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 (nobody)...and 104 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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Members 8025Messages 2614116 Today 2 Topics 127542 |
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when it comes to building up your own music-studio in your bedroom- which systems are the best ? most valuable ? pc desktop gives you endless possibilities of upgrading - with laptops you can do very little. who needs two monitors ? docking station turns laptop into desktop,so pc is better in this field. CPU usage - do macs really have so much to tell here ? or, in general, laptops ? isnt it the issue of legal software rather than whinning about that crap copy of that or that ? so far im running pc desktop xp,especially prepared to do nothing but music ( + little bit of net browsing ). havent seen a reason to turn into linux system, not to mention the laptops at all. whar are your experiences? whats the eway to turn into? considering both - technical workshop + freedom and easy way of getting what you want to get. and money ,of course. IT musicians/guys- recommend, please.all you know / think. long replies please. |
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Save up and get both. Or get some lottery tickets if you're looking for a quick fix. |
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mb |
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yes, be patient. |
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personal advice ?:P |
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It's pretty general to be honest..... ok it's personal for you...? |
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allways |
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I was Mac based for about 4 years, spent a lot of money on the actual computer system, spent money on software only to go through no less than four Apple PowerBooks because they kept overheating. After many years of proclaiming Apple as the best solution for Music, I have been left with a very bitter taste and as such will never use Apple hardware to make music ever again. I am now hardware based (as opposed to previously having been software) and I am using an Atari 1040STe as my main sequencer. I am thinking of either installing Linux on my PC so I can have an audio sequencer, or building a Pentium II system so I can install BeOS and use that as my audio sequencer. Personally I think Windows is too crash prone and resource hungry, and Apple hardware is (in my experience) too flaky. Mac OS X is a great software environment, and if you can manage to get the x86 version running on your PC would make a great system apart from the fact that there are currently no major DAW packages for the intel version of OS X. |
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if you go pc, get dual-core. also, while people claim that mac is better for music and that there are so many "pro" music programs.. well.. pro music programs SUCK BIGTIME if you're a computer musician. there are too few and they're not varied enough. |
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if you go mac, get |
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Re: dual monitors. Yep, very very useful for music and it speeds up the rate you can work at no end. Some laptops let you use the monitor out as a second video channel (as opposed to just showing the laptop's screen on a monitor), but even fairly cheap graphics cards now support dual screens. I regularly run sequencer on one screen, VST windows on the other. |
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what sequencers are there for beos? sounds like fun! word on the amiga, been thinking about going that way myself again. my recommendation: to be completely honest, apple and windows are pretty much on par multimedia these days, give or take. i used to be a huge apple fan, but to be honest i'm not terribly phased either way anymore. most applications are cross platform these days, anyway, and work just as well on either platform. apple's are nice machines though; the thing is, they're built well, so things tend to "just work", unlike PC's where you can fiddle with shit for hours to solve compatibility issues or whatnot (it's improved loads, though). you can build yourself a nice PC, but most of them are usually cheap, with dodgy-ass components/chipsets/PSU's/etc and generally act really crappy. if you go a PC, do yourself a favour and get decent components, and a GOOD QUALITY PSU (audio is something heavily affected, and misunderstood, by most the crappy ones out there on the market). personally, i think there's no perfect solution at the moment, which is why i have both windows, OS X and linux desktops. best of all worlds. linux is rad, and you can do some neat stuff with it, but don't expect audio to be as easy or as flexible as applications on windows/OS X at the moment; windows/OS X blow linux out of the water in this regard with application choice. it's changing, though, very rapidly, and there's definitely some really, really awesome stuff you can do under linux, though. consider it a different 'instrument' if you will, rather than an alternative. bananas and oranges (and apples, ho ho). just, if you stick with windows, be sure to keep your machine virus/spyware clean - it can cause absolute freaking havoc with music stuff. |
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re: laptops or desktops i'd go desktops for home studio stuff; you're going to get far better bang for buck (laptops are slow as shit compared to desktops even half the price). if you're planning on doing any live gigs, i'd strongly recommend a decent-brand laptop for reliability sake. dell, sony and apple are all praised highly for audio stuff. apple is great in this regard because shit "just works", which in a live situation can really save your ass. |
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What about pirate music software/torrent sites? Isn't it much more difficult to find pirate stuff for a Mac? |
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Yes, it's not impossible, but it's much much harder. For this reason I'd only really consider a mac if you planning on making music 100% legally (sample cleareance aside). |
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Um.. I've used macs and PCs and MPCs and keyboards and turntables and buckets to make music.. i've used cubase v3.5-sx3 on mac and pc, logic v5-7 on mac and v5.5 on PC. A apple tower + logic 7 + a good control surface + midi input device + studio monitors + mixer + emagic EMI or bigger audio interface + things to plug into mixer and you have what may be the most technologically advanced, culturally contemporary, cutting edge, cream of the crop, AND EXPENSIVE AS FUCK studio that only needs acoustic optimization of the roomspace before you can use it to potentially make the best sounding tunes in the world. OSX is unix, very stable. logic v7, which is made by emagic, which is now owned by apple, contains the fattest fucking synth and mastering tools, hands down. It's environment is omnipotent, and to even argue with me proves you've never mastered a track with a clue in your life. Emagic also makes the EMI (i think they renamed them, but they are handy little USB 2/6 or 6/2 interfaces that run with 0 latency under OSX with logic) and Mackie built their sweet ass touch sensitive control surface FOR the logic control unit, Logic does MORE, BETTER, FASTER, than any other sequencing environment (though max/MSP and reaktor and other programs have strong unique functions and are good to incorporate). It will even to networked process load carriage-- assign different synths to different macs on network for unlimited live processing power. Apple also introduced the "AUDIO UNIT" core plugin design that all emagic's badass synths and samplers and effects (have you seen the new visual comparative EQ / compression plugins?). OSX comes with the software developers kit for writing your own audio units (LOOK OUT GLITCHES, HERE YOU COME), and there are many free and for sale audio units that compare to all the VSTs out there. Every serious musician / composer I know eventually went from grudged to the mac to desparate for a new g5 + logic, and most of them worked harder than i've ever seen to get th |
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get the money to buy these things. I've seen it with my own eyes, and used it, and it rocks. |
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and you can't pirate logic 7, which is why none of you have ever seen it (discounting the few who have, i'm not talking to you), and don't have a leg to stand on discounting it. master audio quality and deep complication in structure of sound has started to outweigh more creative aspects of music both in the pop industry and a lot of underground music. oscillik, you don't think a dell laptop would've overheated with you running 80 vsts to try and get cool sounds, as well as your macs? I've had 2 powerbooks and the lasted me 3 years and 3 years, the second one taking a dump after hitting the pavement for the 8th time in it's life. (it was cracked, inside mounts splintered, i could take it apart like a sandwich, but it still kicked out the jams for me). Hardware is pretty cool, but I think variety is the spice of life, and the spice is where it's at. |
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If space or portability is an important issue, then go for a laptop, though make sure it is a Centrino and not a Celeron, which is terrible for music apps. It is also worth spending extra to get a 7200RPM hard drive, and a high-resolution screen - I've recently had the pleasure of using a 1680x1050 widescreen laptop (Centrino 2.1Ghz) and it was a great experience. As for desktop machines, you can't go wrong with an AMD 64 system. Bear in mind that not all music apps will utilise dual-core, though it is still worth getting one, as in this situation, the second core would be dedicated to the GUI, which means the display, interface and controls will still be 100% responsive under a high processor load. If you're thinking of using anything except Windows XP, good luck to you.. |
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yeh ok, well what you dont realise is that never pushed my PowerBooks with shitloads of VST's - i only ever worked in Reason. so you're telling me that Reason overheated 4 separate PowerBooks within one year? |
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ok, sorry, but the g4 sucks, therefore, if you're talking things like running 70 vst's at once a dell laptop, sadly, is going to handle this a shitload better than even the most decked out, latest powerbook. a dual g5 powermac - okay, now we're talking. they're seriously nice machines, and they definitely can handle an absolute bucketload thrown at them. great choice for a studio, for sure. i mean, hell - i'm wanting to sell my 1.25ghz / 1.25gb ram powerbook because it can't even cope with remotely complex reason 3 structures. a mate's 2 year old el cheapo pc laptop does it fine. let's not even talk vst's, sigh. |
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^ er, oops, that was meant to be in reponse to illfates |
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This is making interesting reading..... I'd always assumed a G4 Powerbook would be really powerful.... Good that I read this as I'm in the market for a new laptop :) |
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they were once, definitely. they're showing their age now. |
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XF that§s funny...Luke Vibert, Jan Jelinek, Autechre, Fennesz, Squarepusher, Merzbow (to point only some) are using G4 Powerbooks , well if the power of G4 is enough for AE is prodobly enough for anyone |
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you misunderstand. i'm not saying it's bad (although the way i worded it certainly would seem to suggest that). i'm just saying, compared to what else is out there at the moment, it's certainly not brilliant anymore. the architecture is hardly cutting edge these days, and an equally priced x86/pc laptop definitely craps all over it speed wise. of course, there's plenty of reasons why the powerbook is awesome (especially the build quality), they're just not speed demons anymore. there's a reason apple's moving to x86. |
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"there's a reason apple's moving to x86" - nah.... it is not because of power there are other issues. Cross-platform software is unfortuneatly shit like Live 4.0 is as fast on dual g5 2.5 GHz powermac as on my Athlon 2200+:) sad but true! |
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i had a g4 titanium powerbook and it ran logic audio 5.5 with tons of audio units running at no problem--- VSTs were designed for CUBASE, and WINDOWS, not mac's OSX. Of course reason is going to crap out on a mac, if you're going to buy sub par software you should buy the sub par machine to optimally run it. This is too frustrating for me to talk about any more. Bluh. |
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you're a prick |
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i realise all this, nod. all my original point is, is that yeah the mac's are awesome in some areas, but you can honestly get away quite well with a pc these days for far less money; most (if not, all) of the applications home studio'ians use these days will be available to use on windows, and be faster to boot. there are most definitely some reasons why a dual g5, for example, is going to kick some serious booty over anything else. logic 7, you point out, is one, but none of this is exactly cheap and i'm answering in context to the original question. i'm not trying to say the mac sucks, or windows rules (because, honestly, my real opinion is that windows is a steaming pile of fucking shit). just, the huge edge the mac had over windows in terms of audio isn't as dominant anymore, and you can really get away with a windows setup these days at a margin of the cost. for a home studio, it's worth considering. |
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