for RME or Zoom if you need the lowest latencies via USB2).
In case you don't go all mad with additional software and browse questionable sites all day, there's little to worry about in terms of stability.
Note #1: Should you consider that route, make sure it comes with OSX 10.8.x (Mountain Lion) - earlier versions won't let you install High Sierra.
Note #2: These machines aren't compatible with OSX Mojave. You will have to use another graphic card.

[Coxy]

Cost is not the issue here. It's about getting a 1). Stable platform for music production 2). Reliable, with as little moving parts as necessary.

I just had another crash with Cubase when I had 2 projects open and I tried to disable some tracks (needed to bounce some stuff). I've been saying that with increased complexity in all directions, it's been nearly impossible to get a solid, reliable, working setup.

Apparently a reliable solid PC DAW: https://www.odysseyprosound.com/used-ha ... D0EALw_wcB

Get a Mac and get on with production because despite peoples emotive opinions on Apple, when talking Mac stability it comes down to this.

1. Mac OS is based on an inherently stable OS - FreeBSD
2. It''s restricted hardware of selective yet consistent components means there's less likelihood you're going to run into incompatibilities between hardware / software.
3. It's a trillion dollar company so can afford to hire some of the worlds best developers, if it chooses to. These kinds of people are working on making Apple software like Logic better and more stable every day.

So ironically some of the things that people hate Macs for are some of it's biggest strengths when we're talking stability.

Earlier on today I was referencing a mixdown against a commercial production by scrolling through desktops from Logic, flipping over to iTunes to play the reference track flipping back to Logic to continue playing the mix down and making changes back and forth back and forth absolutely seamlessly with no loading of individual programs, no crashes, no issues, no needing to dick around with releasing the ASIO drivers in background as I had to do on Windows (and even then it usually led to instability in things like this.)

When I'm done I save, initiate standby, come back in 3 days time and it's all there waiting, no reinitialisation of software, hardware or anything else just click play and my production carries on from where I left off.

For me, with my production workflow it's been a revelation.

[Sascha Franck]

3. It's a trillion dollar company so can afford to hire some of the worlds best developers, if it chooses to. These kinds of people are working on making Apple software like Logic better and more stable every day.

Note: I'm a partial hardcore Apple hater (for pretty good reasons, as I happen to think at least), but I'm still using one.
And I gotta say that you have a good point here, especially when it comes to Logic (which, IMO, is a must have for anyone sequencing on a Mac, but different folks, different strokes and all that...). In addition to it being incredibly stable, it's also still one of the best performers under lowest latencies and 10.4. really expanded hyperthreading in a very positive way (ok, Reaper might catch up or even take over, but that's quite something else, YMM however V). It's also the best package you can get anywhere. Almost all of the onboard plugins and the delivered content are highly usable (minus, say, the horrible Amp Designer...) and there's even some that would cost almost as much as Logic in the "free world" (such as Alchemy). So, if you can make use of, say, just 30% of them, you might even end up with a rather good overall VFM factor.

There's also something that can be said about Apples longevity.
Sure, they're trying their best to render older systems useless by changing whatever "standards" (example: They were still all about how great FireWire was - and blam, half a year later none of their machines featured it anymore. There's countless examples of that), "planned obsolescence" is something Apple is truly masterful at (anyone remember the iPOD 1 battery scandal?).
Yet, until just 2 weeks ago my 2008 Macbook was my one and only audio production machine (and it's still alive and working well, should serve me fine on the road for another 1-2 years) and I never re-installed the OS. Had to get back to a slightly older incarnation once (broken HDD, fortunately the important things were all backed up), but that was it. And believe me, that guy has been taken through its paces. I never see anyone with a Windows laptop that old (I still have a Samsung of around the same age, and with the installed Windows XP it's barely possible to surf the web anymore, let alone watch YT and things).
Now I got that Mac Pro mentioned before - and while already being 8 years old, it should be absolutely fine for quite some years to come (ok, needs a new GPU in a few months when I'm ready to update to Mojave). In fact, it's almost smoking with its 12 Cores, unless you throw too much at one single core. Again, I don't think anyone would buy an 8 year old Windows box as a serious audio workhorse.

Bottomline: Even if one may hate them for several reasons, Apple is doing some things right. And a good amount of these right things are quite important when it comes to audio production.
Bottomline #2: If I was no die hard Logic addict, I'd probably be on a Windows machine, though.

[dupont]

3. It's a trillion dollar company so can afford to hire some of the worlds best developers, if it chooses to. These kinds of people are working on making Apple software like Logic better and more stable every day.

Don't forget it took +/- 20 years for this tree trillion dollar company to solve an annoying automation issue : in LP 10.4.2 last update you now can drag one automation point above on other.
Still in the automation area LP is way behind other major Daw and have not so improved since last century : no automation shape tools, no drag&drop support ...
Thanks Apple but what a shame.
Little companies like Cockos and there soft Reaper can solve this kind of bug within a couple of days and drop some updates at the same time.
It's also time to improve some plugin UI which are also outdated, ES1, ESX24, Ultrabeat, ES2 ...

[Sascha Franck]

It's also time to improve some plugin UI which are also outdated, ES1, ESX24, Ultrabeat, ES2 ...

Absolutely! And while there's certainly decent onboard alternatives to the ES synths, for the EXS and Ultrabeat that's not exactly true. Those aliasing fonts alone are driving me mad when zooming in - and at least with Ultrabeat you more or less have to, the interface is quite a good demonstration of what cluttered means. A shame, as given the functionality and sound options, it could be really kickass.

[dellboy]

No one hate Macs, they are bits of hardware and software.

Its the greedy business model.

Lock in.

[Coxy]

3. It's a trillion dollar company so can afford to hire some of the worlds best developers, if it chooses to. These kinds of people are working on making Apple software like Logic better and more stable every day.

Don't forget it took +/- 20 years for this tree trillion dollar company to solve an annoying automation issue : in LP 10.4.2 last update you now can drag one automation point above on other.
Still in the automation area LP is way behind other major Daw and have not so improved since last century : no automation shape tools, no drag&drop support ...
Thanks Apple but what a shame.
Little companies like Cockos and there soft Reaper can solve this kind of bug within a couple of days and drop some updates at the same time.
It's also time to improve some plugin UI which are also outdated, ES1, ESX24, Ultrabeat, ES2 ...

Cool.

[Jim Roseberry]

Cost is not the issue here. It's about getting a 1). Stable platform for music production 2). Reliable, with as little moving parts as necessary.

I just had another crash with Cubase when I had 2 projects open and I tried to disable some tracks (needed to bounce some stuff). I've been saying that with increased complexity in all directions, it's been nearly impossible to get a solid, reliable, working setup.

Apparently a reliable solid PC DAW: https://www.odysseyprosound.com/used-ha ... D0EALw_wcB

The problem isn't that a PC is inherently prone to instability.
The problem is your current configuration.
We build machines for many professional clients.
These folks earn their living recording, mixing, and composing for TV/Film.
They don't have problems getting work done on said machine/s (in some cases they're running multiple PC DAWs as VE Pro "Slaves" - running huge orchestral scoring templates).

Mac stability is also fine.
You're going to pay a lot more for what amounts to a slower machine.
Mac hardware tends to lag quite a bit behind the curve.
Hard-core composers are essentially being forced to PC... to get the hardware performance necessary for their work.
On a modern Mac, there's zero room for internal expansion.
Everything added has to be external.
Something as simple as swapping the boot drive on a modern Mac is a PITA.
With the iMac, you have to peel off the screen to swap the boot drive.
Even for tech-savvy folks, that's not a fun ordeal.
If the machine is under warranty, swapping the boot drive means a trip to the Apple Store.
Macs are slick machines... but Apple has abandoned their power-users.

[Jim Roseberry]

Don't forget it took +/- 20 years for this tree trillion dollar company to solve an annoying automation issue : in LP 10.4.2 last update you now can drag one automation point above on other.
Still in the automation area LP is way behind other major Daw and have not so improved since last century : no automation shape tools, no drag&drop support ...
Thanks Apple but what a shame.
Little companies like Cockos and there soft Reaper can solve this kind of bug within a couple of days and drop some updates at the same time.
It's also time to improve some plugin UI which are also outdated, ES1, ESX24, Ultrabeat, ES2 ...

Cockos are a small/dynamic operation... so they can change focus quickly.
If a problem crops up, they can move swiftly to resolve it.
No red-tape, BOD, bean counters, marketing department to dilute focus.

There are advantages to being a larger company.
Speed and efficiency often aren't their forte'.