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

[fmr]

I may switch to Mac when the M1X arrives, Windows has given me a lot of trouble. Maybe Windows 11 will be different down the line.

What kind of trouble? Windows 10 is super stable over here (I am running it on several machines). Maybe if you explain more htoughly what are your problems, you can get some help. Many times, the problems arise between the keyboard and the chair, not inside the computer.

[J-Aro]

It's just things like updates, laptop refusing to update to Windows (getting stuck on 94 percent) . I want a more seemless driverless approach that Mac seems to offer. Turn it in, install music software, and get right to work.

[dellboy]

It's just things like updates, laptop refusing to update to Windows (getting stuck on 94 percent) . I want a more seemless driverless approach that Mac seems to offer. Turn it in, install music software, and get right to work.

I had a new Intel Mac Mini last year for a few months before selling it, and was surprised how much better the audio was. It is multi-client out of the box without installing any drivers. It allows you to have a DAW open and watch YouTube etc, without having to fiddle with sound settings. Just a small thing, but these sort of things add up. I could quite happily live with just an M1 Mac and Logic. Fast, quiet, powerful, reasonable price. Whats not to like ?

[Teksonik]

I may switch to Mac when the M1X arrives, Windows has given me a lot of trouble. Maybe Windows 11 will be different down the line.

Unless things change Windows 11 will not run on many older systems. I have 100% faith that it will be just as much of a pig of an operating system errr I mean data collection and monetization system as Winblows 10.

As of August 2nd...."Older hardware is less likely to pass Windows 11's stringent compatibility checks; Intel 7th Generation Core processors, for example, are not on the list of compatible CPUs, nor are PCs built using AMD Zen 1 processors. PCs purchased in 2016 or earlier are almost certain to be unsupported".

https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-1 ... d-to-know/

My studio system will run Win 11 but that gives me no comfort as it's still Winblows.

I hope one day Linux will be the OS of choice for musicians and we're starting to see more and more developers release native Linux versions of their software.

Screw both Microsloth and Crapple.......

Anyway I'm not going to debate the issue, use whatever you think is best but what I can say for sure is if all the DAWs and plugins I use now would run native on Linux I would kick Winblows to the curb and never look back....

Carry on I'm out.....

[J-Aro]

Ya, I'm just trying to update from Windows 1909 to 20H2 or 21H1

[fmr]

Ya, I'm just trying to update from Windows 1909 to 20H2 or 21H1

If you are having those kind of troubles (update stops at 94%), then most likely something went wrong with your system along the way, and it may possibly be beyond repair.

The best and safer way in these circumstances is to perform a clean install of the OS. Of course, that will mean you will have to reinstall everything, but you may keep your user files where they are right now.

Anyway, what exactly is the error message that appears?

[fmr]

It's just things like updates, laptop refusing to update to Windows (getting stuck on 94 percent) . I want a more seemless driverless approach that Mac seems to offer. Turn it in, install music software, and get right to work.

I had a new Intel Mac Mini last year for a few months before selling it, and was surprised how much better the audio was. It is multi-client out of the box without installing any drivers. It allows you to have a DAW open and watch YouTube etc, without having to fiddle with sound settings. Just a small thing, but these sort of things add up. I could quite happily live with just an M1 Mac and Logic. Fast, quiet, powerful, reasonable price. Whats not to like ?

And here comes a fanboy. Whart exactly is "better"? What exactly is multi-client? If you are serious about music and audio, you will have to buy some kind of audio interface. That will have a separate driver, which means you will be able to run whatever you want with the internal audio, and keep your DAW running using ASIO in Windows (I do this all the time).

What you call "multi-client" is in fact a mess. If you want a performant system, you will want to keep your specific audio hardware separate of that "multi-client" Apple audio system. So no, it isn't "turn it in, install music software, and get right to work"... unless you know nothing about what you're doing.

[jancivil]

the onboard audio is quite good, actually.

doing what I do without an audio interface was doable, but not at low latencies.
I'm separated from it now and to get the performance with without the Quantum 2626 means upping the latency buffering from 192 to 512. 8.5ms r.t. to over 24ms. I installed its drivers, yes. I had to throw several hundred dollars at it like a problem finally. I hadn't tried this in several years because a number of things reputed and benchtested to the moon and back are not really making a difference with OSX (never did) So I did teh research and got well.

and with Cubase this 'aggregate device' is the single way to hear audio from the headphones jack.
That's kind of a mess but I don't know why I would blame Apple for something Steinberg made. I don't even know how that's on point, 'a mess'. It probably is imperfect.

I'm not a fan of Apple, again. But as a point of fact I have done 'install music software and get right to work' a number of times, so that's some bullshit to tell people they know "nothing about what they are doing", one supposes agreement with your worldview is what would make someone smart or knowledgable. I know enough to get the music done way underspec btfw.

[anttimaatteri]

install win10 and debloat the shit out of it, THEN install all audio ware you have and never go online with that machine. theres also a already sort of debloated win10 version to buy.

but if thats not what you want, i just have one thing to say

you want it one way
but its the other way

which leads to the point to buy apple hardware. no matter what consequences it implies ^^

[jancivil]

"That will have a separate driver, which means you will be able to run whatever you want with the internal audio, and keep your DAW running using ASIO"
We can run whatever we want with the internal audio and switch back and forth with Cubase or whatever.
You literally don't know what you're doing there. I'm listening to Nahre Sol's
I Tried Erik Satie's BIZARRE Daily Routine at Youtube and playback of the Cubase/VE Pro project I have up at the same time.
no es problemas

[dellboy]

And here comes a fanboy. Whart exactly is "better"? What exactly is multi-client? If you are serious about music and audio, you will have to buy some kind of audio interface. That will have a separate driver, which means you will be able to run whatever you want with the internal audio, and keep your DAW running using ASIO in Windows (I do this all the time).

What you call "multi-client" is in fact a mess. If you want a performant system, you will want to keep your specific audio hardware separate of that "multi-client" Apple audio system. So no, it isn't "turn it in, install music software, and get right to work"... unless you know nothing about what you're doing.

Obviously I have an audio interface. What did you think I was using on the Mac ?

The internal sound chip ?

The simple truth is that when I had a Mac I connected up my audio interface and that was it - it worked. No drivers needed. I wish Microsoft could do that. In fact, Linux now works better in that regard with my audio interface.

[Double Tap]

Minor point, but class compliant audio interfaces don't use drivers.

I switched to a M1 MacBook Pro about six months ago because my three year old Windows laptop was noticeably slowing down and was much slower than the benchmarks suggested it should be - I think the GPU was running in about the bottom 20th percentile of similar machines, according to CPU Benchmarks or one of those sites, and the CPU was also pretty slow - and I couldn't figure out why, or do anything to improve it. I couldn't upgrade the BIOS which was about five years old. Just finding the drivers for everything was hard enough, because it wasn't a 'mainstream' laptop from one of the main suppliers like Dell/Acer etc - it was a semi-custom Windows laptop from 3XS, exactly the sort of thing that you're meant to be able to do with PCs, assemble the best parts and put them together.

Otherwise it was pretty reliable, although there were a couple of BSODs, but otherwise was particularly wrong with it. I just got sick of the fact that I was upgrading about every three years and spending more and more time learning about how to fix or optimise things, and Task Manager seemed to be permanently up on my screen, yet none of it seemed to make any difference to performance.

There are still things about the Apple ecosystem that grate, like what is the point of the App Store? There's a whole load of flicker and delay when it connects to my external monitor. Some of the security stuff is a bit odd, not allowing you to easily open apps you've downloaded. The peripherals are ridiculously expensive, and having just two USB C ports is painful. But so far I don't regret the switch.

[J-Aro]

I have a desktop replacement pro audio optimised laptop. Clevo with a 9900k. My issues with Windows is over time. Something always randomly goes wrong. I don't have the money to have a dedicated offline only PC so the laptop has to be multi purpose. Its great for bigger projects. I've never used mac but Windows something literally always randomly happens down the line through a forced update.

[fmr]

Obviously I have an audio interface. What did you think I was using on the Mac ?

The internal sound chip ?

The simple truth is that when I had a Mac I connected up my audio interface and that was it - it worked. No drivers needed. I wish Microsoft could do that. In fact, Linux now works better in that regard with my audio interface.

Windows does that too... with some interfaces. It's called class compliant audio devices. But things will always work better with specially written drivers.

[fmr]

I have a desktop replacement pro audio optimised laptop. Clevo with a 9900k. My issues with Windows is over time. Something always randomly goes wrong. I don't have the money to have a dedicated offline only PC so the laptop has to be multi purpose. Its great for bigger projects. I've never used mac but Windows something literally always randomly happens down the line through a forced update.

You have periodic updates on Windows, as you have periodic updates on macOS. It's called security updates. No big deal, Usually, Windows downloads the files silently on the background, and only prompts to install when you want to shut down. Macs do more or less the same. If you start to jump over the updates, then you will probably run into trouble, sooner or later.