# Should I switch from Mac to PC?



## MojoMusik

Been using Logic ever since the late nineties(when it was emagic). Now that I'm focusing on orchestral writing (and sample libraries) I'm getting increasingly frustrated and contemplating changing my whole set up. Frequent crashes, no way to arrange templates into sub folders, poor control over articulations imo... just a few of my grievances. 
Further to this im currently making do with an m1 macbook with 16gb and 1tb ssd. Even with a template of <100 tracks im getting frequent overloads and crashing to desktop and the i just can't work with it anymore. It's stopping me even want to write.
So I was hoping some of you could share your opinions with me as I need to make a choice whether or not to sell a kidney a buy a ridiculous priced mac pro, or perhaps switch to pc, perhaps something like a ryzen system with at least 64gb ram and start using Cubase which seems from the outset to be a much more efficient workflow (haven't used cubase for 20 years!).


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## KEM

No


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## MojoMusik

Would you care to elaborate?


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## KEM

MojoMusik said:


> Would you care to elaborate?



Mac may be more expensive but it’s just so much more intuitive and optimization has always been much better (for me, anyway). I have both Mac and PC and yeah, PC you get more power for the price but I would never in a million years want to be a Windows user, it’s sluggish and glitchy and I’ve only ever hated it

Not to mention Apple Silicon is the future of cpu technology, much better to invest in it now, you’ll thank yourself later


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## MojoMusik

KEM said:


> Mac may be more expensive but it’s just so much more intuitive and optimization has always been much better (for me, anyway). I have both Mac and PC and yeah, PC you get more power for the price but I would never in a million years want to be a Windows user, it’s sluggish and glitchy and I’ve only ever hated it
> 
> Not to mention Apple Silicon is the future of cpu technology, much better to invest in it now, you’ll thank yourself later


Thank you Kem! Much appreciated. If you don't mind me asking, what system are you using?
I really want a one system solution (no slaves) that can handle a large template of 300+ tracks


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## Zero&One

FWIW, I have been slowly moving away from Mac the last few years. I've gone mostly hardware for synths with hardware and external recording/sequencing. So that's covered.
DAW, pick one like Cubase as you've mentioned or S1, Reaper etc and demo them on Mac until you find a suitable replacement. Grind with it until you no longer can, or until the MacBook craps out, buy a PC and carry on where you let off without selling a kidney and other organs.

I think the gap between PC and Mac has long long gone. Will I miss iCalc, Chess, Stocks and that Apple TV icon... sure! But my wallet certainly will be happier and I'm certain .wav files will sound as 'warm' as Macs. I think once you get used to another DAW you'll not give 2 thoughts to Mac.


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## KEM

MojoMusik said:


> Thank you Kem! Much appreciated. If you don't mind me asking, what system are you using?
> I really want a one system solution (no slaves) that can handle a large template of at perhaps 300+ tracks



You’d be able to do that no problem with the M1 Max cpu, you could get the current MacBook Pro but I would suggest waiting for the Mac Mini, It should be announced in just a few weeks and you’ll be getting the exact same specs at a much cheaper price point

I have a 2015 MacBook Pro and it’s pretty old at this point, works fine for everything else but music so once I get the new Mac Mini I’ll just use it for travel and lounging around and all that


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## MojoMusik

Zero&One said:


> FWIW, I have been slowly moving away from Mac the last few years. I've gone mostly hardware for synths with hardware and external recording/sequencing. So that's covered.
> DAW, pick one like Cubase as you've mentioned or S1, Reaper etc and demo them on Mac until you find a suitable replacement. Grind with it until you no longer can, or until the MacBook craps out, buy a PC and carry on where you let off without selling a kidney and other organs.
> 
> I think the gap between PC and Mac has long long gone. Will I miss iCalc, Chess, Stocks and that Apple TV icon... sure! But my wallet certainly will be happier and I'm certain .wav files will sound as 'warm' as Macs. I think once you get used to another DAW you'll not give 2 thoughts to Mac.


Thank you. I'm no longer using any hardware synths. All itb mainly kontakt, spitfire libraries etc. It's hard for me to justify the mac premium but i guess i could swallow it if really is the way to go


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## MojoMusik

KEM said:


> You’d be able to do that no problem with the M1 Max cpu, you could get the current MacBook Pro but I would suggest waiting for the Mac Mini, It should be announced in just a few weeks and you’ll be getting the exact same specs at a much cheaper price point
> 
> I have a 2015 MacBook Pro and it’s pretty old at this point, works fine for everything else but music so once I get the new Mac Mini I’ll just use it for travel and lounging around and all that


I have an old i7 mac mini that i bought maybe 10 yrs ago. Loved it, never missed a beat but was only really used for audio work.
Presumably the new ones can support more than 16gb ram?


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## jamwerks

Yes!


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## KEM

MojoMusik said:


> I have an old i7 mac mini that i bought maybe 10 yrs ago. Loved it, never missed a beat but was only really used for audio work.
> Presumably the new ones can support more than 16gb ram?



Yeah they’ll support up to 64gb of ram


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## MojoMusik

KEM said:


> Yeah they’ll support up to 64gb of ram


Very interesting. Many thanks!


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## Zero&One

MojoMusik said:


> Thank you. I'm no longer using any hardware synths. All itb mainly kontakt, spitfire libraries etc. It's hard for me to justify the mac premium but i guess i could swallow it if really is the way to go


Take Logic out of the picture, what would you miss?


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## MojoMusik

Zero&One said:


> Take Logic out of the picture, what would you miss?


I mean, I'm fairly fluent with PC as well as Mac. I guess system stability is the priority here. Being able to upgrade components (again, something I can do myself) and save some money are big pluses also


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## MojoMusik

MojoMusik said:


> I mean, I'm fairly fluent with PC as well as Mac. I guess system stability is the priority here. Being able to upgrade components (again, something I can do myself) and save some money are big pluses also


To be clear I've always owned pcs. The only thing I've ever used a Mac for is for Audio/Music production and I suppose I have been rather unwilling to switch daws. I'm certainly open to switching daws though


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## Jeremy Spencer

Are you running your sample libraries from a dedicated drive? Using an audio interface? These are important factors for performance.


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## Patryk Scelina

KEM said:


> Mac may be more expensive but it’s just so much more intuitive and optimization has always been much better (for me, anyway). I have both Mac and PC and yeah, PC you get more power for the price but I would never in a million years want to be a Windows user, it’s sluggish and glitchy and I’ve only ever hated it
> 
> Not to mention Apple Silicon is the future of cpu technology, much better to invest in it now, you’ll thank yourself later


Also never looked back since I moved to Mac. But, now when it goes to Apple Silicon it made me wonder from time to time. Many plugins I used to use will simply become obsolete. I'm not even talking some old 32bit VSTs but even some of relatively new Izotope plugins. It's becoming more expensive and more inconvenient to keep switching to new plugins only because many become incompatible with new OS. 
One of examples is reverb. I think I changed my main / favorite reverb 3 times since "Lion" due to incompatibility of a plugin with OS after update.


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## rogierhofboer

Also watch  by @A.Dern 

Note you could also use a Mac for Logic and render on a PC via VE Pro or audiogridder.


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## KEM

Patryk Scelina said:


> Also never looked back since I moved to Mac. But, now when it goes to Apple Silicon it made me wonder from time to time. Many plugins I used to use will simply become obsolete. I'm not even talking some old 32bit VSTs but even some of relatively new Izotope plugins. It's becoming more expensive and more inconvenient to keep switching to new plugins only because many become incompatible with new OS.
> One of examples is reverb. I think I changed my main / favorite reverb 3 times since "Lion" due to incompatibility of a plugin with OS after update.



Once everything you use becomes native to Apple Silicon I wouldn’t upgrade, I was on High Sierra for like 6 years and only recently upgraded to Big Sur (bad idea), so whatever the new Mac I get ships with I will probably be on for a very long time. Thankfully most of the stuff I use is now native


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## jbuhler

You might try getting a PC with lots of RAM to offload some of your samples and then continue to run Logic on your M1 with VEPro as bridge. That will allow you to evaluate the PC environment for music and allow you to continue to working with Logic until you determine whether the PC is suitable.


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## Tim_Wells

jamwerks said:


> Yes!


Agreed! YES!


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## CATDAD

Nothing wrong with working on a Windows machine, you shouldn’t have any more issues with stability than you do with your regular use as long as you have a decent audio interface that has solid Windows drivers. It’s a good way to get a lot of ram and a lot of raw CPU power for not a lot of money.

Since you mentioned you are no stranger to building your own PC, I assume you are no stranger to running a clean Windows installation. There’s potentially a huge difference between a prebuilt Windows machine with proprietary garbage on it, and a clean install.

The biggest difference for you would probably just be finding a suitable DAW replacement for Logic that you like if you were to switch! 

Oh also, you can’t easily make aggregate devices on Windows, so if you were planning to combine inputs/outputs of a few audio interfaces it might not work out well.


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## MojoMusik

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Are you running your sample libraries from a dedicated drive? Using an audio interface? These are important factors for performance.


Hi Jeremy.
I'm running my samples from the internal ssd and using an audio interface albeit only a small focusrite


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## MojoMusik

jbuhler said:


> You might try getting a PC with lots of RAM to offload some of your samples and then continue to run Logic on your M1 with VEPro as bridge. That will allow you to evaluate the PC environment for music and allow you to continue to working with Logic until you determine whether the PC is suitable.


Interesting alternative. Tbh i no longer feel so precious about sticking with logic, particularly as I'm less than impressed with how it handles articulations. Certainly worthy of consideration though. Thank you


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## jbuhler

MojoMusik said:


> Interesting alternative. Tbh i no longer feel so precious about sticking with logic, particularly as I'm less than impressed with how it handles articulations. Certainly worthy of consideration though. Thank you


Are you using articulation sets? I find the sets themselves work very well. The editor for the articulation sets though is abysmal.


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## MojoMusik

CATDAD said:


> Nothing wrong with working on a Windows machine, you shouldn’t have any more issues with stability than you do with your regular use as long as you have a decent audio interface that has solid Windows drivers. It’s a good way to get a lot of ram and a lot of raw CPU power for not a lot of money.
> 
> Since you mentioned you are no stranger to building your own PC, I assume you are no stranger to running a clean Windows installation. There’s potentially a huge difference between a prebuilt Windows machine with proprietary garbage on it, and a clean install.
> 
> The biggest difference for you would probably just be finding a suitable DAW replacement for Logic that you like if you were to switch!
> 
> Oh also, you can’t easily make aggregate devices on Windows, so if you were planning to combine inputs/outputs of a few audio interfaces it might not work out well.


Yes I won't have to many problems building and performing a clean install. Also I was eyeing Cubase as potential alternative. I have used it before back in my college days 20+ years ago


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## MojoMusik

jbuhler said:


> Are you using articulation sets? I find the sets themselves work very well. The editor for the articulation sets though is abysmal.


Yes. Also been using thanos and control panel with css. It might sound petty but i would love to have a visual method to input articulations like in other daws


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## Pier

KEM said:


> Mac may be more expensive but it’s just so much more intuitive and optimization has always been much better (for me, anyway). I have both Mac and PC and yeah, PC you get more power for the price but I would never in a million years want to be a Windows user, it’s sluggish and glitchy and I’ve only ever hated it
> 
> Not to mention Apple Silicon is the future of cpu technology, much better to invest in it now, you’ll thank yourself later


LOL you're such a fanboy.

I love macOS. I'm writing this from a 5K iMac which I use for dev work, but Windows 10 is rock solid for me too. Super fast. Zero glitches as far as using my DAW.

And once you open your DAW there's absolutely no difference between using macOS and Windows. Like, literally, Cubase (or Photoshop) are exactly 100% the same in both.

Oh btw you know who runs Cubase on Windows? Your hero, Hans Zimmer 😂


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## MojoMusik

rogierhofboer said:


> Also watch  by @A.Dern
> 
> Note you could also use a Mac for Logic and render on a PC via VE Pro or audiogridder.



Love her channel. Thanks for sharing this vid


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## Jett Hitt

MojoMusik said:


> Further to this im currently making do with an m1 macbook with 16gb and 1tb ssd. Even with a template of <100 tracks im getting frequent overloads and crashing to desktop and the i just can't work with it anymore. It's stopping me even want to write.


I am a Mac guy, but it is totally irrelevant to me which system you or anyone else uses. I just don’t have a dog in the hunt. But when I read that you’re having frequent crashes and you mention 100 tracks and 16GB of RAM, I gotta scratch my head a bit. It’s a Mac, not a super computer. You’d have same problems on a PC system with the same limited resources. You can only do so much with limited RAM.


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## MojoMusik

Pier said:


> LOL you're such a fanboy.
> 
> I love macOS. I'm writing this from a 5K iMac which I use for dev work, but Windows 10 is rock solid for me too. Super fast. Zero glitches as far as using my DAW.
> 
> And once you open your DAW there's absolutely no difference between using macOS and Windows. Like, literally, Cubase (or Photoshop) are exactly 100% the same in both.
> 
> Oh btw you know who runs Cubase on Windows? Your hero, Hans Zimmer 😂


Yes im aware that Cubase is Zimmers daw of choice which is a great endorsement! (I'm also a big fan of hz!)


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## CATDAD

I think the point here though is that @MojoMusik is trying to expand to a bigger system for exactly that reason and is considering their options!


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## MojoMusik

Jett Hitt said:


> I am a Mac guy, but it is totally irrelevant to me which system you or anyone else uses. I just don’t have a dog in the hunt. But when I read that you’re having frequent crashes and you mention 100 tracks and 16GB of RAM, I gotta scratch my head a bit. It’s a Mac, not a super computer. You’d have same problems on a PC system with the same limited resources. You can only do so much with limited RAM.


Yes im aware of that but either way, i still need a new machine and this time I want to spend a little more time and make a better decision


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## Thomas Costantino

Was in your same exact situation. I’m sure there’s lots of opinions to support each option, but the reality is: you need something that works now...

The main issue with your Mac isn’t the power, Space, Ram, the new chip or the operating system. Surprisingly it’s the graphics card. This plays a much heavier role in audio workstations than we think. From loading tracks to rendering time, it’s the main processor of it all. Unfortunately Mac has yet to step their game up in this sector. On top of that, all laptop graphics cards operate 50-60 percent lower than their desktop counterpart.

As a true Mac lover and Steve Jobs fan, at this time it’s imperative to switch to a desktop pc with a really good graphics card. I recommend starting with gaming PC’s. Go with intel chips and AMD graphics cards ( this paring will save you much time and prevent driver comparability problems ). Intel chips work better with any thunderbolt audio gear and the AMD works better with most DAW’s. Cubase is certainly a great option. As for Windows, I concur with others it’s not the best, but also not the worst. Some things are lacking, as others are better than Mac. The one upside is that you can dive under the hood and really tweak things to your liking. Another perk is that you will always be able to upgrade this machine instead of being stuck with Apples technology of the given year you buy it, which will always leave you years behind.

The one major issue I’ve ran into is the media player. Having come from iTunes, everything I’ve tried seems like junk. Groove looks and sounds great but the way it functions is trash. Music Bee sounds good too and is super customizable, but I’m tired of fussing with the setup and never feels right. A dark mode iTunes clone is much needed in the World of Windows. Never-the-less, this system is running at a pace that a Mac could never touch.

Just remember, with Apple making all these Silicon chip changes, Audio will always be the least of their concerns. Keep your eye on the graphics performance of these chips, not the ram speed hype. As of now the laptops and Mac mini just can’t compete with a PC. I am indeed looking forward to see what happens. But investing in them now in the name of ‘it’s the future of computers’ is foolish. Get what works now, and stick with it until Apple gives you a good reason to switch back.


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## Jeremy Spencer

MojoMusik said:


> Hi Jeremy.
> I'm running my samples from the internal ssd and using an audio interface albeit only a small focusrite


Seems weird that you're having these issues.

I recommend a 2020 iMac with 3rd party Ram. Building a powerful PC is still going to cost you a lot of $$, and Cubase Pro is going to cost you around $900 alone.


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## MojoMusik

Thomas Costantino said:


> Was in your same exact situation. I’m sure there’s lots of opinions to support each option, but the reality is: you need something that works now...
> 
> The main issue with your Mac isn’t the power, Space, Ram, the new chip or the operating system. Surprisingly it’s the graphics card. This plays a much heavier role in audio workstations than we think. From loading tracks to rendering time, it’s the main processor of it all. Unfortunately Mac has yet to step their game up in this sector. On top of that, all laptop graphics cards operate 50-60 percent lower than their desktop counterpart.
> 
> As a true Mac lover and Steve Jobs fan, at this time it’s imperative to switch to a desktop pc with a really good graphics card. I recommend starting with gaming PC’s. Go with intel chips and AMD graphics cards ( this paring will save you much time and prevent driver comparability problems ). Intel chips work better with any thunderbolt audio gear and the AMD works better with most DAW’s. Cubase is certainly a great option. As for Windows, I concur with others it’s not the best, but also not the worst. Some things are lacking, as others are better than Mac. The one upside is that you can dive under the hood and really tweak things to your liking. Another perk is that you will always be able to upgrade this machine instead of being stuck with Apples technology of the given year you buy it, which will always leave you years behind.
> 
> The one major issue I’ve ran into is the media player. Having come from iTunes, everything I’ve tried seems like junk. Groove looks and sounds great but the way it functions is trash. Music Bee sounds good too and is super customizable, but I’m tired of fussing with the setup and never feels right. A dark mode iTunes clone is much needed in the World of Windows. Never-the-less, this system is running at a pace that a Mac could never touch.


Thanks for the message. I do actually have an AMD vega56 card in my old pc. Maybe that would do the trick ( still need a new pc build though to make it all work)


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## fakemaxwell

Thomas Costantino said:


> The main issue with your Mac isn’t the power, Space, Ram, the new chip or the operating system. Surprisingly it’s the graphics card. This plays a much heavier role in audio workstations than we think. From loading tracks to rendering time, it’s the main processor of it all.


Err...huh? There's only a few plugins that have tried using the graphics card to offload processing and it hasn't really taken off. Graphics card is definitely the last thing on the list in "most important parts of computer for audio) so I'm not sure where this is coming from.


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## KEM

Pier said:


> LOL you're such a fanboy.
> 
> I love macOS. I'm writing this from a 5K iMac which I use for dev work, but Windows 10 is rock solid for me too. Super fast. Zero glitches as far as using my DAW.
> 
> And once you open your DAW there's absolutely no difference between using macOS and Windows. Like, literally, Cubase (or Photoshop) are exactly 100% the same in both.
> 
> Oh btw you know who runs Cubase on Windows? Your hero, Hans Zimmer 😂



Ludwig uses Mac though!! And you’re right that there’s no difference between Cubase on Mac or Windows, for me the reason I like MacOS so much more is Finder, I can’t stand Windows file browser, maybe I’m just an idiot but it is much more complicated to me


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## Thomas Costantino

fakemaxwell said:


> Err...huh? There's only a few plugins that have tried using the graphics card to offload processing and it hasn't really taken off. Graphics card is definitely the last thing on the list in "most important parts of computer for audio) so I'm not sure where this is coming from.


It comes from 9 years experience pushing Mac machines to the edge and building custom PC’s to isolate the processing issues. I know it sounds weird but the graphics need to be just as powerful as your other components. Its primarily what causes crashes and freezes. It’s not about the plugins. More about the DAW needing power to display and process on the graphics level. 

Think of every component of the computer like a body part. You can’t take care of the body and leave one major organ out of the picture. One fails and it could be fatal. Everything needs to be balanced and strong. If your pushing your Daw to the limit and it’s slowing down, it’s screaming for more graphics power, not ram. 

If you jump onto a machine that has a top tier gaming GPU, then you’ll see what I’m talking about.


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## CATDAD

Also for what it’s worth, if you have any concerns about compatibility moving to Windows 11, I’ve anecdotally had no issue moving forward with it now. I have heard similar from others, and it feels not a whole lot has changed at least in regards to audio handling from Windows 10.

If you don’t like to take any chances you can always stick to Windows 10 for a few years more anyways, but there won’t be a “compatibility patch” wave to worry about or anything like that.


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## jbuhler

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Seems weird that you're having these issues.
> 
> I recommend a 2020 iMac with 3rd party Ram. Building a powerful PC is still going to cost you a lot of $$, and Cubase Pro is going to cost you around $900 alone.


Yes, the current Intel macs are all fine for audio production with or without an upgraded graphics card. I have a 2015 iMac i7 with a basic graphics card and a 2020 iMac i9 with an upgraded card, and both operate about the same with audio programs. The i9 is much better for video editing, rendering, transcoding, and such. And my i9 can handle a much larger track load due to more cores and more memory. But I don't see the GPU kicking in much at all, even with 3 monitors.



fakemaxwell said:


> Graphics card is definitely the last thing on the list in "most important parts of computer for audio) so I'm not sure where this is coming from.



Yes, GPU is about the last thing I'd be concerned with when it comes to audio programs as well.



Thomas Costantino said:


> Having come from iTunes, everything I’ve tried seems like junk.


If iTunes is an example of a good media player, I'd really hate to see a bad one, because iTunes (now Music app) is horrible—just try to find anything if you have more than a couple hundred tracks—and it's getting worse with each iteration. iTunes/Music app is by far the worst application that I use regularly, and I only use it regularly because its ubiquity in the MacOS has made developing alternatives a no win proposition for other developers. Would be happy to hear what other folks have found for alternatives though.


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## Thomas Costantino

MojoMusik said:


> Thanks for the message. I do actually have an AMD vega56 card in my old pc. Maybe that would do the trick ( still need a new pc build though to make it all work)



Not sure where that one falls in line on the power scale. There’s a bunch of tech sites that rank them. May do you some good to look it up. Hopefully it falls in line with the top 50 percent. If you can make the investment, I’d go with something in the top 30 ( which the silicon chips will barely touch) . Can always pop it in and see what’s what.


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## Patryk Scelina

KEM said:


> Once everything you use becomes native to Apple Silicon I wouldn’t upgrade, I was on High Sierra for like 6 years and only recently upgraded to Big Sur (bad idea), so whatever the new Mac I get ships with I will probably be on for a very long time. Thankfully most of the stuff I use is now native


I have similar approach. I've been using Maverics for years, then with a new computer switch to Mojave and revcntly again with new a computer to Big Sur and that one hurts the most.


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## MojoMusik

Thanks to everyone that has taken the time to reply. This was my first post on the forum and have been thoroughly taken aback by all the help and wisdom that you've shared so far. Hopefully I will be able to pay it forward and contribute to the forum in the future. ❤


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## KEM

Patryk Scelina said:


> I have similar approach. I've been using Maverics for years, then with a new computer switch to Mojave and revcntly again with new a computer to Big Sur and that one hurts the most.



Big Sur wasn’t good for older Mac’s that’s for sure, mine struggles because of it


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## Thomas Costantino

jbuhler said:


> Yes, the current Intel macs are all fine for audio production with or without an upgraded graphics card. I have a 2015 iMac i7 with a basic graphics card and a 2020 iMac i9 with an upgraded card, and both operate about the same with audio programs. The i9 is much better for video editing, rendering, transcoding, and such. And my i9 can handle a much larger track load due to more cores and more memory. But I don't see the GPU kicking in much at all, even with 3 monitors.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, GPU is about the last thing I'd be concerned with when it comes to audio programs as well.
> 
> 
> If iTunes is an example of a good media player, I'd really hate to see a bad one, because iTunes (now Music app) is horrible—just try to find anything if you have more than a couple hundred tracks—and it's getting worse with each iteration. iTunes/Music app is by far the worst application that I use regularly, and I only use it regularly because its ubiquity in the MacOS has made developing alternatives a no win proposition for other developers. Would be happy to hear what other folks have found for alternatives though.



Strictly for audio, I found iTunes much easier than what I’ve experienced. I would also love to see what others are using as well. I believe there’s another thread on the matter. 

In relation to the GPU kicking in, your not going to see that measurement when the DAW is hitting its load to display more tracks, effect render/bouncing times or even prevent freeze situations. Honestly, from having invested and dealt with this situation and producing various machine builds and experimenting on new Mac machines... the GPU is a huge factor. Saying it’s not is an assumption- one that we’ve all made. 

OP is loading a crazy amount of tracks and the new Apple machines can’t handle that. A PC with a gaming GPU can.


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## alcorey

Have you looked into Babylon Waves "Art Conductor" articulation sets for Logic? It may be helpful for you.

Also, here is a link to a thread that may be of interest regarding Cubase - https://vi-control.net/community/threads/cubase-performance-on-windows-11-vs-hackintosh.121689/

16GB ram is an absolute bottleneck here for you and it is very unfortunate that ram is now "frozen" in newer Macs at this point. I'm waiting to see what's coming and not buying a new Mac until I'm certain it will perform for me for the next 5+ years.

I'm running Big Sur on a 6 year old Hackintosh at this point with a 32GB ram limitation - and I feel it at times. But I get by OK for now.
When the new Macs are announced I will either buy one or build a newer Hackintosh that should last me for at least 4 - 5 years - and in that time period I will hopefully find a new Mac to go forward with.


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## MojoMusik

alcorey said:


> Have you looked into Babylon Waves "Art Conductor" articulation sets for Logic? It may be helpful for you.
> 
> Also, here is a link to a thread that may be of interest regarding Cubase - https://vi-control.net/community/threads/cubase-performance-on-windows-11-vs-hackintosh.121689/
> 
> 16GB ram is an absolute bottleneck here for you and it is very unfortunate that ram is now "frozen" in newer Macs at this point. I'm waiting to see what's coming and not buying a new Mac until I'm certain it will perform for me for the next 5+ years.
> 
> I'm running Big Sur on a 6 year old Hackintosh at this point with a 32GB ram limitation - and I feel it at times. But I get by OK for now.
> When the new Macs are announced I will either buy one or build a newer Hackintosh that should last me for at least 4 - 5 years - and in that time period I will hopefully find a new Mac to go forward with.


Thanks. Yes I briefly looked at it but had heard that although it is an improvement, there was still some issues with it managing some of the inherent latencies. Handling all the different latencies in CSS for example is a pain and I'd kind of resigned myself to just manually nudging each articulation by the appropriate values. Please feel free to share your experience with it though as admittedly I've not tried it myself.


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## jbuhler

Thomas Costantino said:


> Strictly for audio, I found iTunes much easier than what I’ve experienced. I would also love to see what others are using as well. I believe there’s another thread on the matter.
> 
> In relation to the GPU kicking in, your not going to see that measurement when the DAW is hitting its load to display more tracks, effect render/bouncing times or even prevent freeze situations. Honestly, from having invested and dealt with this situation and producing various machine builds and experimenting on new Mac machines... the GPU is a huge factor. Saying it’s not is an assumption- one that we’ve all made.
> 
> OP is loading a crazy amount of tracks and the new Apple machines can’t handle that. A PC with a gaming GPU can.


Well, not with 16 GB he's not going to handle that. And he won't be able to handle it with 16GB if he has the best GPU available. The choke point for a large template is the 16GB not the GPU. I can run very large templates on my 2015 iMac with no problem so long as I don't hit the limits of RAM.

On the base GPU machine, there is no slowness in scrolling with large templates if I'm not near the RAM limit. The differences in everything else from the 2020 iMac with i9 and upgraded GPU are much better accounted for by having 6 more cores... Now when it comes to rendering video, transcoding, and such, then the GPU makes a big advantage. But for audio, really not.

I mean I have these two 27" imacs, one with the enhanced GPU and the other without it, and I just don't see a notable difference for audio work. I mean the one with the GPU is a newer and more advanced machine, with twice the memory and more than double the cores, but aside from being able to load more tracks because I don't hit the RAM ceiling as quickly, I don't notice much difference between working on one machine versus working on the other with audio. With video, it's night and day, but audio, not really.


----------



## Jett Hitt

MojoMusik said:


> Thanks. Yes I briefly looked at it but had heard that although it is an improvement, there was still some issues with it managing some of the inherent latencies. Handling all the different latencies in CSS for example is a pain and I'd kind of resigned myself to just manually nudging each articulation by the appropriate values. Please feel free to share your experience with it though as admittedly I've not tried it myself.


Babylonwaves articulation sets work wonderfully well, and the latency in CSS is easily mitigated with a global offset at the beginning of the track.


----------



## aeliron

KEM said:


> Mac may be more expensive but it’s just so much more intuitive and optimization has always been much better (for me, anyway). I have both Mac and PC and yeah, PC you get more power for the price but I would never in a million years want to be a Windows user, it’s sluggish and glitchy and I’ve only ever hated it
> 
> Not to mention Apple Silicon is the future of cpu technology, much better to invest in it now, you’ll thank yourself later


To be fair: I switched from PC to Mac some years back, much better experience for music making. But today PCs are much better than in my day, so ...

Mac is still inexplicably terrible at some basic things (shortcut keys usually need 2-3 modifiers (ctrl-opt-shift-cmd-whatever), and they're different across apps; windows behavior is weird; email app is terrible (can't handle simple multi-level numbered lists the way you think it should, zoom, etc.); family sharing is a mess; iCloud is confusing; iTunes keeps threatening to erase your whole library, etc.

But yes, Apple Silicon is waaaay ahead. If only they could make the rest of it more user-friendly!


----------



## Thomas Costantino

jbuhler said:


> Well, not with 16 GB he's not going to handle that. And he won't be able to handle it with 16GB if he has the best GPU available. The choke point for a large template is the 16GB not the GPU. I can run very large templates on my 2015 iMac with no problem so long as I don't hit the limits of RAM.
> 
> On the base GPU machine, there is no slowness in scrolling with large templates if I'm not near the RAM limit. The differences in everything else from the 2020 iMac with i9 and upgraded GPU are much better accounted for by having 6 more cores... Now when it comes to rendering video, transcoding, and such, then the GPU makes a big advantage. But for audio, really not.
> 
> I mean I have these two 27" imacs, one with the enhanced GPU and the other without it, and I just don't see a notable difference for audio work. I mean the one with the GPU is a newer and more advanced machine, with twice the memory and more than double the cores, but aside from being able to load more tracks because I don't hit the RAM ceiling as quickly, I don't notice much difference between working on one machine versus working on the other with audio. With video, it's night and day, but audio, not really.



Yea 32 GB Ram is essential at this point... 64 is ideal. I’ll tell ya, there’s something about Apples 2015 machines. I still run a 2015 MacBook for other work and sometimes when I want to dive back into Logic. As far as dependability and design, it’s flawless. They could literally just install new silicon guts into those designs and have a wonderful machine.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

aeliron said:


> iCloud is confusing


I love my Mac's, but THIS. I'm still trying to figure out how to get my desktop files back after letting iCloud take it up up there.


----------



## alcorey

Jeremy Spencer said:


> I love my Mac's, but THIS. I'm still trying to figure out how to get my desktop files back after letting iCloud take it up up there.


Ha, been using Macs since early 90s - but never went "up there"


----------



## MojoMusik

Jett Hitt said:


> Babylonwaves articulation sets work wonderfully well, and the latency in CSS is easily mitigated with a global offset at the beginning of the track.


This is true in some libraries but css has different latencies ranging from 60ms to 330ms depending on the articulation. I'm not entirely happy with just using a global offset, unless i want to separate every single articulation to an individual track.


----------



## Thomas Costantino

alcorey said:


> Ha, been using Macs since early 90s - but never went "up there"



Ha same ! Never. I’ll keep my data safe and sound in the physical world. iCloud is a fancy name for Data Prison.


----------



## José Herring




----------



## aeliron

Jeremy Spencer said:


> I love my Mac's, but THIS. I'm still trying to figure out how to get my desktop files back after letting iCloud take it up up there.


What happens when you try to copy them?


----------



## KEM

aeliron said:


> To be fair: I switched from PC to Mac some years back, much better experience for music making. But today PCs are much better than in my day, so ...
> 
> Mac is still inexplicably terrible at some basic things (shortcut keys usually need 2-3 modifiers (ctrl-opt-shift-cmd-whatever), and they're different across apps; windows behavior is weird; email app is terrible (can't handle simple multi-level numbered lists the way you think it should, zoom, etc.); family sharing is a mess; iCloud is confusing; iTunes keeps threatening to erase your whole library, etc.
> 
> But yes, Apple Silicon is waaaay ahead. If only they could make the rest of it more user-friendly!



I’ve actually never used iCloud on my Mac before, only on my iPhone, but it works great there. Haven’t used the email app either, now that I think about it I don’t do much on my computer besides make music or listen to music (with Apple Music of course)

One of the absolute best features Apple has is AirDrop, it is one of the most convenient tools I’ve ever used and it also saves me a ton of time, and it’s also great for pulling pranks lol


----------



## Pier

KEM said:


> Ludwig uses Mac though!! And you’re right that there’s no difference between Cubase on Mac or Windows, for me the reason I like MacOS so much more is Finder, I can’t stand Windows file browser, maybe I’m just an idiot but it is much more complicated to me


I totally agree the file explorer on Windows is fugly.



Thomas Costantino said:


> I know it sounds weird but the graphics need to be just as powerful as your other components. Its primarily what causes crashes and freezes. It’s not about the plugins. More about the DAW needing power to display and process on the graphics level.


Yeah there are countless videos on the last Intel Mini bottlenecking because of the terrible integrated GPU. People forced to run Logic at 1080p because it stuttered like crazy at 4k even though the CPU load is not high.

And it's not only the DAW. Everything is GPU accelerated these days.


----------



## Thomas Costantino

Pier said:


> I totally agree the file explorer on Windows is fugly.
> 
> 
> Yeah there are countless videos on the last Intel Mini bottlenecking because of the terrible integrated GPU. People forced to run Logic at 1080p because it stuttered like crazy at 4k even though the CPU load is not high.
> 
> And it's not only the DAW. Everything is GPU accelerated these days.



My Lord.. I thought I was alone lol TomSolo out here.


----------



## aeliron

KEM said:


> I’ve actually never used iCloud on my Mac before, only on my iPhone, but it works great there. Haven’t used the email app either, now that I think about it I don’t do much on my computer besides make music or listen to music (with Apple Music of course)
> 
> One of the absolute best features Apple has is AirDrop, it is one of the most convenient tools I’ve ever used and it also saves me a ton of time, and it’s also great for pulling pranks lol


Yeah, on the desktop you have to come to grips with the fact that iCloud was designed to be a syncing service, rather than an extra storage drive. You then have to get around what it tries to do for you, e.g. "optimizing" by downloading gazillions of files to your drive, etc. and find ways to use it as you want.

But, like iTunes, the warning messages you get ... "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO ERASE ALL YOUR FILES" or the like when you change a setting ... Jobs is turning over in his iCoffin (or was it iUrn).


----------



## Pier

aeliron said:


> But yes, Apple Silicon is waaaay ahead. If only they could make the rest of it more user-friendly!


Nah.

In fact the latest Intel chips already outperform the M1 in single core performance:









PassMark CPU Benchmarks - Single Thread Performance


Benchmarks of the single thread performance of CPUs. This chart comparing CPUs single thread performance is made using thousands of PerformanceTest benchmark results and is updated daily.



www.cpubenchmark.net





The M2 chip probably will get a bit ahead in single core perf, but the M1 desktop chips (Mac Pro and big iMac) will not.

In terms of multicore perf the M1 chip is way behind (rank 176) compared to the desktop chips of AMD and Intel:









PassMark Intel vs AMD CPU Benchmarks - High End


PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - Over 1 million CPUs and 1,000 models benchmarked and compared in graph form, updated daily!



www.cpubenchmark.net





The M1 chips are really amazing in terms of efficiency, which is of course mostly relevant for laptops. But AMD Zen 4 5nm chips are releasing this year and are promised to be much more efficient. Maybe even as efficient as the M1 chips.


----------



## Thomas Costantino

aeliron said:


> Yeah, on the desktop you have to come to grips with the fact that iCloud was designed to be a syncing service, rather than an extra storage drive. You then have to get around what it tries to do for you, e.g. "optimizing" by downloading gazillions of files to your drive, etc. and find ways to use it as you want.
> 
> But, like iTunes, the warning messages you get ... "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO ERASE ALL YOUR FILES" or the like when you change a setting ... Jobs is turning over in his iCoffin (or was it iUrn).



I think about that all the time: What Would Jobs Do.


----------



## CATDAD

Thomas Costantino said:


> My Lord.. I thought I was alone lol TomSolo out here.


I think it’s less about having a powerful GPU, and more just about having a “not shit” GPU. With a dedicated GPU most anything would be good enough, but with integrated this could vary significantly for sure.


----------



## Thomas Costantino

Pier said:


> Nah.
> 
> In fact the latest Intel chips already outperform the M1 in single core performance:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PassMark CPU Benchmarks - Single Thread Performance
> 
> 
> Benchmarks of the single thread performance of CPUs. This chart comparing CPUs single thread performance is made using thousands of PerformanceTest benchmark results and is updated daily.
> 
> 
> 
> www.cpubenchmark.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The M2 chip probably will get a bit ahead in single core perf, but the M1 desktop chips (Mac Pro and big iMac) will not.
> 
> In terms of multicore perf the M1 chip is way behind (rank 176) compared to the desktop chips of AMD and Intel:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PassMark Intel vs AMD CPU Benchmarks - High End
> 
> 
> PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - Over 1 million CPUs and 1,000 models benchmarked and compared in graph form, updated daily!
> 
> 
> 
> www.cpubenchmark.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The M1 chips are really amazing in terms of efficiency, which is of course mostly relevant for laptops. But AMD Zen 4 5nm chips are releasing this year and are promised to be much more efficient. Maybe even as efficient as the M1 chips.



It’s good to see this competition ! Up until a couple years ago I’d be all in on Apple no matter what. Now it’s about flexibility. I’ll float to where the advancements are being made. Maybe Hackintosh is the way


----------



## jbuhler

Thomas Costantino said:


> I think about that all the time: What Would Jobs Do.


I think we all agree on this. Though to be fair to current Apple, I think he'd be all in on the Silicon chips.


----------



## Thomas Costantino

jbuhler said:


> I think we all agree on this. Though to be fair to current Apple, I think he'd be all in on the Silicon chips.



I’d go as far to say that the M1 concept ( or being chip independent ) was part of his legacy. Who knows how much he left for them to accomplish.


----------



## Pier

jbuhler said:


> I think we all agree on this. Though to be fair to current Apple, I think he'd be all in on the Silicon chips.


Oh yeah definitely. E2E control is really part of his legacy.


----------



## alcorey

Thomas Costantino said:


> It’s good to see this competition ! Up until a couple years ago I’d be all in on Apple no matter what. Now it’s about flexibility. I’ll float to where the advancements are being made. Maybe Hackintosh is the way


Check out this new Hack video - it's long and she is certainly a character, but I think she has really got a great solution - I'm trying to learn more in case I build a new Hack

OT - BTW I'm also originally from R.I. - Clamcakes and Chowdah raised


----------



## Thomas Costantino

alcorey said:


> Check out this new Hack video - it's long and she is certainly a character, but I think she has really got a great solution - I'm trying to learn more in case I build a new Hack
> 
> OT - BTW I'm also originally from R.I. - Clamcakes and Chowdah raised



We got Chowdah coursing through our veins 😂... if you don’t know what a Clamcake is, I can’t trust you.


----------



## aeliron

Pier said:


> Nah.
> 
> In fact the latest Intel chips already outperform the M1 in single core performance:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PassMark CPU Benchmarks - Single Thread Performance
> 
> 
> Benchmarks of the single thread performance of CPUs. This chart comparing CPUs single thread performance is made using thousands of PerformanceTest benchmark results and is updated daily.
> 
> 
> 
> www.cpubenchmark.net


Nice. Something more to salivate over!


----------



## Saxer

I'm running a Hackintosh with Catalina and Logic 10.6.3 since two years without problems. Until there's a useful Mac-Pro or at least Mini-Pro and mostly Silicon compatible plugins I'll stay with it.


----------



## KEM

Saxer said:


> I'm running a Hackintosh with Catalina and Logic 10.6.3 since two years without problems. Until there's a useful Mac-Pro or at least Mini-Pro and mostly Silicon compatible plugins I'll stay with it.



Wait like 2 more weeks lol


----------



## robgb

God no.


----------



## rMancer

Mac is sort of like Spitfire to me. You pay a premium for the "lifestyle" aspect that they're selling, independent of actual performance or features. That's not to say Mac is any better or worse in actual use, but it's definitely a factor to be considered. 

Personally I love PC; more flexibility with hardware/build, far less expensive, more options with software generally, and if you want to do any gaming at all you'll probably end up wanting a PC for that. And Air Lyndhurst can be a bit much.


----------



## Thomas Costantino

rMancer said:


> Mac is sort of like Spitfire to me. You pay a premium for the "lifestyle" aspect that they're selling, independent of actual performance or features. That's not to say Mac is any better or worse in actual use, but it's definitely a factor to be considered.
> 
> Personally I love PC; more flexibility with hardware/build, far less expensive, more options with software generally, and if you want to do any gaming at all you'll probably end up wanting a PC for that. And Air Lyndhurst can be a bit much.



Very Interesting analogy.


----------



## Thomas Costantino

This thread made me reflect on the technology we have as composers. It’s truly incredible. I have a great appreciation for both Windows and Mac. 

With that being said ... 

It seems invasive data collection, Cloud based storage, and download only apps are becoming a large part of these operating systems. I understand things evolve and we must adapt. On the other hand, do you feel the ‘Personal’ is being taken out of Personal Computing ? Do you see a future demand for something new ? Or maybe music companies adapting software for Linux ? Will Microsoft and Apple be responsive to users wanting more privacy and less headaches with version upgrades ?

Having only 2 major operating systems is a huge benefit to third party software developers, but seems quite limiting to users. Any thoughts ?


----------



## rMancer

Thomas Costantino said:


> This thread made me reflect on the technology we have as composers. It’s truly incredible. I have a great appreciation for both Windows and Mac.
> 
> With that being said ...
> 
> It seems invasive data collection, Cloud based storage, and download only apps are becoming a large part of these operating systems. I understand things evolve and we must adapt. On the other hand, do you feel the ‘Personal’ is being taken out of Personal Computing ? Do you see a future demand for something new ? Or maybe music companies adapting software for Linux ? Will Microsoft and Apple be responsive to users wanting more privacy and less headaches with version upgrades ?
> 
> Having only 2 major operating systems is a huge benefit to third party software developers, but seems quite limiting to users. Any thoughts ?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

I'd definitely wait until the 21st century before you think about switching. You still need Pro Tools TDM to do serious audio work, and going native on a PC and relying on a computer for everything is never going to work.

But if you do switch, be sure to get the right SCSI hard drive.

Gotta go play with my Palm Pilot and watch President Bill Clinton.

How about that economy!


----------



## aeliron

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I'd definitely wait until the 21st century before you think about switching. You still need Pro Tools TDM to do serious audio work, and going native on a PC and relying on a computer for everything is never going to work.
> 
> But if you do switch, be sure to get the right SCSI hard drive.
> 
> Gotta go play with my Palm Pilot and watch President Bill Clinton.
> 
> How about that economy!


I heard Apple is going to do some kind of … tablet thing. Think it’s worth waiting for?


----------



## Pier

rMancer said:


>


Also Bitwig runs on Linux.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

aeliron said:


> I heard Apple is going to do some kind of … tablet thing. Think it’s worth waiting for?


I hear Palm is going to come out with this thing called a Treo that combines the Pilot and a cellphone.


----------



## Saxer

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I hear Palm is going to come out with this thing called a Treo that combines the Pilot and a cellphone.


I heard they build a camera with a television set into a telephone box.


----------



## samphony

I told you all we’re living in the 80s, still!


----------



## aeliron

samphony said:


> I told you all we’re living in the 80s, still!


Hey, that’s where 80% of the best pop music still lives!


----------



## jblongz

M1 Macbook Pro user here...I built a PC last year with AMD 5900x (12core) and 128GB of RAM, all for less than the new Mac Studio equivalent announced this week (major size difference though). My intent for the PC is rendering 3D animation and VEPro 7 slave. So to the OP, it may be worth considering. I also use the Elgato Thunderbolt 3 Pro dock for gigabit ethernet and having all accessories connect to Mac with one cable. Compared to the Mac setup, you'll still have budget to add a 8TB SATA SSD for sound libraries and keep your system on a 2TB NVME. 

Windows 11 Pro has been stable for me and introduced some Mac features. If you get the Logitech MX Keyboard with the matching mouse. you can flow through both screens as if it was a single dual screen computer using their unifying receiver and flow software.

As for Logic Pro's crash bugs, I'm not sure where you'll find better sanctuary. I have Cubase 10 and 12, Ableton 11, Bitwig 4, ProTools 12, Reason 12... still a few crashes here and there with all. Logic and Ableton have the better session recovery methods in my own experience. Perhaps sourcing a VEPro slave will help alleviate some buggy interactions with DAW and other plugins, but I'd only recommend that route for big projects with a lot of 3rd party instrument plugins.


----------



## easyrider

Pier said:


> I totally agree the file explorer on Windows is fugly.


Do you not use a third party file explorer? 🤭


----------



## Pier

easyrider said:


> Do you not use a third party file explorer? 🤭


I considered using Files but never got around to it... and then I just got used to all the Windows fuglyness 😂

Edit:

To be fair, I don't use the file explorer that much. I only use Windows to open Bitwig or Steam.


----------



## KEM

Get a Mac Studio


----------



## easyrider

Get a PC


----------



## aeliron

KEM said:


> Get a Mac Studio


No.

He'll push back delivery times for the rest of us.


----------



## aeliron

easyrider said:


> Get a PC


When are Chromebooks gonna get some love around here


----------



## KEM

aeliron said:


> No.
> 
> He'll push back delivery times for the rest of us.



Fair point, if I see my early April date change I’ll be blaming OP


----------



## Thomas Costantino

jblongz said:


> M1 Macbook Pro user here...I built a PC last year with AMD 5900x (12core) and 128GB of RAM, all for less than the new Mac Studio equivalent announced this week (major size difference though). My intent for the PC is rendering 3D animation and VEPro 7 slave. So to the OP, it may be worth considering. I also use the Elgato Thunderbolt 3 Pro dock for gigabit ethernet and having all accessories connect to Mac with one cable. Compared to the Mac setup, you'll still have budget to add a 8TB SATA SSD for sound libraries and keep your system on a 2TB NVME.
> 
> Windows 11 Pro has been stable for me and introduced some Mac features. If you get the Logitech MX Keyboard with the matching mouse. you can flow through both screens as if it was a single dual screen computer using their unifying receiver and flow software.
> 
> As for Logic Pro's crash bugs, I'm not sure where you'll find better sanctuary. I have Cubase 10 and 12, Ableton 11, Bitwig 4, ProTools 12, Reason 12... still a few crashes here and there with all. Logic and Ableton have the better session recovery methods in my own experience. Perhaps sourcing a VEPro slave will help alleviate some buggy interactions with DAW and other plugins, but I'd only recommend that route for big projects with a lot of 3rd party instrument plugins.



Excellent post. Switching to Cubase from Logic wasn’t that bad. I miss some Logic features, but Cubase has surprised me with some serious workflow additions.


----------



## Cdnalsi

Funny how in all these 'switching to' discussions the Windows people will say switch, the Mac people will say don't. 

But the majority of Mac people switched from Windows, while the majority of Windows people haven't even used a Mac.


----------



## Thomas Costantino

Cdnalsi said:


> Funny how in all these 'switching to' discussions the Windows people will say switch, the Mac people will say don't.
> 
> But the majority of Mac people switched from Windows, while the majority of Windows people haven't even used a Mac.



On point 😂


----------



## Pier

Cdnalsi said:


> Funny how in all these 'switching to' discussions the Windows people will say switch, the Mac people will say don't.
> 
> But the majority of Mac people switched from Windows, while the majority of Windows people haven't even used a Mac.


The explanation is pretty simple actually.

Macs only account for like 15% of the desktop market share worldwide. This explains why most people started on Windows, why there are a lot more Windows users who have never user a Mac, and why people who have never used Windows are rare.

Both platforms really have pros and cons.

The M1 Mini and Studio have amazing value for the price. But if you want to do other stuff on that machine like gaming or using Nvidia CUDA, macOS is really a no-go.

Personally I think macOS has much better UX, but Windows is not as horrible as it used to be and Microsoft has finally been working on that. And, like I mentioned before, once you're inside your DAW it makes absolutely no difference which OS you're using.

Even with all the amazing Mac hardware Apple is pulling out lately, the truth is you're buying a closed system which is impossible to upgrade and difficult/expensive (or even impossible) to repair. Good luck repairing your Mac if you don't live in a big city or living outside the US/EU. Just a couple of weeks ago, Apple Mexico wanted to charge me $1000 to basically replace all the parts of a MB Air (except the display) because of a keyboard/trackpad problem.

With a Windows tower you can replace/upgrade any component at any time. You have total control of the hardware. It's true the M1 chips are unrivaled in terms of efficiency, but this is not critical for a desktop.

Let's not forget about all the bullshit Apple pulls regularly like introducing breaking changes on every OS version. Windows still can run software from 10+ years ago. You simply can't do that on macOS. Developers struggle to keep up with Apple. Eg: Photoshop is still not fully supported on Monterey which was released 6 months ago but it's rock solid on Windows.

Again, both platforms have pros and cons.

Edit:

That said it's quite amazing Apple has pretty much removed pricing out of the equation of Mac vs PC.


----------



## Instrugramm

Just my point of view:

As a tech enthusiast I'll use whatever gives me the right performance and stability, right now Apple is still in transition towards ARM chips, meaning that a lot of software isn't supported yet (it'll mature and probably be awesome at some point). In terms of hardware I think they're both at a very similar level.

Imo the typical Apple vs PC discussion is pretty pointless, use whatever gives you the tools necessary, live and let live. There are enough real conflicts in the world already.


----------



## jblongz

If this Apple Studio high end GPU can beat an nvidia 3090 cuda compute when it comes to rendering and the cpu compares to Xeon AFTER thermal throttling, I’ll drop some cash on it. The system is impressive in terms of power efficiency, but lets wait for the real world performance. 

Surely whoever buys it early has a chance to get a lot of YouTube attention, especially on this forum for relevant topics. I’d be willing to do for “for the team”, but I want something in return…*ahem* DAW templates and coffee.


----------



## jblongz

Just saw that I’d have to wait until June for this config. Shame.


----------



## RogiervG

Move to windows if you want, or don't. 

in general: Windows fans, will defend windows. mac fans, will defend mac os. Easy peasy.. 
Use your own gut feeling. And take a pick. 
Both sides have con's and pro's (there are too many to sum them up. Do some research online, outside of this forum: computer forums where both parties are active with lots of computing/hardware knowlege (indepth), will suit this better imho). 

as for music making use:
Both are up to the task of making music, and depending on the hardware specs, you can do a lot of sample tracks or lesser so. All hardware, like controllers, audio interfaces etc... (the main players anyway) have good support (e.g drivers) on both os'es. . Many DAWS are available on both platforms.


----------



## ed buller

I miss mac's. They are easy and straightforward . But It's like owning a BMW or an AUDI. I need a cheap truck. Yes it needs to be fast, yes it needs a shit ton of memory. I bought it two years ago. Cost me 4k. 

(Intel i9 10980XE 18 Core 36 Threads 4.6GHz Asus X299-A II 256GB DDR4 RAM 3200MHz )

At the time the same computer from Apple would have been over 20 grand....at least !

Since then i have added three drives, changed two graphics cards and upgraded my three most important programs. Again that would Not have been possible on Steve Job's finest

My last two Cheasegraters are in the garage. They aren't upgradable Even my fucking pictures !!!!...The iPhoto on the computers is too old. And the chipset won't allow anything post 2015 .

So I own a MacBook, Ipad pro, Ipad, Iphone...all great for mucking about.

I earn a living on my PC

best

e


----------



## jblongz

I ultimately lean towards Mac for overall use, but PC is relevant for brute power at a more reasonable price...perhaps until Mac Studio 2nd gen.
If you decide to go the PC route and don't need outrageous specs, consider an iTX mother board for smaller size cars. Some of the recent chipsets (AMD x570 or Intel Z690) allow up to 64GB RAM on an iTX, 4 Sata ports, and 2 name slots. Same spec as the base Mac Studio, for half the price. 

If you decide to stay Mac, consider if MacMini M1 is sufficient power for your need and catch a hastily seller within the next few weeks. Honsely, Im very impressed by the top of line Mac Studio marking specs, that I'm willing to sit it out for the next version.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Instrugramm said:


> right now Apple is still in transition towards ARM chips, meaning that a lot of software isn't supported yet (it'll mature and probably be awesome at some point).



Actually it is supported under Rosetta. There is some broken software, but as a general rule I don't see any reason to hold off.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

jblongz said:


> I ultimately lean towards Mac for overall use, but PC is relevant for brute power at a more reasonable price...perhaps until Mac Studio 2nd gen.
> 
> If you decide to go the PC route and don't need outrageous specs, consider an iTX mother board for smaller size cars. Some of the recent chipsets (AMD x570 or Intel Z690) allow up to 64GB RAM on an iTX, 4 Sata ports, and 2 name slots. Same spec as the base Mac Studio, for half the price.
> 
> If you decide to stay Mac, consider if MacMini M1 is sufficient power for your need and catch a hastily seller within the next few weeks. Honsely, Im very impressed by the top of line Mac Studio marking specs, that I'm willing to sit it out for the next version.


What exactly is wrong with the current generation? If you look at backward-cap benchrmark specs, these processors are more ripped than anything else.


----------



## Tim_Wells

Cdnalsi said:


> But the majority of Mac people switched from Windows, while the majority of Windows people haven't even used a Mac.


You don't need to switch when you're completely happy.


----------



## aeliron

Tim_Wells said:


> You don't need to switch when you're completely happy.


But … you could be happiER … 😝


----------



## dylanmixer

Long time Mac user here that switched to Windows a little over a year ago. I too was worried about the supposed jankyness of the Windows OS. But to my surprise, it has been a squeaky clean experience. I built a PC with good hardware, good drivers, and I keep it updated and maintained well, and it is perfect for me. I even found that Cubase performance is exceedingly better on PC than it is on Mac. After my iMac busted and there was virtually no way to fix it, I feel a lot more comfortable knowing that I can simply open the unit up and switch parts out within minutes. Trying to open up a Mac is like trying to breach Area 51.


----------



## phil_wc

jblongz said:


> Windows 11 Pro has been stable for me and introduced some Mac features. If you get the Logitech MX Keyboard with the matching mouse. you can flow through both screens as if it was a single dual screen computer using their unifying receiver and flow software.


How's DAW performance on Win11? any downside of upgrading now? Could you please tell me how's your experience on it. I'm thinking about go for intel 12900k and it needs Win11.


----------



## Zedcars

Pier said:


> Nah.
> 
> In fact the latest Intel chips already outperform the M1 in single core performance:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PassMark CPU Benchmarks - Single Thread Performance
> 
> 
> Benchmarks of the single thread performance of CPUs. This chart comparing CPUs single thread performance is made using thousands of PerformanceTest benchmark results and is updated daily.
> 
> 
> 
> www.cpubenchmark.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The M2 chip probably will get a bit ahead in single core perf, but the M1 desktop chips (Mac Pro and big iMac) will not.
> 
> In terms of multicore perf the M1 chip is way behind (rank 176) compared to the desktop chips of AMD and Intel:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PassMark Intel vs AMD CPU Benchmarks - High End
> 
> 
> PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - Over 1 million CPUs and 1,000 models benchmarked and compared in graph form, updated daily!
> 
> 
> 
> www.cpubenchmark.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The M1 chips are really amazing in terms of efficiency, which is of course mostly relevant for laptops. But AMD Zen 4 5nm chips are releasing this year and are promised to be much more efficient. Maybe even as efficient as the M1 chips.


Your last point is not insignificant though because, although it’s not as obvious as laptop battery drain speed, those watts per hours aren’t going to pay for themselves. Over the course of the lifetime of the computer it will amount to serious savings.


----------



## Zedcars

Pier said:


> The explanation is pretty simple actually.
> 
> Macs only account for like 15% of the desktop market share worldwide. This explains why most people started on Windows, why there are a lot more Windows users who have never user a Mac, and why people who have never used Windows are rare.
> 
> Both platforms really have pros and cons.
> 
> The M1 Mini and Studio have amazing value for the price. But if you want to do other stuff on that machine like gaming or using Nvidia CUDA, macOS is really a no-go.
> 
> Personally I think macOS has much better UX, but Windows is not as horrible as it used to be and Microsoft has finally been working on that. And, like I mentioned before, once you're inside your DAW it makes absolutely no difference which OS you're using.
> 
> Even with all the amazing Mac hardware Apple is pulling out lately, the truth is you're buying a closed system which is impossible to upgrade and difficult/expensive (or even impossible) to repair. Good luck repairing your Mac if you don't live in a big city or living outside the US/EU. Just a couple of weeks ago, Apple Mexico wanted to charge me $1000 to basically replace all the parts of a MB Air (except the display) because of a keyboard/trackpad problem.
> 
> With a Windows tower you can replace/upgrade any component at any time. You have total control of the hardware. It's true the M1 chips are unrivaled in terms of efficiency, but this is not critical for a desktop.
> 
> Let's not forget about all the bullshit Apple pulls regularly like introducing breaking changes on every OS version. Windows still can run software from 10+ years ago. You simply can't do that on macOS. Developers struggle to keep up with Apple. Eg: Photoshop is still not fully supported on Monterey which was released 6 months ago but it's rock solid on Windows.
> 
> Again, both platforms have pros and cons.
> 
> Edit:
> 
> That said it's quite amazing Apple has pretty much removed pricing out of the equation of Mac vs PC.


I started on a Spectrum +2, moved to Atari 1040ST and from there to a Mac Clone CW Nashville with System 7. Then got a Power Mac G3, then G4 Dual Processor, then bought a PC to run VSL Synphonic Cube on, but hated it immensely (noisy, crashed loads, horrible GUI, having to run AV etc). Sold that and got a G5 Quad…then 2 generations of Intel Mac Minis and now the Mac Studio. I use Windows 10 at work and in Parallels. I much prefer it to anything that came before but still prefer macOS. Just easier on the eye.

By the way, I remember when the Mac user base was much smaller. I think it was something like 2.6% in 1997. So to go from that when Apple were on their knees and seemingly near death to 15% is pretty incredible.


----------



## Jotto

I have used Mac and Logic for the last ten years and i would have prefered to stay. But..i dont think i can afford it. Its just way to expencive. I think im going to switch


----------



## ed buller

Jotto said:


> I have used Mac and Logic for the last ten years and i would have prefered to stay. But..i dont think i can afford it. Its just way to expencive. I think im going to switch


you won't regret it. DAW's are built for PC's ( logic notwithstanding)

best

e


----------



## Braveheart

Every time Apple release a new OS version, many VST’s are incompatible without an update from the developer. On PC, older VST’s are still working after many years not supported…


----------



## jblongz

Nick Batzdorf said:


> What exactly is wrong with the current generation? If you look at backward-cap benchrmark specs, these processors are more ripped than anything else.


An important factor yet to be determined is the thermal performance in real world. If the Mac Studio cannot cool efficiently at load (especially for rendering video/animation), the ”ripped” CPU cores will be throttled. Even though it can benchmark faster than the Mac Pro, we need to see how it moves heat in such a small package. Now if Apple offered a water-cooled method, I would be less concerned. We will know more once someone does some real tests, Apple has never offered details in this regard, but every laptop and mac mini has throttled in the past.




phil_wc said:


> How's DAW performance on Win11? any downside of upgrading now? Could you please tell me how's your experience on it. I'm thinking about go for intel 12900k and it needs Win11.


Windows 11 Pro feels very solid to me. I use ASIO drivers for audio. Once your hardware is good, you should have no issues. I went the AMD route for comparable performance and slightly less power usage. Intel chips should perform well too. In the case of using higher end processors, I don’t have a “quiet” machine. Water cooling fans for CPU get a bit noisy, but I don’t notice when the music is playing. I have a Gigabyte Aorus board which has some decent fan control options to keep it relatively quiet when idle. As for the Windows TPM requirement, I wasted money buying those modules because my AMD CPUs (5900x and 3600G) have TPM built-in and can be activated in the BIOS. Intel chips may have this too, but I did not check.


----------



## aeliron

Braveheart said:


> Every time Apple release a new OS version, many VST’s are incompatible without an update from the developer. On PC, older VST’s are still working after many years not supported…


Totally agree with the frustration.

But is it better if you update your operating system which forces users to buy new hardware? *cough* Windows 11









One in three work PCs "not capable" of running Windows 11. Here are the upgrades they need


Time for a round of hardware upgrades?




www.zdnet.com





Arguably same for Monterey, iOS, etc. ... no one's hands are clean!


----------



## Braveheart

aeliron said:


> Totally agree with the frustration.
> 
> But is it better if you update your operating system which forces users to buy new hardware? *cough* Windows 11
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One in three work PCs "not capable" of running Windows 11. Here are the upgrades they need
> 
> 
> Time for a round of hardware upgrades?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.zdnet.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Arguably same for Monterey, iOS, etc. ... no one's hands are clean!


Buy new hardware? I got a free upgrade from Win10 to Win11 using the same computer…


----------



## aeliron

Braveheart said:


> Buy new hardware? I got a free upgrade from Win10 to Win11 using the same computer…


Congrats! Per the article, not everyone was so lucky ...


----------



## easyrider

Being locked out of updating a Bios and installing a new chip makes Macs redundant for me….

And when the time comes

Being able to quickly swap out a Motherboard , Drop in a new chip on a completely new platform while just reconnecting all my internal SSD’S, makes Macs redundant for me.

Some keep mentioning the GUI….Well the Gui is the same when using Cubase in windows or Mac….so don’t get it….


----------



## Mike Fox

I switched from Windows to Mac about 16 years ago. Haven’t looked back since. My main machine is almost that old too (2010 Mac Pro). Dual Xeon processors, 64gb RAM, 4 SSD bays, etc. It’s also built like a tank and handles all of my music needs flawlessly. Zero desire to upgrade to anything.

That being said, I hate how Apple does things in general these days. They love creating problems only to sell you the solution. Brilliant business move on their end.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

jblongz said:


> An important factor yet to be determined is the thermal performance in real world.


I don't mean to snort at you personally, but I'm sorry: to me that's just ridiculous backwards-cap gaming pimply male teenager stuff.

Apple has 50,001 highly paid and trained engineers working on their hardware. I just use their machines - and that entails enough troubleshooting without trying to second-guess professional computer designers.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

easyrider said:


> Being able to quickly swap out a Motherboard


Had to do that twice with PC’s (right in the middle of projects with looming deadlines). Not one single failure with my Mac’s, that’s why I pay a bit more for peace of mind. Personal experience, of course.


----------



## easyrider

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Had to do that twice with PC’s (right in the middle of projects with looming deadlines). Not one single failure with my Mac’s, that’s why I pay a bit more for peace of mind. Personal experience, of course.


I’ve not had a mother failure yet….touch wood….I’ve managed to stay current with the latest tech buy selling my previous Gen motherboards and chips….

When it comes to hand held devices thats Apple all the way…my iPad and iPhone are a fundamental part of my digital DNA….

But I love building PCs and trying out the latest chips…Although this 5950x beast I’m using right now has somewhat quashed my desire to upgrade it….as nothing out there is compelling enough….that Will probably change when AM5 hits…but I’ll look at benchmarks and real world usage data first against my 5950x.

Also Stablebit Drive pool is a fundamental part of my storage system and it’s not available for MAC os….

What is interesting though is I’m currently doing some supply teaching and delivering Media courses and a film sound composition assignment for 13 - 16 year olds….the I.T department use Windows machines and the Music Department use IMacs for Garage band…

I see the kids struggling with MAC, they don’t like them….they are much more in their comfort zone using PC’s….

I would love to rip out all the Macs in the music department…and use Sony Vegas and Cubase on windows…We could really get things done…..

I see the appeal of set and forget with Mac….but planned obsolescence ain’t my thang! 😀


----------



## aeliron

easyrider said:


> I’ve not had a mother failure yet….touch wood….I’ve managed to stay current with the latest tech buy selling my previous Gen motherboards and chips….
> 
> When it comes to hand held devices thats Apple all the way…my iPad and iPhone are a fundamental part of my digital DNA….
> 
> But I love building PCs and trying out the latest chips…Although this 5950x beast I’m using right now has somewhat quashed my desire to upgrade it….as nothing out there is compelling enough….that Will probably change when AM5 hits…but I’ll look at benchmarks and real world usage data first against my 5950x.
> 
> Also Stablebit Drive pool is a fundamental part of my storage system and it’s not available for MAC os….
> 
> What is interesting though is I’m currently doing some supply teaching and delivering Media courses and a film sound composition assignment for 13 - 16 year olds….the I.T department use Windows machines and the Music Department use IMacs for Garage band…
> 
> I see the kids struggling with MAC, they don’t like them….they are much more in their comfort zone using PC’s….
> 
> I would love to rip out all the Macs in the music department…and use Sony Vegas and Cubase on windows…We could really get things done…..
> 
> I see the appeal of set and forget with Mac….but planned obsolescence ain’t my thang! 😀


Some aspects of Mac are def less user friendly, oddly enough. The weird windowing behavior where your cmd-tab selected app doesn't appear, the terrible font and color setting dialogs, the four-key "shortcuts", ... no question that it's still horrible in many ways. And the switch to all USB-C ... thankfully somewhat reversed.

But ... tradeoffs. Am enjoying my M1 Pro (unlike my lousy, disappointing 2015 MBP that had 3 hour battery life and egg-frying heat), but certainly can see the appeal of a cheaper, user-maintainable system.


----------



## jonnybutter

I think the consensus is that either Mac or Windows works well for music these days. Wasn’t always so, but now, yes. That said, while I had been inching away from the Mac, since they started revealing computers with their own silicon I can’t see buying any more Intel based computers. The new Macs are a better value, at least for me. I did have a dual boot Windows/Hackintosh for a few years that I built myself, and yes I loved saving the money and building exactly what I wanted. But the new Macs are going to be unbeatable, afaic.


----------



## easyrider

jonnybutter said:


> I think the consensus is that either Mac or Windows works well for music these days. Wasn’t always so, but now, yes. That said, while I had been inching away from the Mac, since they started revealing computers with their own silicon I can’t see buying any more Intel based computers. The new Macs are a better value, at least for me. I did have a dual boot Windows/Hackintosh for a few years that I built myself, and yes I loved saving the money and building exactly what I wanted. But the new Macs are going to be unbeatable, afaic.


This is a very Intel and Mac heavy forum….

The new Ryzen chips sent Intel packing….There has been a price drop on the 5950x which makes it phenomenal value for a 16 core 32 thread chip.


----------



## thevisi0nary

easyrider said:


> This is a very Intel and Mac heavy forum….
> 
> The new Ryzen chips sent Intel packing….There has been a price drop on the 5950x which makes it phenomenal value for a 16 core 32 thread chip.


12600k/12700k overtakes everything in the 5000 series up until the 5950x, which is still probably the best music cpu overall but overkill if you don't run enormous projects.


----------



## thevisi0nary

easyrider said:


> I see the kids struggling with MAC, they don’t like them….they are much more in their comfort zone using PC’s….


I think whichever OS you are used to and are comfortable with is a far bigger factor than whatever hardware is in a device. I wanted so bad to make a newer Macbook work because I love what they've done with ARM but I hate working on MacOS after 30 years of Windows.


----------



## Tom_D

I made the transition from mac to pc this year.

Used a mac pro cheese grater for ~10 years with Logic and at the beginning of this year I built my first Windows 10 pc and switched to Cubase pro (currently on version 11). It was a big transition learning a new daw, but I actually like working on a pc and there are lots of things Cubase does that I wished logic would do. As far as midi composing goes I don't miss logic at all (although I did like having exs24 handy, but I never relied on it very heavily).

Having said all that, I also own a mac mini m1 with 16gb ram, so I still have access to Logic and macOS and I can easily use logic and route things to the pc and vice versa. I have them both networked together, but the composing happens on the PC. I host everything in the PC (5 drives; #1 for OS, #2&3 for sample libraries, #4&5 for backups), so there is no networked ve pro, only a local instance. I'm mostly using the mac to host video playback and run my touch screen controller; way overkill for these purposes, but I already had the computer, and I like having access to windows and mac. I use synergy to share the keyboard and mouse between the computers - works well.

With the pc I like having control over what parts go into the computer and being able to modify it as desired. I had that to some degree with the cheese grater mac pro, but the current crop of macs (aside from the super expensive mac pro) were too closed off for me. 

If you like the idea of building a computer and are willing to move away from Logic, I say give it a try. If you end up not liking it and go back to mac, then use the pc as a ve pro server.


----------



## mscp

MojoMusik said:


> Been using Logic ever since the late nineties(when it was emagic). Now that I'm focusing on orchestral writing (and sample libraries) I'm getting increasingly frustrated and contemplating changing my whole set up. Frequent crashes, no way to arrange templates into sub folders, poor control over articulations imo... just a few of my grievances.
> Further to this im currently making do with an m1 macbook with 16gb and 1tb ssd. Even with a template of <100 tracks im getting frequent overloads and crashing to desktop and the i just can't work with it anymore. It's stopping me even want to write.
> So I was hoping some of you could share your opinions with me as I need to make a choice whether or not to sell a kidney a buy a ridiculous priced mac pro, or perhaps switch to pc, perhaps something like a ryzen system with at least 64gb ram and start using Cubase which seems from the outset to be a much more efficient workflow (haven't used cubase for 20 years!).



Yes. PCs are great. I have both - ignore fanboys. Macs are just as a pain to deal with as PCs. They're just different but both have quirks. Logic is a piece of .... imho. I'm using it with my M1 and apart from the decent plugins it comes with, I not happy with its stability and core management issues. Since 2016, I've been using Steinberg products because it's cross platform. Never looked back. They also have issues, but less irritating (ymmv).

If you decide to move to PC, you can indeed buy a beefier cpu (for real-time audio) these days than what mac currently offers (under the current circumstances). Don't buy into the "M1 is better" crap at present time. I have an M1 Max and well...I'm running most things in Rosetta 2 so I can't judge. You will not feel a whole lot of difference than a 12th Gen Intel. 

Just make sure you *do NOT* touch/optimise Windows. Avoid all the "tweaks", especially if you're not Windows savvy. It's not THAT important these days if you build a quality system.


----------



## mscp

KEM said:


> Not to mention Apple Silicon is the future of cpu technology, much better to invest in it now, you’ll thank yourself later


Nostradamus much? haha.

Nobody knows what's going to be like in 5-10 years. I ventured in an M1 but haven't found the OMG factor yet. In fact, I hate how slow the world is trying to port their stuff to the new architecture. If someone is tight on cash, I wouldn't advise buying one now at ALL.


----------



## richiebee

I think the OS is the most important factor in your decision. Do you prefer MacOS or Windows? No matter how similar third party applications run on the two platforms, the OS can get in the way of productivity... but it doesn't have to. One will be more intuitive to you. Could be MacOS, could be Windows.


----------



## waveheavy

I have a PC built by VisionDAW running Windows 7 that I still use, but obviously I need to upgrade to Windows 10. It has 32 GB RAM, a quad-core Intel CPU. I was told by the builders that the number of cores is not the most important feature for building a DAW computer. It's the CPU speed that is most important. So a high CPU speed is preferable to a high number of cores with a slow CPU speed.

I can do a rebuild for around $2000, for a new Gigabyte motherboard, new Intel CPU 11th generation 8-core 3.6 GHz, 2 ea. 1 TB- M.2 SSD cards, G-Skill 128 GB RAM, new Seasonic 750 W power supply, and Windows 10 Pro on USB flash drive. I keep my present case with fans, graphics card, sound card, CPU cooler, monitor, keyboard, etc.

The biggest factor of my not upgrading yet is the potential loss of software that won't run on Windows 10.


----------



## nas

I've been running a PC server to do the heavy lifting connected to my iMac with VEP 7. It's been a real workhorse and very reliable. But for me, nothings beats the Mac OS and I'm quite comfortable and fluid with Logic Pro... it does everything I need for renedering orchestral scores. Very stable and I'm also use a 3rd party articulation switcher. I am definitely considering a new Mac Studio at some point to have everything on one computer but will continue to use VEP as I like the workflow and efficiency it provides.

Like other's have said, it really comes down to personal preference. Both have operating systems and DAW's that will enable you to produce great scores and I believe Cubase also has a trial version - so just choose one that gets out of the way and lets you focus on your creativity the most.


----------



## easyrider

waveheavy said:


> I have a PC built by VisionDAW running Windows 7 that I still use, but obviously I need to upgrade to Windows 10. It has 32 GB RAM, a quad-core Intel CPU. I was told by the builders that the number of cores is not the most important feature for building a DAW computer. It's the CPU speed that is most important. So a high CPU speed is preferable to a high number of cores with a slow CPU speed.
> 
> I can do a rebuild for around $2000, for a new Gigabyte motherboard, new Intel CPU 11th generation 8-core 3.6 GHz, 2 ea. 1 TB- M.2 SSD cards, G-Skill 128 GB RAM, new Seasonic 750 W power supply, and Windows 10 Pro on USB flash drive. I keep my present case with fans, graphics card, sound card, CPU cooler, monitor, keyboard, etc.
> 
> The biggest factor of my not upgrading yet is the potential loss of software that won't run on Windows 10.


You do the know the 11th Gen Intel’s were a waste Of sand….


----------



## richiebee

waveheavy said:


> I have a PC built by VisionDAW running Windows 7 that I still use, but obviously I need to upgrade to Windows 10. It has 32 GB RAM, a quad-core Intel CPU. I was told by the builders that the number of cores is not the most important feature for building a DAW computer. It's the CPU speed that is most important. So a high CPU speed is preferable to a high number of cores with a slow CPU speed.
> 
> I can do a rebuild for around $2000, for a new Gigabyte motherboard, new Intel CPU 11th generation 8-core 3.6 GHz, 2 ea. 1 TB- M.2 SSD cards, G-Skill 128 GB RAM, new Seasonic 750 W power supply, and Windows 10 Pro on USB flash drive. I keep my present case with fans, graphics card, sound card, CPU cooler, monitor, keyboard, etc.
> 
> The biggest factor of my not upgrading yet is the potential loss of software that won't run on Windows 10.


This held me back for a couple of years, and eventually led to me giving up music work completely. Until last year that is. I discovered, purely by accident that virtually everything (including Cubase 6.5) would run on my Windows 10 laptop, and while I never bought it for power uses, it did okay. I upgraded some things over the next six months, and now I'm on Windows 11, with all my old sample libraries working, as well as virtually all my old plugins. I think its just a handful of really old Voxengo plugins that won't work in Windows 11 (or 10), and they became obsolete anyway when I updated my DAW (Cubase 6.5-11, and now 12) which has the functionality of those plugins, built in.
I understand its probably not cool to buy an off the shelf computer, but its currently cheaper to do so. You can buy smart and not need to change a thing for years.


----------



## robgb

If you like the Windows experience, by all means switch. I used PCs for decades, built several over the years and had screaming fast machines. The machines I bought didn't last very long, however. They tended to start crapping out after two or three years and I would have to buy or build a new one. Back then I used to make fun of my Mac using friends (yeah, I was one of those guys), saying they overpaid for lesser hardware.

Then I was forced to use a Mac at my day job and discovered how wrong I was. Not only was the Mac operating system so much smoother and more pleasant to use, what I thought was a "lesser" machine turned out to be far superior to any PC I'd ever bought or built in terms of user experience and, most all, longevity.

So I bought an iMac that wound up lasting me about six years before the graphics card went bad. I bought a new one in 2013 and that's the one I'm using as I write this. It's still going strong. The only change I've made is swapping out the hard drive for an SSD boot drive. And when the day comes that I have to replace it, I may well buy a refurbished iMac rather than anything brand new, because I know how reliable they are.

Now, I know the Windows experience has improved. I still use a Windows 10 machine for my business and the experience is mostly tolerable. But I can't even imagine using anything but my Mac for music. Everything just works without me having to fuss with drivers, etc.

So, yes, switch if you feel you must. But it will never beat the Mac experience.


----------



## richiebee

robgb said:


> If you like the Windows experience, by all means switch. I used PCs for decades, built several over the years and had screaming fast machines. The machines I bought didn't last very long, however. They tended to start crapping out after two or three years and I would have to buy or build a new one. Back then I used to make fun of my Mac using friends (yeah, I was one of those guys), saying they overpaid for lesser hardware.
> 
> Then I was forced to use a Mac at my day job and discovered how wrong I was. Not only was the Mac operating system so much smoother and more pleasant to use, what I thought was a "lesser" machine turned out to be far superior to any PC I'd ever bought or built in terms of user experience and, most all, longevity.
> 
> So I bought an iMac that wound up lasting me about six years before the graphics card went bad. I bought a new one in 2013 and that's the one I'm using as I write this. It's still going strong. The only change I've made is swapping out the hard drive for an SSD boot drive. And when the day comes that I have to replace it, I may well buy a refurbished iMac rather than anything brand new, because I know how reliable they are.
> 
> Now, I know the Windows experience has improved. I still use a Windows 10 machine for my business and the experience is mostly tolerable. But I can't even imagine using anything but my Mac for music. Everything just works without me having to fuss with drivers, etc.
> 
> So, yes, switch if you feel you must. But it will never beat the Mac experience.


It'll never beat the Mac experience... _for you_. 

I have the opposite experience. At work, I've been using Macs since around 2005, and all but one have been a disappointment. I had an iMac for about a year. The screen was gorgeous. But the thing was so dreadfully slow. When we transitioned to having the flexibility to work from home, we changed to laptops, and got maxed out Mac Book Pros. It's a lot better than my iMac was, but its still not better than my year older Dell XPS laptop. Software goes obsolete quicker on MacOS, forcing you to upgrade, or keep an old OS. 

Hardware failure is not rare on the Mac side, and in fact, when I was providing computer support for my department at the time (2005-2017), we had more failures on the Mac side than the PC side (with about 50/50 split in users).

Personally, I find MacOS gets in my way, while Windows stays out of it. You may find the opposite.


----------



## mscp

richiebee said:


> It'll never beat the Mac experience... _for you_.
> 
> I have the opposite experience. At work, I've been using Macs since around 2005, and all but one have been a disappointment. I had an iMac for about a year. The screen was gorgeous. But the thing was so dreadfully slow. When we transitioned to having the flexibility to work from home, we changed to laptops, and got maxed out Mac Book Pros. It's a lot better than my iMac was, but its still not better than my year older Dell XPS laptop. Software goes obsolete quicker on MacOS, forcing you to upgrade, or keep an old OS.
> 
> Hardware failure is not rare on the Mac side, and in fact, when I was providing computer support for my department at the time (2005-2017), we had more failures on the Mac side than the PC side (with about 50/50 split in users).
> 
> Personally, I find MacOS gets in my way, while Windows stays out of it. You may find the opposite.



My experience with Macs was: *AMAZING* - up until 2014ish. Since then, Apple has become synonymous to trashy hype. Underpowered machines that even though worked, they were severely worse than a standard PC with windows 10.

FFWD to 2021, I recently bought an M1 Max as a slight leap of faith in them for the next years, but I will only be able to truly assess whether they're superior than their PC counterparts when every software I use is natively coded.

I also wish Apple stopped updating their MacOS every single year. If they want to add some new feature, just add it ffs. No need to update the entire environment and break stuff.


----------



## easyrider

robgb said:


> If you like the Windows experience, by all means switch. I used PCs for decades, built several over the years and had screaming fast machines. The machines I bought didn't last very long, however. They tended to start crapping out after two or three years and I would have to buy or build a new one.


Hmmm, then you clearly didn’t know what you were doing…I’ve got a couple of old PCs still going used as backup servers…I have a windows Dell laptop that I bought in 2008 and still use it for surfing the internet.



robgb said:


> So, yes, switch if you feel you must. But it will never beat the Mac experience.


In your opinion….

Currently running a water cooled Ryzen 5950X 16 core 32 thread machine I built and it runs silently while offering boat loads of power…..Love it….


----------



## pulpfiction

MojoMusik said:


> Been using Logic ever since the late nineties(when it was emagic). Now that I'm focusing on orchestral writing (and sample libraries) I'm getting increasingly frustrated and contemplating changing my whole set up. Frequent crashes, no way to arrange templates into sub folders, poor control over articulations imo... just a few of my grievances.
> Further to this im currently making do with an m1 macbook with 16gb and 1tb ssd. Even with a template of <100 tracks im getting frequent overloads and crashing to desktop and the i just can't work with it anymore. It's stopping me even want to write.


I also tried to get by with 16gb for a long time, but especially with orchestral music it's really no fun nowadays. That's why I switched to a self-built desktop computer half a year ago and regret not having switched much earlier.



MojoMusik said:


> So I was hoping some of you could share your opinions with me as I need to make a choice whether or not to sell a kidney a buy a ridiculous priced mac pro, or perhaps switch to pc, perhaps something like a ryzen system with at least 64gb ram and


If money is not an issue for you, it doesn't really matter if it's a Mac or a PC...

If it does, I would recommend you to build a PC yourself. However, it is important to compare prices at the moment. These can currently vary greatly because of Corona and Ukraine.
If you don't have the confidence to do that, you can also use PC builder websites to get an idea of what components you need and then compare with other websites.
Intel or AMD? Doesn't really matter today. I would just go for a current Ryzen (better value for money).
64gb Ram is usually enough. Take a 64gb Ram bar, then you can just add a second one later and have 128gb.
Graphics card? Actually it doesn't matter which one. I would recommend a used one around 100€ (GTX 970/960) or something like that.

When I compared prices back then, I noticed that I would have had to rob a bank for the same performance on a Apple (the price difference was huge between my homebuilt PC and an Apple).

For me, the advantages of a PC clearly outweigh the disadvantages:
-much better price-performance ratio
-better possibilities for upgrading
-better compatibility to hardware and software (older software/VSTs also run)
-it's fun to deal with your PC and assemble it yourself (better understanding)
-Since there are SSDs and Windows 10, the times of old lame Windows computers are over.



MojoMusik said:


> start using Cubase which seems from the outset to be a much more efficient workflow (haven't used cubase for 20 years!).





MojoMusik said:


> Frequent crashes, no way to arrange templates into sub folders, poor control over articulations imo... just a few of my grievances.


Which DAW? That doesn't really matter if money is no object. Your VSTs, samples, synths, etc. make the sound. Just download a few trial versions and see how you get on with it. All the DAWs mentioned here in the forum will serve your purposes if you work your way in a bit.

My DAW recommendation:

If money and the aspects you mentioned (stability, sup folders, articulation control, efficient workflow, orchestration) play a role, then I would rather advise against Cubase.
Especially the aspects cost efficiency and stability are not the flagships of Steinberg.

My selection criteria for my current DAW were simply the price model, a fully featured trial version, stability, good VST compatibility and good video tutorials.
From my perspective, you can't go wrong with Reaper. I don't see the point in spending 600€ (and ILOK + expensive updates) for something when you can have the same features for 60€ ( long supply of free updates). Better invest your money in good hardware.
If that doesn't appeal to you as much, I would try Studio One.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

easyrider said:


> Hmmm, then you clearly didn’t know what you were doing…I’ve got a couple of old PCs still going used as backup servers…I have a windows Dell laptop that I bought in 2008 and still use it for surfing the internet.
> 
> 
> In your opinion….
> 
> Currently running a water cooled Ryzen 5950X 16 core 32 thread machine I built and it runs silently while offering boat loads of power…..Love it….


Sounds like you’re still in denial…just come over to Mac and be done with it. You can just never accept that people prefer Mac.


----------



## robgb

easyrider said:


> Hmmm, then you clearly didn’t know what you were doing…I’ve got a couple of old PCs still going used as backup servers…I have a windows Dell laptop that I bought in 2008 and still use it for surfing the internet.


I knew what I was doing, thank you. But okay.


easyrider said:


> In your opinion….


Isn't that what a forum is about? Our opinions? And in my opinion, after decades of experience, the Mac experience is superior to the PC experience. I also like licorice.


----------



## robgb

richiebee said:


> It'll never beat the Mac experience... _for you_.


Again, this is a given on a forum like this, is it not? We are expressing opinions. So I'm not sure why this has to be clarified every time we express one.


----------



## easyrider

robgb said:


> I knew what I was doing, thank you.


Then why did the machines you bought not last very long, Why did they start crapping out after two or three years and why would you have to buy or build a new one?

Seems odd….😂


----------



## easyrider

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Sounds like you’re still in denial…just come over to Mac and be done with it. You can just never accept that people prefer Mac.


Taught Music Creation on Macs for the last 3 months…it was hell….the kids hated them and we all wanted PC’s….😂


----------



## Scottyb

Used to hate Mac. Was in I.T. Built over a thousand PCs, many of them High-end and custom. Built one for myself for music. It wasn't a wonderful experience. Tried a friend's Mac running Logic. I bought a Mac two weeks later and never went back. This is 100% my opinion but to me, quite often for the things I love to do, the Mac just works. There's no extra brain power involved in trying to tweak anything to make it work better. I just point it in the direction I want to go and it goes there. One less hurdle in my production of music is a beautiful thing and important for me.


----------



## easyrider

Scottyb said:


> Used to hate Mac. Was in I.T. Built over a thousand PCs, many of them High-end and custom. Built one for myself for music. It wasn't a wonderful experience. Tried a friend's Mac running Logic. I bought a Mac two weeks later and never went back. This is 100% my opinion but to me, quite often for the things I love to do, the Mac just works. There's no extra brain power involved in trying to tweak anything to make it work better. I just point it in the direction I want to go and it goes there. One less hurdle in my production of music is a beautiful thing and important for me.


Until a OSX update breaks all your plugins….😂


----------



## Scottyb

But I don't feel the need to update OSX every time an update comes out because things already run perfectly. : )


----------



## easyrider

Scottyb said:


> But I don't feel the need to update OSX every time an update comes out because things already run perfectly. : )


Stay in the past!
Be dictated to by your harware….
Planned obsolescence

Tech Prison!


----------



## jononotbono

I use both. They both suck in equal measures.


----------



## Zhao Shen

Are there any game composers here that compose on Mac? If so, what's your workflow? I feel like for many games, a Windows machine is required to run playable builds. I guess Windows dual boot or VM on Mac are fine, but are those the only workarounds?

I considered switching to Mac when M1 Ultra Mac Studio was announced but it wasn't a big enough upgrade over my PC for me to justify it. I'm keeping an eye out for the M2 Mac Pro but am definitely wary in this one area.


----------



## easyrider

Zhao Shen said:


> Are there any game composers here that compose on Mac? If so, what's your workflow? I feel like for many games, a Windows machine is required to run playable builds. I guess Windows dual boot or VM on Mac are fine, but are those the only workarounds?
> 
> I considered switching to Mac when M1 Ultra Mac Studio was announced but it wasn't a big enough upgrade over my PC for me to justify it. I'm keeping an eye out for the M2 Mac Pro but am definitely wary in this one area.


Let’s hope M2 doesn’t break M1 plugins….😂


----------



## jononotbono

I remember the days of building PCs and you would 100% cut your hands on every sharp edge as you try to slot anything into anything. PC building these days is so simple (as long as you don't cheap skate on crap parts).

I have a 2600k PC I built over 13 years ago and its still going strong and faster than my Mac Pro 5,1. Every time I turn it on I still am impressed by how fast it is in comparison.

I think my next computer is going to be a PC. Really want a machine not just for music but also for video game development and for that (or what I want to do) PC is best choice. Damn it. Dreaming of a new computer now.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

easyrider said:


> Until a OSX update breaks all your plugins….😂


That has happened to me once in the past ten years….and it was a handful of Waves Renaissance plugins that were twenty years old.


----------



## davidnaroth

After the new M1 came out Im debating moving back to Mac. I havent had any audio tests yet, but I use my m1 macbook for couch/coffee shop sample library development, and the compile time of my code is easily 5-6x faster on my M1 than it is on my octocore i9.


----------



## jononotbono

davidnaroth said:


> After the new M1 came out Im debating moving back to Mac. I havent had any audio tests yet, but I use my m1 macbook for couch/coffee shop sample library development, and the compile time of my code is easily 5-6x faster on my M1 than it is on my octocore i9.


I tried an M1 Mac Book Pro and it was amazingly fast compared to what I use. I tried some visibility macros I created in Cubase. It took 7 seconds to show some tracks in Cubase (this is with over 2000 PLE commands in the prefs folder and over 1000 Macros - so we're not talking small numbers here). The exact same Cubase template on the M1 Mac Book Pro... Took sub 1 second.

I then tested it on an i9 14 Core PC running win 10 Pro. Same speed as the M1 Mac Book Pro. So it proved one thing to me. My current computers suck 😂


----------



## kitekrazy

easyrider said:


> Hmmm, then you clearly didn’t know what you were doing…I’ve got a couple of old PCs still going used as backup servers…I have a windows Dell laptop that I bought in 2008 and still use it for surfing the internet.
> 
> 
> In your opinion….
> 
> Currently running a water cooled Ryzen 5950X 16 core 32 thread machine I built and it runs silently while offering boat loads of power…..Love it….


I must be lucky as well. I have all of the parts left over where I could build a socket A system or a P4.


----------



## kitekrazy

jononotbono said:


> I tried an M1 Mac Book Pro and it was amazingly fast compared to what I use. I tried some visibility macros I created in Cubase. It took 7 seconds to show some tracks in Cubase (this is with over 2000 PLE commands in the prefs folder and over 1000 Macros - so we're not talking small numbers here). The exact same Cubase template on the M1 Mac Book Pro... Took sub 1 second.
> 
> I then tested it on an i9 14 Core PC running win 10 Pro. Same speed as the M1 Mac Book Pro. So it proved one thing to me. *My current computers suck *😂


 Thats because you are not running Linux. That superior platform ignored by almost all big time multimedia developers.


----------



## mscp

davidnaroth said:


> After the new M1 came out Im debating moving back to Mac. I havent had any audio tests yet, but I use my m1 macbook for couch/coffee shop sample library development, and the compile time of my code is easily 5-6x faster on my M1 than it is on my octocore i9.


The real assessment will come out when everything has been successfully ported to native code. At present, I'm still on the fence with my M1 Max. Sometimes it works like a charm, sometimes it's a headache-fest with all these plugins and drivers running on Rosetta. Ugh.

But I have a PC to cope...so I'm good.


----------



## jononotbono

kitekrazy said:


> Thats because you are not running Linux. That superior platform ignored by almost all big time multimedia developers.


And you've literally just answered why I'm not using Linux. 😂


----------



## mscp

easyrider said:


> Let’s hope M2 doesn’t break M1 plugins….😂


Let's hope the M1 hype isn't just a hype like very little flamboyant Mac product out there. Give it a decade until every developer has caught up - like always...

I want to use my M1 Max to its full potential!!


----------



## HCMarkus

easyrider said:


> Until a OSX update breaks all your plugins….😂


I get it, you like PCs. But your statements denigrating Macs and macOS don't make you look very informed, as proved by posts like the above. It doesn't really help folks looking for assistance.


----------



## jcrosby

easyrider said:


> Until a OSX update breaks all your plugins….😂


The irony here is that Apple doesn't force updates on you. Disabling automatic updates is as simple as ticking a checkbox, once those settings are made the update policy sticks for the life of your OS. No need to defer updates to a later date, jump through hoops by disabling services...
Windows? Mmmm, not so much.

Apple also doesn't install a bunch of unwanted 3rd party garbage looking to mine your data that you have to uninstall after the fact. Your average PC, mmm not so much.

Everything has its tradeoffs


----------



## easyrider

HCMarkus said:


> I get it, you like PCs. But your statements denigrating Macs and macOS don't make you look very informed, as proved by posts like the above. It doesn't really help folks looking for assistance.


Same can be said about people defending Apple….I’ve seen many posts here in this forum try to persuade people to get a Mac when it’s not really ideal for their purpose….

I love my iPhone and iPad….so I’m not anti Apple….but I‘m not blinkered by macs…and the issues they have that people seem to ignore as non issues due to their bias…


----------



## easyrider

jcrosby said:


> The irony here is that Apple doesn't force updates on you. Disabling automatic updates is as simple as ticking a checkbox, once those settings are made the update policy sticks for the life of your OS. No need to defer updates to a later date, jump through hoops by disabling services...
> Windows? Mmmm, not so much.
> 
> Apple also doesn't install a bunch of unwanted 3rd party garbage looking to mine your data that you have to uninstall after the fact. Your average PC, mmm not so much.
> 
> Everything has its tradeoffs


That’s the beauty of PC…you can strip the OS of the guff ,create an image of your OS and run the system you want to run.


----------



## jcrosby

easyrider said:


> That’s the beauty of PC…you can strip the OS of the guff ,create an image of your OS and run the system you want to run.


Sounds like macos out of the box


----------



## easyrider

jcrosby said:


> Sounds like macos out of the box


Not really…..I can swap out motherboards and processors and still use the same Windows image….it really is something quite beautiful….

I have complete control of my hardware and can upgrade at will….a bios update allows me to upgrade my cpu….I can pool SSD’S into one single storage pool using Stablebit drivepool….the data stays in tact separate from OS…while being completely integrated into the OS…

The configurations to meet the users need are endless…..


----------



## jononotbono

easyrider said:


> Not really…..I can swap out motherboards and processors and still use the same Windows image….it really is something quite beautiful….
> 
> I have complete control of my hardware and can upgrade at will….a bios update allows me to upgrade my cpu….I can pool SSD’S into one single storage pool using Stablebit drivepool….the data stays in tact separate from OS…while being completely integrated into the OS…
> 
> The configurations to meet the users need are endless…..


But do you use Linux?


----------



## easyrider

jononotbono said:


> But do you use Linux?


No but I can dual boot !


Edit: I ran a raspberry Pi so yeah ! 👍


----------



## richiebee

robgb said:


> Again, this is a given on a forum like this, is it not? We are expressing opinions. So I'm not sure why this has to be clarified every time we express


It's not a given. You're using superlatives. I get it, it's a very Apple thing to do. It also turns out to be BS so very often. Its very easy to quantify a statement as being your experience, or your opinion. So why not just do it, instead of misleading people to think that there is only one route worthy of your time.


----------



## robgb

richiebee said:


> It's not a given. You're using superlatives. I get it, it's a very Apple thing to do. It also turns out to be BS so very often. Its very easy to quantify a statement as being your experience, or your opinion. So why not just do it, instead of misleading people to think that there is only one route worthy of your time.


Whatever, dude. What are any of us doing here if we aren't merely expressing opinions? That's the very reason forums like this exist and why the OP said this: "So I was hoping some of you could share your opinions with me..."

So let's not go down the road of disingenuous discourse simply to prove some kind of point. I've expressed my OPINION and you disagree. Let's leave it at that.


----------



## robgb

easyrider said:


> Then why did the machines you bought not last very long, Why did they start crapping out after two or three years and why would you have to buy or build a new one?


Because they were PCs. I already said that. But, hey, go ahead and insult me again. I've apparently struck a chord. You're welcome to have the last word.


----------



## Sergievsky

I was actually ready to go back into PCs and add a good one to my Mac setup as a VEP slave, with the added benefit of being a killer gaming PC (even though I really don't have time to play games). But then the Mac Studio came out with its tiny footprint, and really without any equal on the PC side, powerwise (that small). Or there is and I haven't seen...?


----------



## easyrider

robgb said:


> Because they were PCs.


That’s not good enough….it’s a cop out….at least bring some gravitas to your argument


----------



## jcrosby

Sergievsky said:


> I was actually ready to go back into PCs and add a good one to my Mac setup as a VEP slave, with the added benefit of being a killer gaming PC (even though I really don't have time to play games). But then the Mac Studio came out with its tiny footprint, and really without any equal on the PC side, powerwise (that small). Or there is and I haven't seen...?


20 cores with the Studio's performance in that footprint is currently impossible with x86 simply because of the energy consumption and heat. Not to mention that GPU is still a factor... Add in dual full bandwidth thunderbolt (and the equivalent PCIe lanes to accomplish that).... Nope, there's nothing on the bare metal PC market that can compare with that kind of horsepower in the Mac Studio's footprint.

Even the biggest critics of Apple (LTT for example) will at least acknowledge that while they might not like Apple's approach of locking their users out, their pricing, etc (which I completely agree with), the Ultra is still unique, if not incredible given its physical footprint, energy consumption, etc.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

richiebee said:


> So why not just do it, instead of misleading people to think that there is only one route worthy of your time.


Who has implied this (other easy rider)?


----------



## LatinXCombo

jononotbono said:


> And you've literally just answered why I'm not using Linux. 😂


TRUE Linux has never been tried.


----------



## benatural

I've worked every day for years on PC writing music, making sounds, mixing audio. I'm lucky, I get to do it for my day job and I work with some very incredibly talented and prolific individuals, and they all use PC. PC's are incredibly stable, no less than Macs are. 

I won't tread over the classic Mac vs. PC arguments. Ok maybe I will... :D I'll just reiterate that you will pay less for more power, and I would even hesitate to say that the notion of waiting months for all the vendors to get their software working again every time a new version of the OS comes out is much, much, much less frequent on PC than it is on Mac. You will go years on the same version of Windows and likely never encounter this issue.

I recently went back to Mac for a couple of weeks. And I don't know if I was hallucinating or not, but just the act of moving the mouse and typing felt noticably slower on Mac than it does on Windows. Not that the Mac was slow - it wasn't - just that basic navigation is less snappy than it is on PC. It was weird but I felt it pretty strongly!

Anyhow, take it for what it's worth.


----------



## Øivind

KEM said:


> Ludwig uses Mac though!! And you’re right that there’s no difference between Cubase on Mac or Windows, for me the reason I like MacOS so much more is Finder, I can’t stand Windows file browser, maybe I’m just an idiot but it is much more complicated to me


Directory Opus can be a possible solution. Incredible file manager with all the features one could ever dream of and more. Script support, plug-ins, ftp, sync file feature, build inn 7z, zip, rar etc, batch renaming, wildcards, fully customizable, themable and even with all that and more, it's easy to use and looks great (when using a nice theme). Only available for Windows tho, but what a timesaver.

As for Mac vs Windows it's very simple. The correct answer is... Linux 😁


----------



## HCMarkus

benatural said:


> I recently went back to Mac for a couple of weeks. And I don't know if I was hallucinating or not, but just the act of moving the mouse and typing felt noticably slower on Mac than it does on Windows. Not that the Mac was slow - it wasn't - just that basic navigation is less snappy than it is on PC. It was weird but I felt it pretty strongly!


Any chance your display was running @ 30Hz?


----------



## jcrosby

HCMarkus said:


> Any chance your display was running @ 30Hz?


It could also be that they didn't like (or disable) the animation settings and tracking speed. I've always found the defaults too slow for my preference so I immediately adjust these when setting up a new machine so the OS is super snappy...


----------



## waveheavy

easyrider said:


> You do the know the 11th Gen Intel’s were a waste Of sand….


An idea no doubt created by the AMD crowd.


----------



## easyrider

waveheavy said:


> An idea no doubt created by the AMD crowd.


 No, it’s common knowledge.


----------



## waveheavy

easyrider said:


> No, it’s common knowledge.


I have found Intel CPUs to be the most stable, and AMD's the least stable but often faster than Intel chips. But I'm not interested in playing 'games', so I'll stick to the stability and reliability of Intel.


----------



## MartinH.

benatural said:


> I recently went back to Mac for a couple of weeks. And I don't know if I was hallucinating or not, but just the act of moving the mouse and typing felt noticably slower on Mac than it does on Windows. Not that the Mac was slow - it wasn't - just that basic navigation is less snappy than it is on PC. It was weird but I felt it pretty strongly!


What input lag does an iMac screen have?
Or was it an external screen?


----------



## easyrider

waveheavy said:


> I have found Intel CPUs to be the most stable, and AMD's the least stable but often faster than Intel chips. But I'm not interested in playing 'games', so I'll stick to the stability and reliability of Intel.


Myth…..Having built 100s of PCs using Intel and AMD I can tell you for a fact you're talking BS….


----------



## jononotbono

How many Ryzen and Threadripper Motherboards are there that natively support Thunderbolt 3/4 now? Before it was 1 for each and they were Micro ATX boards with 1 PCIe slot. A huge reason why I haven't built anything yet. Unfortunately, if there isn't a decent selection, I will build an Intel build purely because of Thunderbolt 3/4


----------



## waveheavy

easyrider said:


> Myth…..Having built 100s of PCs using Intel and AMD I can tell you for a fact you're talking BS….


I've built my previous PC's and 3 of my son's PC's, and that's enough to know the difference. So, not BS. The AMD chips are liked by GAMERS, because they are faster than Intel's, not because of being more stable than Intel.


----------



## waveheavy

robgb said:


> If you like the Windows experience, by all means switch. I used PCs for decades, built several over the years and had screaming fast machines. The machines I bought didn't last very long, however. They tended to start crapping out after two or three years and I would have to buy or build a new one. Back then I used to make fun of my Mac using friends (yeah, I was one of those guys), saying they overpaid for lesser hardware.
> 
> Then I was forced to use a Mac at my day job and discovered how wrong I was. Not only was the Mac operating system so much smoother and more pleasant to use, what I thought was a "lesser" machine turned out to be far superior to any PC I'd ever bought or built in terms of user experience and, most all, longevity.
> 
> So I bought an iMac that wound up lasting me about six years before the graphics card went bad. I bought a new one in 2013 and that's the one I'm using as I write this. It's still going strong. The only change I've made is swapping out the hard drive for an SSD boot drive. And when the day comes that I have to replace it, I may well buy a refurbished iMac rather than anything brand new, because I know how reliable they are.
> 
> Now, I know the Windows experience has improved. I still use a Windows 10 machine for my business and the experience is mostly tolerable. But I can't even imagine using anything but my Mac for music. Everything just works without me having to fuss with drivers, etc.
> 
> So, yes, switch if you feel you must. But it will never beat the Mac experience.


Not really my experience with this PC built by VisionDAW that I have now running Windows 7. It's about 7 years old and still solid (knock on wood). I just need an upgrade for more RAM, but its motherboard maxed at 32 GB. Also have a DELL laptop over 14 years old running Windows 2000 that I use with Microsoft Office 2000. (I did later put XP on it though).


----------



## Tim_Wells

waveheavy said:


> I have found Intel CPUs to be the most stable, and AMD's the least stable but often faster than Intel chips. But I'm not interested in playing 'games', so I'll stick to the stability and reliability of Intel.


This is just silly. You're free to prefer whatever chip you want... for whatever reasons you want. But implying that AMDs aren't stable and reliable is beyond ridiculous.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

Tim_Wells said:


> This is just silly. You're free to prefer whatever chip you want... for whatever reasons you want. But implying that AMDs aren't stable and reliable is beyond ridiculous.


Just assuming here, but maybe he just means he’ll stick with the “devil he knows”? I think it’s natural to have a bias if one has had a good experience with a certain product.


----------



## waveheavy

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Just assuming here, but maybe he just means he’ll stick with the “devil he knows”? I think it’s natural to have a bias if one has had a good experience with a certain product.


Well... maybe. My son is a 'gamer' and he swears by his AMD builds, even though he has burned up 3 of his AMD builds. That's been several years ago though. And in that time Intel was the most stable, which is why my engineering work site (a U.S. R & D facility for the USAF which I won't name) chose Dell's with Intel chips.


----------



## Tim_Wells

waveheavy said:


> Well... maybe. My son is a 'gamer' and he swears by his AMD builds, even though he has burned up 3 of his AMD builds. That's been several years ago though. And in that time Intel was the most stable, which is why my engineering work site (a U.S. R & D facility for the USAF which I won't name) chose Dell's with Intel chips.


A Black Lab bit a friend of mine. A Goldendoodle never bit him. Obviously, Black Labs can't be trusted and Goldendoodles are better.


----------



## MartinH.

waveheavy said:


> Well... maybe. My son is a 'gamer' and he swears by his AMD builds, even though he has burned up 3 of his AMD builds. That's been several years ago though. And in that time Intel was the most stable, which is why my engineering work site (a U.S. R & D facility for the USAF which I won't name) chose Dell's with Intel chips.


What exactly do you mean with "stable" in a cpu context? Are the mainboard chipset drivers more stable, or do the AMD CPUs physically die or what do you mean?


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

Tim_Wells said:


> A Black Lab bit a friend of mine. A Goldendoodle never bit him. Obviously, Black Labs can't be trusted and Goldendoodles are better.


This is pretty much how we form a bias. I have had awful experiences with PC’s since 1992, and my Mac’s have never let me down. Naturally, I’m bias towards Mac. Doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong, but that’s my reasoning for choosing Mac. Sounds like it’s the same type of reasoning for waveheavy choosing Intel. And I understand his reasoning.


----------



## Scripter

MojoMusik said:


> Thank you Kem! Much appreciated. If you don't mind me asking, what system are you using?
> I really want a one system solution (no slaves) that can handle a large template of 300+ tracks


Than Windows or a $$$ Mac. ^^ 
Had never problems with Windows so far (started as a Mac User too).
But with Cubase ... never worked for me, especially when working with my Mac and Windows setup. Cubase for me is so sluggish, especially on Mac. 
But yeah I like my windows more cause of the power for the price. Works well with S1 on large Orchestral Templates.


----------



## Scripter

oivind_rosvold said:


> Directory Opus can be a possible solution. Incredible file manager with all the features one could ever dream of and more. Script support, plug-ins, ftp, sync file feature, build inn 7z, zip, rar etc, batch renaming, wildcards, fully customizable, themable and even with all that and more, it's easy to use and looks great (when using a nice theme). Only available for Windows tho, but what a timesaver.
> 
> As for Mac vs Windows it's very simple. The correct answer is... Linux 😁


Which Linux Distro?


----------



## Scripter

My tip: Stick with whats the best bang for your buck. Nowadays both Intel and AMD are great. Really compare some similar ones and look a the price and decide. Had both and have currently AMD with Windows. Works buttersmooth here. 


waveheavy said:


> I've built my previous PC's and 3 of my son's PC's, and that's enough to know the difference. So, not BS. The AMD chips are liked by GAMERS, because they are faster than Intel's, not because of being more stable than Intel.


----------



## easyrider

jononotbono said:


> How many Ryzen and Threadripper Motherboards are there that natively support Thunderbolt 3/4 now? Before it was 1 for each and they were Micro ATX boards with 1 PCIe slot. A huge reason why I haven't built anything yet. Unfortunately, if there isn't a decent selection, I will build an Intel build purely because of Thunderbolt 3/4


I’m using Gigabyte Aorus x570…Thunderbolt header on mtherboard and an add in TB3 card with zero issues.


----------



## easyrider

waveheavy said:


> I've built my previous PC's and 3 of my son's PC's, and that's enough to know the difference. So, not BS. The AMD chips are liked by GAMERS, because they are faster than Intel's, not because of being more stable than Intel.


What does this even mean? Lol utter nonsense.


----------



## easyrider

waveheavy said:


> Well... maybe. My son is a 'gamer' and he swears by his AMD builds, even though he has burned up 3 of his AMD builds. That's been several years ago though. And in that time Intel was the most stable, which is why my engineering work site (a U.S. R & D facility for the USAF which I won't name) chose Dell's with Intel chips.


And Google uses AMD…

This BS needs to stop! 😂


----------



## easyrider

MartinH. said:


> What exactly do you mean with "stable" in a cpu context? Are the mainboard chipset drivers more stable, or do the AMD CPUs physically die or what do you mean?


Thing is he doesn’t know what he means….😂


----------



## easyrider

Google announced it has deployed 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors in its internal infrastructure production datacenter environment and in late 2019 will support new general-purpose machinespowered by 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors on Google Cloud Compute Engine as well;
Twitter announced it will deploy 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors across its datacenter infrastructure later this year, reducing TCO by 25%;
Microsoft announced a limited preview of new Azure virtual machines for general purpose applications, as well as preview signup for cloud-based remote desktops and HPC workloads based on 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors today;
HPE announced continued support of the AMD EPYC processor family with plans to triple their AMD-based portfolio with a broad range of 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor-based systems, including the HPE ProLiant DL385 and HPE ProLiant DL325 servers;
Cray announced The Air Force Weather Agency will be using a Cray Shasta system with 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors to provide comprehensive terrestrial and space weather information to the U.S. Air Force and Army;
Lenovo announced new solutions that are specifically built to take advantage of the full range of enhanced capabilities found in the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors. Available today, the ThinkSystem SR655 and SR635 are ideal solutions for use cases such as video infrastructure, virtualization, software-defined storage and more, with exceptional energy efficiency;
Dell Technologies announced the upcoming availability of newly designed servers optimized for 2ndGen AMD EPYC processors;
VMware and AMD announced a close collaboration to deliver support for new security and other features of the high-performance 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors within VMware vSphere.
“AMD 2nd Gen EPYC processors will help us continue to do what we do best in our datacenters: innovate,” said Bart Sano, Google vice president of Engineering. “Its scalable compute, memory and I/O performance will expand our ability to drive innovation forward in our infrastructure and will give Google Cloud customers the flexibility to choose the best VM for their workloads.”


----------



## brek

Use them both, love and hate both of them.

I definitely prefer OS navigation on Mac. As a paid owner of Directory Opus who has spent countless hours tweaking, researching, and scripting - it still can't do all the things I want it to, and does not have anywhere near the elegance of Finder (after making the necessary tweaks there).

That's basically it for me on the Apple side, though the cost to performance ratio of M1s is promising.

The update thing on Macs is a real issue. You can't just say "don't update" because then you are sooner or later locking yourself out of software updates for every program you use. 

Related, I can still use my perpetual copy of Sibelius (2018) on my PC, whereas a new MacBook purchase only a couple years ago can't open it. I can even open Finale on the PC, which I last updated around the mid-aughts. 

Working with students and in a computer lab, I see frequent problems on the Macs. The kind of weird stuff I had come to expect on PCs... like the cursor disappearing in Logic's automation lane if certain accessibility settings are turned on. In the last year or so even Logic has become rather crash prone (usually having to do with, you guessed it, a plugin needing to be updated).

On balance, Apple still gets a slight edge on reliability in my world - but it is only slight. Someone earlier mentioned things taking a turn around 2014, and that matches my perception. 

Ymmv, of course. 

As far as bloat, 3rd party bloat is certainly an issue on consumer PCs. I imagine many of us are not running into that issue based on the types of PCs we would be shopping for. 

Both Microsoft and Apple, on the other hand, are more than happy to push their first party bloat at you.


----------



## waveheavy

MartinH. said:


> What exactly do you mean with "stable" in a cpu context? Are the mainboard chipset drivers more stable, or do the AMD CPUs physically die or what do you mean?


Program stability, less crashes overall mainly.


----------



## waveheavy

Jeremy Spencer said:


> This is pretty much how we form a bias. I have had awful experiences with PC’s since 1992, and my Mac’s have never let me down. Naturally, I’m bias towards Mac. Doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong, but that’s my reasoning for choosing Mac. Sounds like it’s the same type of reasoning for waveheavy choosing Intel. And I understand his reasoning.


USAF contracters choosing Intel isn't a chance choice, especially in an R & D engineering situation. The electrical engineers at my work actually asked me what I thought of my Dell computer, as they were looking for a 'stable' platform for R & D data collection. When they were done looking, they chose Dell computers. We used Dells for years, even in hot building environments that had no air conditioning.


----------



## MartinH.

waveheavy said:


> Program stability, less crashes overall mainly.


Thanks for answering. How can one tell whether a program crashed because of the CPU and not some driver issue? I always thought a CPU doesn't "make mistakes" randomly. How can you rule out that it's not the chipset drivers that are different on intel and amd mainboards that cause the crashes?


----------



## waveheavy

Scripter said:


> My tip: Stick with whats the best bang for your buck. Nowadays both Intel and AMD are great. Really compare some similar ones and look a the price and decide. Had both and have currently AMD with Windows. Works buttersmooth here.


Yeah, I agree now days both are good, but I still don't rely on overclocking.


----------



## waveheavy

MartinH. said:


> Thanks for answering. How can one tell whether a program crashed because of the CPU and not some driver issue? I always thought a CPU doesn't "make mistakes" randomly. How can you rule out that it's not the chipset drivers that are different on intel and amd mainboards that cause the crashes?


When it starts to fail and you have to REPLACE the CPU.


----------



## waveheavy

easyrider said:


> Google announced it has deployed 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors in its internal infrastructure production datacenter environment and in late 2019 will support new general-purpose machinespowered by 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors on Google Cloud Compute Engine as well;
> Twitter announced it will deploy 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors across its datacenter infrastructure later this year, reducing TCO by 25%;
> Microsoft announced a limited preview of new Azure virtual machines for general purpose applications, as well as preview signup for cloud-based remote desktops and HPC workloads based on 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors today;
> HPE announced continued support of the AMD EPYC processor family with plans to triple their AMD-based portfolio with a broad range of 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor-based systems, including the HPE ProLiant DL385 and HPE ProLiant DL325 servers;
> Cray announced The Air Force Weather Agency will be using a Cray Shasta system with 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors to provide comprehensive terrestrial and space weather information to the U.S. Air Force and Army;
> Lenovo announced new solutions that are specifically built to take advantage of the full range of enhanced capabilities found in the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors. Available today, the ThinkSystem SR655 and SR635 are ideal solutions for use cases such as video infrastructure, virtualization, software-defined storage and more, with exceptional energy efficiency;
> Dell Technologies announced the upcoming availability of newly designed servers optimized for 2ndGen AMD EPYC processors;
> VMware and AMD announced a close collaboration to deliver support for new security and other features of the high-performance 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors within VMware vSphere.
> “AMD 2nd Gen EPYC processors will help us continue to do what we do best in our datacenters: innovate,” said Bart Sano, Google vice president of Engineering. “Its scalable compute, memory and I/O performance will expand our ability to drive innovation forward in our infrastructure and will give Google Cloud customers the flexibility to choose the best VM for their workloads.”


That's today though. Not how it was over 20 years ago, like when Dells came out.


----------



## SupremeFist

I've never built a PC, and I feel like learning how to do so would not be a good expenditure of time for me. Therefore I use Macs because they are what I know and they pretty much work as advertised. If I am paying an "Apple tax" it is worth it, for me, to not really have to care how my computer works. Everyone's choice is ok!


----------



## waveheavy

Jeremy Spencer said:


> This is pretty much how we form a bias. I have had awful experiences with PC’s since 1992, and my Mac’s have never let me down. Naturally, I’m bias towards Mac. Doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong, but that’s my reasoning for choosing Mac. Sounds like it’s the same type of reasoning for waveheavy choosing Intel. And I understand his reasoning.


Yep, pretty much it. Past experience in the old days with Intel wasn't as good as today's. Both AMD and Intel quality improved. But AMD's concentration was more about speed back then. And gamers wanted to be able to overclock their systems, supercool the cpu and just do things to see what they could stretch the limits to.

And I never saw an Apple computer as worse than a PC back in the Dell days. It was just Job's marketing strategy for Apple to concentrate more on the media industry, while the PC was chosen more by general industry and governments. 

What I find truly interesting though, is how both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates actually stole the 'windows' and menu idea from Commodore. Commodore had windows displays on their Amiga units. I had an Amiga 500 that did Ray Trace graphics and Encore for orchestral music samples long before Apple or Microsoft had comparable platforms.


----------



## MartinH.

waveheavy said:


> When it starts to fail and you have to REPLACE the CPU.


Gotcha, thanks for clarifying! So far I was lucky and never had any CPU die on me. I found this statistic which supports your claim that AMD CPUs have slightly more hardware failures during actual use. However the DOA failure rate of that intel core 11th gen is shockingly high: 









Reliability Report Pits Intel Vs AMD CPUs, GPU Brands, Storage: Failure Rates Are Telling


Puget Systems publishes a report every year on reliability, and we take a look at the data.




hothardware.com





I need to remember looking these up next time I shop for components.


----------



## inthevoid

Made the move from Mac to PC for my main DAW earlier this year after roughly 10 years on Mac (switched from Logic to Cubase a couple of years ago which helped the decision.) Bought a custom built PC from Scan 3XS who have been extremely helpful and informative. 

The transition wasn't totally straightforward, and came with its own set of frustrating headaches - I had definitely got very used to the 'plug and play'-ness of Macs. If you're looking to use a UAD interface with your Windows machine beware of compatibility issues! 

It took a couple of weeks to get everything set up the way I wanted it, but once everything was up and running I've been very pleasantly surprised. The machine's been both ridiculously snappy and powerful - and completely rock solid reliability wise - for the past 3 months. Time will tell if this stays the case.

Biggest downside is the horrible Windows file system - Finder is the absolute crown jewel of Mac OS IMO and it's really the only Mac feature I still regularly miss (though OneCommander has been a good albeit slightly over-complicated stand-in.) Special mention also goes to the amount of bloatware that comes pre-packaged with Win 11 (ThisIsWin11 on Github fixed most of this quickly).

Biggest upside has been the insane performance I'm now getting in Cubase for literally half the price of an equivalent Mac Pro.

I still have my old Mac Pro cylinder linked up to it via Ethernet as well for running Video Sync and for whenever I need to dive into Logic projects. The app Synergy means I can use the Mac seamlessly with the PC on a separate monitor, with the same mouse and keyboard as my PC as if it were just another screen on my PC.


----------



## easyrider

waveheavy said:


> Program stability, less crashes overall mainly.


Sweeping generalisation…and utter BS.


----------



## easyrider

waveheavy said:


> Yeah, I agree now days both are good, but I still don't rely on overclocking.


Where is anyone mentioning overclocking …and the best overclocking chips since the Core Duo days were Intel chips….


----------



## easyrider

waveheavy said:


> That's today though. Not how it was over 20 years ago, like when Dells came out.


Wtf?


----------



## easyrider

waveheavy said:


> When it starts to fail and you have to REPLACE the CPU.


Eh? You clearly have no idea what you are talking about….when what starts to fail?

I want a precise answer….


----------



## easyrider

waveheavy said:


> Yep, pretty much it. Past experience in the old days with Intel wasn't as good as today's.


BS



waveheavy said:


> Both AMD and Intel quality improved.


improved on what?


waveheavy said:


> But AMD's concentration was more about speed back then.


lol….From Pentium 4 onwards up until Ryzen, enthusiasts used Intel chips….Some used AMD Opteron 170….But intel Q6600 was the game changer and Core 2 duo Intel chips…

Then Intel ticked tocked right up until AMD released Ryzen.


waveheavy said:


> And gamers wanted to be able to overclock their systems, supercool the cpu and just do things to see what they could stretch the limits to.


Gamers overclocked Intel chips, I did, under water and under phase change….and and in all these years abusing chips from both camps I’ve not had one cpu faliure.

But I’m still wondering what your point actually is…


----------



## Nico5

It's fine to love whatever (and whomever) you want, but I find the reciting of quite old bad experiences with technology (or ex-spouses, boy- or girl-friends) rather tiring from anyone older than an all-knowing teenager. But at least the teenager can't recite personal experiences that are more than 2 decades ago 

But maybe making music and participating on web forums brings out the inner teenager in some of us. 

I believe that making a "good choice" has more to do with one's current priorities at "forest" level rather than at "tree" level:

If you prefer to keep leveraging your long term acquired knowledge, stay with your platform. Also stay, if it's important for current collaborations and/or an informal circle of helpful friends/acquaintances.


If you're at a stage where you'd like to learn something new (for whatever reason), or your tinkering priorities, or your financial priorities have changed, maybe switch platforms. Also switch, if it's important for collaborations and/or an informal circle of helpful friends/acquaintances.
For least money and most tinkering, my choice would be Linux.
For medium money and medium tinkering, my choice would be Windows (AMD or Intel, depending on exactly when I build my PC, since hardware leapfrogging is a thing).
For relatively least tinkering, and relatively lesser older "cruft", and when money is not a main factor, my choice would be Mac.

Also: One can get to different combinations of money and stability by using older versions of hardware and software (i.e. keeping or buying older gear) - at the cost of missing out on some newer goodness.


p.s. No matter what our personal choices are, we *all* benefit from different choices being available. So I appreciate all of you, who make music on different platforms than I do - it drives competition and therefore progress across the board for all of us.

p.p.s. I'm currently using some WinPC, some Linux and some Apple in my computing life, because I have different priorities for different kinds of stuff I do with computers.


----------



## KEM

But let’s not forget Ludwig Göransson uses Mac…


----------



## easyrider

KEM said:


> But let’s not forget Ludwig Göransson uses Mac…


Yawn…..


----------



## Øivind

Scripter said:


> Which Linux Distro?


I did some audio work on Mint. Worked great.

Manjaro also worked rather well for audio/media work and I do hear good things about AV Linux MX Edition, tho never tried it myself.


----------



## vitocorleone123

SupremeFist said:


> I've never built a PC, and I feel like learning how to do so would not be a good expenditure of time for me. Therefore I use Macs because they are what I know and they pretty much work as advertised. If I am paying an "Apple tax" it is worth it, for me, to not really have to care how my computer works. Everyone's choice is ok!


Absolutely nothing wrong with that. More and more I feel I’m getting too old to spend time building a PC even though it gets easier every time. I use Macs for work and Windows for creative stuff and games.

People who pay the Apple tax and then think they automatically have the “best” computer because it cost a lot, rather than the best computer for themselves, are a big part of the problem. A lot of that is just successful marketing by Apple. Or outdated knowledge from 10+ years ago and/or before Windows went 64 bit.

It’s pretty much a wash at this point, but there’s perks and pitfalls to both.

I wouldn’t encourage random switching from one to the other. But if there’s reasons? Go for it. You’ll take a productivity hit for some time, though.


----------



## el-bo

vitocorleone123 said:


> People who pay the Apple tax[...]


Apple 'tax' can be offset to a great degree for Logic users. Given the time-elapsed and the current version number, I can easily imagine it reaching ten years before Logic hits version XI. That'd be ten years of up-to-date DAW usage for 200 quid


----------



## easyrider

el-bo said:


> Apple 'tax' can be offset to a great degree for Logic users. Given the time-elapsed and the current version number, I can easily imagine it reaching ten years before Logic hits version XI. That'd be ten years of up-to-date DAW usage for 200 quid


Can you run the latest version of Logic on a ten year old Mac ?


----------



## el-bo

easyrider said:


> Can you run the latest version of Logic on a ten year old Mac ?


No...but only since the last update. My computer is from 2012, but I bought it in 2014. Those computers that were released at the end of 2013, onwards are still compatible.


----------



## Tim_Wells

I'm sure most everyone knows this, but if you want to go with a Windows PC, you DO NOT have to build it yourself. There are a myriad of options from cheap to expensive. 

Being a cheapskate, I went with the Custom PC Builder at Newegg and it worked out very well. At the time it was $99, plus parts. It may be a bit more now.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

easyrider said:


> Can you run the latest version of Logic on a ten year old Mac ?


My 2013 does. Nine years old, but still going strong.


----------



## rezoneight

vitocorleone123 said:


> Absolutely nothing wrong with that. More and more I feel I’m getting to old to spend time building a PC even though it gets easier every time. I use Macs for work and Windows for creative stuff and games.
> 
> People who pay the Apple tax and then think they automatically have the “best” computer because it cost a lot, rather than the best computer for themselves, are a big part of the problem. A lot of that is just successful marketing by Apple. Or outdated knowledge from 10+ years ago and/or before Windows went 64 bit.
> 
> It’s pretty much a wash at this point, but there’s perks and pitfalls to both.
> 
> I wouldn’t encourage random switching from one to the other. But if there’s reasons? Go for it. You’ll take a productivity hit for some time, though.


There is no "Apple Tax". It's like saying there is a "Rolex Tax". No, you pay more. That's not a tax, its just more. Windows PCs are the same thing. Higher quality PCs cost more money. When I had to buy my XPS 13 for my consulting work I paid about the equivalent to whatever a similarly-speced Mac laptop was at the time. Why? Because the XPS13 was high quality all-around (funny that it can't run Windows 11 though and its only 5 years old and has a fast i7 and 16GB of RAM).


----------



## rezoneight

easyrider said:


> BS
> 
> 
> improved on what?
> 
> lol….From Pentium 4 onwards up until Ryzen, enthusiasts used Intel chips….Some used AMD Opteron 170….But intel Q6600 was the game changer and Core 2 duo Intel chips…
> 
> Then Intel ticked tocked right up until AMD released Ryzen.
> 
> Gamers overclocked Intel chips, I did, under water and under phase change….and and in all these years abusing chips from both camps I’ve not had one cpu faliure.
> 
> But I’m still wondering what your point actually is…


Yawn...


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

rezoneight said:


> There is no "Apple Tax".


I suppose you could also rename it "extra peace of mind for getting shit done reliably". I don't care if my 2020 iMac was $4000, it paid for itself with its first couple of gigs (already owes me nothing) and I know it will perform reliably for years to come (as did my 2013 that's still reliable as hell). I'm sure PC's have provided the same experience for Windows users, but for me Mac is the preference.


----------



## vitocorleone123

Jeremy Spencer said:


> I suppose you could also rename it "extra peace of mind for getting shit done reliably". I don't care if my 2020 iMac was $4000, it paid for itself with its first couple of gigs (already owes me nothing) and I know it will perform reliably for years to come (as did my 2013 that's still reliable as hell). I'm sure PC's have provided the same experience for Windows users, but for me Mac is the preference.


Yep. Totally possible to get the same from Windows... for the same or less cash. Doesn't make one right or wrong to choose one or the other - or, like me, use both. 

I tend to like Apple laptops better, but that's changed in the last couple years where I feel PC makers are finally competing... until you compare battery life, now. But I don't ever see myself buying an Apple desktop - that's all Windows on hardware I selected and assembled.


----------



## rezoneight

vitocorleone123 said:


> Yep. Totally possible to get the same from Windows... for the same or less cash. Doesn't make one right or wrong to choose one or the other - or, like me, use both.
> 
> I tend to like Apple laptops better, but that's changed in the last couple years where I feel PC makers are finally competing... until you compare battery life, now. But I don't ever see myself buying an Apple desktop - that's all Windows on hardware I selected and assembled.


The problem with PC laptops is having to run Windows (please, no Linux discussion). I've got too many Mac-only apps that I rely on that just don't have equivalents on Windows. I am typing this on a 24" iMac. Best machine I've ever owned bar none. Fabulous display. Very nice quality web cam. Fast. Silent. Not doing any music on this one, just work.


----------



## el-bo

rezoneight said:


> When I had to buy my XPS 13 for my consulting work I paid about the equivalent to whatever a similarly-speced Mac laptop was at the time.


I bought my first Macbook Pro, back in 2007, because it was cheaper than the Windows laptop that I'd been looking to buy


----------



## Eulenauge66

Can somebody explain why Finder is supposed to be so much better than Explorer? I am using both. PC for audio production, Mac for everything else. I just can’t see a difference.


----------



## rezoneight

Eulenauge66 said:


> Can somebody explain why Finder is supposed to be so much better than Explorer? I am using both. PC for audio production, Mac for everything else. I just can’t see a difference.


I actually prefer Windows Explorer and I'm a Mac user  There is a reason why Path Finder exists as a Mac product (and why I bought it).


----------



## SupremeFist

vitocorleone123 said:


> I tend to like Apple laptops better, but that's changed in the last couple years where I feel PC makers are finally competing... until you compare battery life, now. But I don't ever see myself buying an Apple desktop - that's all Windows on hardware I selected and assembled.


I've had exclusively Apple laptops since the 1990s but there's no way in hell I'm getting one with a stupid notch.


----------



## jaketanner

For me it always been Apple. Started early on when I first got into computer recording from analog. No one had a PC in a Pro studio. The other thing I always found to be an issue AND can also be a blessing, is that everyone and their mother can make PC parts, computers, peripherals…etc. But very few can make them for Apple, and only Apple makes Apple…so there is no guess work in terms of “Will it work”, “aid this compatible”? Etc…and being that I can technically run Windows on my Intel Mac, I feel I have the best of both worlds should I choose to use a PC…but I do own a PC laptop…just not for music.


----------



## mscp

Jeremy Spencer said:


> I suppose you could also rename it "extra peace of mind for getting shit done reliably".


Outdated thinking (pre-2010). They’re both “unreliable” depending on circumstances. Exhibit A: My M1 max.


----------



## aeliron

SupremeFist said:


> I've had exclusively Apple laptops since the 1990s but there's no way in hell I'm getting one with a stupid notch.


I got the one with the smart notch! 😆


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

mscp said:


> Outdated thinking (pre-2010). They’re both “unreliable” depending on circumstances. Exhibit A: My M1 max.


Did it die?


----------



## mscp

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Did it die?


I haven't seen a computer (neither a PC or a Mac) die since childhood. Not sure what you're on about.

My Macs and PCs are the same s....but different flavours. I could go on and list everything that sucks and irritates me on both OSs, but I think I've mentioned some of them somewhere already. The stigma of Mac users in regards to modern PCs is real though.

Work can be done on both - with patience. User beware though...if shit happens (like parked CPU cores causing clicks/pops), you're most likely to be able to fix it yourself on WindowsPCs. Not so much on MacOSes.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

mscp said:


> I haven't seen a computer (neither a PC or a Mac) die since childhood. Not sure what you're on about.
> 
> My Macs and PCs are the same s....but different flavours. I could go on and list everything that sucks and irritates me on both OSs, but I think I've mentioned some of them somewhere already. The stigma of Mac users in regards to modern PCs is real though.
> 
> Work can be done on both - with patience. User beware though...if shit happens (like parked CPU cores causing clicks/pops), you're most likely to be able to fix it yourself on WindowsPCs. Not so much on MacOSes.


Having an annoying OS is fine for me as long as my machine (work tool) gets the job done and doesn't crap out. If choosing Mac is my preference, I'm perfectly okay with the stigma or "fanboyism", I really don't care. My deadlines are consistently met (with the exception of my procrastination and wasting time on forums ). If my iMac acts up, I'll just take it into a certified warranty service shop and use my MacBook until it's repaired. At this point in life I can't be bothered with the f**kery of replacing PC parts...give me AppleCare any day (which is now available perpetually). 

Regarding dying PC's...I've had two since childhood. Fried MOBO's, they were clinically dead Lol. 

Ok, rant over.....I'll get my coat...


----------



## mscp

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Having an annoying OS is fine for me as long as my machine (work tool) gets the job done and doesn't crap out. If choosing Mac is my preference, I'm perfectly okay with the stigma or "fanboyism", I really don't care. My deadlines are consistently met (with the exception of my procrastination and wasting time on forums ). If my iMac acts up, I'll just take it into a certified warranty service shop and use my MacBook until it's repaired. At this point in life I can't be bothered with the f**kery of replacing PC parts...give me AppleCare any day (which is now available perpetually).
> 
> Regarding dying PC's...I've had two since childhood. Fried MOBO's, they were clinically dead Lol.
> 
> Ok, rant over.....I'll get my coat...


Yep, but this is not a Mac appreciation thread.


----------



## cel4145

Jeremy Spencer said:


> At this point in life I can't be bothered with the f**kery of replacing PC parts...give me AppleCare any day (which is now available perpetually).


I don't understand what that means. If a PC has problems, you can take it in for repair just like you do a Mac. No need to do it yourself. You just can't take it to an Apple store. lol


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

cel4145 said:


> I don't understand what that means. If a PC has problems, you can take it in for repair just like you do a Mac. No need to do it yourself. You just can't take it to an Apple store. lol


No need for an Apple Store for Mac's either, there are numerous authorized repair shops in my area that repair Mac's that are under Apple Care. Even if it's a $2000 repair, it's 100% covered. $200 covers me for three years, and Apple now allows coverage beyond that for a nominal annual fee (which is still reasonable IMO). If the mobo (for example) fries on a custom built PC, Lord knows what the cost will be at the shop.....I guarantee it won't be $200 with parts and labour.

Anyways, this is my preference. No right or wrong, I just like the peace of mind.


----------



## richiebee

Jeremy Spencer said:


> No need for an Apple Store for Mac's either, there are numerous authorized repair shops in my area that repair Mac's that are under Apple Care. Even if it's a $2000 repair, it's 100% covered. $200 covers me for three years, and Apple now allows coverage beyond that for a nominal annual fee (which is still reasonable IMO). If the mobo (for example) fries on a custom built PC, Lord knows what the cost will be at the shop.....*I guarantee it won't be $200 with parts and labour.*


That depends on whether you paid for the extended warranty. Most people who build their own computers can fix their own computers. Parts are still warrantied, and extended warranties on components are available (if you want to pay for them). If you don't want to build your own (I don't), you can buy warranties when you buy your machine. I could have paid $100CDN for three years in home service warranty (so no driving to a store).


----------



## Karmand

No


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

richiebee said:


> That depends on whether you paid for the extended warranty. Most people who build their own computers can fix their own computers. Parts are still warrantied, and extended warranties on components are available (if you want to pay for them). If you don't want to build your own (I don't), you can buy warranties when you buy your machine. I could have paid $100CDN for three years in home service warranty (so no driving to a store).


That is a good deal, I didn't know there was anything like that in Canada that offered the same level of protection for a high end PC build. Certainly nothing like that in my neck of the woods for $100 (even Memory Express 4-year warranty is around $1000 for a $4k PC build). Tit for tat I guess.


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## aeliron

Karmand said:


> No


Maybe?


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## cel4145

Jeremy Spencer said:


> No need for an Apple Store for Mac's either, there are numerous authorized repair shops in my area that repair Mac's that are under Apple Care. Even if it's a $2000 repair, it's 100% covered. $200 covers me for three years, and Apple now allows coverage beyond that for a nominal annual fee (which is still reasonable IMO). If the mobo (for example) fries on a custom built PC, Lord knows what the cost will be at the shop.....I guarantee it won't be $200 with parts and labour.
> 
> Anyways, this is my preference. No right or wrong, I just like the peace of mind.


You can get a PC warranty. Just like you paid for Apple Care. The major PC manufacturers offer them. Or you can buy one independently. 

So I don't get why you keep posting these distinctions without a difference fallacies.


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## Pier

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Anyways, this is my preference. No right or wrong, I just like the peace of mind.


Personally it gives me more peace of mind I can just upgrade/replace components whenever I want. I can go to any PC components store, Amazon, NewEgg, etc, and buy anything I need and change it myself in minutes.

I love Macs, I'm writing this right now on a 5K iMac, but they are really black boxes.


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## rezoneight

Just for a counter point I had a 2010 MBP die on me. It was the nvidia graphics chip and a well-known problem at the time. That was the only Mac ever to die on me however. I used to like building PCs but I don't have the patience for that anymore, not to mention I just find macOS a much better operating system for my day job (programmer) and productivity tools.


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## richiebee

rezoneight said:


> I just find macOS a much better operating system for my day job (programmer) and productivity tools.



I'm surprised more people don't just make this argument for one or the other. I think its the distinction these days. The computers themselves are reliable, unless you buy bottom of the barrel junk. The way you interact with the OS matters, even when the applications you use on them look the same on Windows and MacOS. They're pretty different, even if most of those differences are superficial.


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## StefanoM

After 15 years of Mac, I've been using PCs for about Two Years, And I'm very very happy.

Actually, I have 2 Machines

1 VEP Machine with an i9 10980XE 18 Cores 128 GB is a beast in MultiCore not so powerful in Single Core.
1 Master Machine with a new i9 12900k 16 Cores 128GB that is a BEAST also in single Core.

and for all those two machines, with TB3 and 4, M2 DISK ( 6TB in Total ), etc... I spent less than 1 Mac Studio Ultra which cost over 6000 Euro, and actually, the i9 12900K performs better than M1 Ultra in particular in single core that is important in Tracking when you Play at low latency







And I can Upgrade/Change When I Want some components.

I have a Mac just to test my libraries also on a Mac.

But for work, Pc for Ever, I'm using Windows 11 Pro, Optimized for Audio. No problem at all, low DPC latency, stable OS.

The only reason for me to use a MAC now in 2022 is if you are on Logic and you can't / you don't want to change the DAW.

Fortunately, I'm on Cubase/Nuendo, Studio One, and sometimes Reaper.


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## Jeremy Spencer

Pier said:


> Amazon, NewEgg, etc, and buy anything I need and change it myself in minutes.


And that is definitely a huge advantage! My days of that are over though, can’t be bothered.


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## rezoneight

StefanoM said:


> After 15 years of Mac, I've been using PCs for about Two Years, And I'm very very happy.
> 
> Actually, I have 2 Machines
> 
> 1 VEP Machine with an i9 10980XE 18 Cores 128 GB is a beast in MultiCore not so powerful in Single Core.
> 1 Master Machine with a new i9 12900k 16 Cores 128GB that is a BEAST also in single Core.
> 
> and for all those two machines, with TB3 and 4, M2 DISK ( 6TB in Total ), etc... I spent less than 1 Mac Studio Ultra which cost over 6000 Euro, and actually, the i9 12900K performs better than M1 Ultra in particular in single core that is important in Tracking when you Play at low latency
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And I can Upgrade/Change When I Want some components.
> 
> I have a Mac just to test my libraries also on a Mac.
> 
> But for work, Pc for Ever, I'm using Windows 11 Pro, Optimized for Audio. No problem at all, low DPC latency, stable OS.
> 
> The only reason for me to use a MAC now in 2022 is if you are on Logic and you can't / you don't want to change the DAW.
> 
> Fortunately, I'm on Cubase/Nuendo, Studio One, and sometimes Reaper.


Dude nobody cares. For that small increase in one benchmark your i9 is drinking power like its someone lost in the Sahara in the middle of the day while the Ultra is sipping with its pinky stuck out at a fine coffeehouse.


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## Pier

richiebee said:


> I'm surprised more people don't just make this argument for one or the other. I think its the distinction these days. The computers themselves are reliable, unless you buy bottom of the barrel junk. The way you interact with the OS matters, even when the applications you use on them look the same on Windows and MacOS. They're pretty different, even if most of those differences are superficial.


It really depends on what you do.

I only use my Windows machine for music and gaming so very rarely actually use the OS itself. I mean, Cubase is exactly the same on both macOS and Windows.

But personally I prefer macOS for general use and coding. If only because Alfred is so ingrained in me that I couldn't be as productive without it.


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## mscp

Jeremy Spencer said:


> And that is definitely a huge advantage! My days of that are over though, can’t be bothered.


But you can be bothered to take your mac to a shop for a repair? Call that irony. It must be such an ordeal to snap a PCIe into a slot these days, and boot the machine. 😂 

Just say you like Macs. It’s not a venereal disease - nothing to be ashamed of. 

Insisting that Macs are superior to PCs is just fanboyism horsesh…though. They work equally well, and can be EXTREMELY frustrating when issues come up. Lately, MacOS has been pissing me off but I wanted to try an M1 anyway. I like technology, and have an enourmous amount of patience to spare, so I’m always the stupid early bird. 

Software wise, Windows has been more rock solid than the latest macOS's since 2016ish over here. Hardware-wise, my intel pcs literally laugh at my Macs - as weird as it sounds. The only real problem I still have with PCs is that Windows is fugly, and Pro Tools still looks like 1985. 😆


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## Jeremy Spencer

mscp said:


> Just say you like Macs. It’s not a venereal disease - nothing to be ashamed of.


I actually like both Mac and PC. I use Mac for my music production and PC’s for my full time profession. Both are good at what they do.


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## Jeremy Spencer

mscp said:


> But you can be bothered to take your mac to a shop for a repair? Call that irony.


For stuff like a card on a PC, no problem. But replacing something like a motherboard…no thanks. Been there, done that.


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## HCMarkus

mscp said:


> Pro Tools still looks like 1985. 😆


It was a a very good year...? (Sing it Frank)


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## Nicola74

StefanoM said:


> But for work, Pc for Ever, I'm using Windows 11 Pro, Optimized for Audio. No problem at all, low DPC latency, stable OS.


Hi Stefano,
Is there a guide to optimize W11 for audio? Or did you make it by yourself?


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## StefanoM

Nicola74 said:


> Hi Stefano,
> Is there a guide to optimize W11 for audio? Or did you make it by yourself?


I use first of all the Debloat by Chris to remove all the things that are not usefull:

there is a script for PowerShell and it works for Windows 10 and 11





Debloat Windows in 2022


Having Fun with Technology




christitus.com






Then in general are the same things for Windows 10

Settings a Correct Power Option State

Configuring the Bios to disable all the C-State and Power Options

Disable the Turbo Boost of Intel to have all the cores ad a fixed value.

Etc there are a lot of guides on the Internet.

I did a video but this time, it's in Italian.


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## StefanoM

rezoneight said:


> Dude nobody cares. For that small increase in one benchmark your i9 is drinking power like its someone lost in the Sahara in the middle of the day while the Ultra is sipping with its pinky stuck out at a fine coffeehouse.


Sure..

but before maybe I've to think about the people that go by Car every Day ( I take my bike)

On a desktop computer, I genuinely care that it works better. And it works better and costs less.


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## Nicola74

StefanoM said:


> I did a video but this time, t's in Italian


Can you link It? I am from Italy


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## StefanoM

Nicola74 said:


> Can you link It? I am from Italy



O che coglione che sono ahahah!

Certo Nicola


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## Nicola74

Grazie!! Siamo tutti un po' coglioni a volte


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## MarcusD

Been having a similar thoughts about switching exclusively to Mac when upgrading the desktop machine. However, I think both platforms have their pros and cons. Loving the MacOS since getting an M1, video editing, documentation, graphics, photo editing, just the OS in general is just much more straight forward to work with. The downside, RAM and Storage are not as simple to upgrade if you want to D.I.Y. at cost.

PC on the other hand, you can stuff full of RAM and Storage whenever you want, which is great. Much cheaper in that regard, also has the bonus of being recyclable if you want to upgrade in the future and not fork out on a complete new machine. I'm planning on upgrading my desktop soon and it'll cost around £1500 for 5950x CPU, 128GB RAM and new Motherboard. All the other components will be recycled from the old machine. Later down the line will get another Mac and use it as a master machine and turn the PC into a VEP slave. 

Both platforms are good!


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## easyrider

Jeremy Spencer said:


> For stuff like a card on a PC, no problem. But replacing something like a motherboard…no thanks. Been there, done that.


I think it’s a confidence thing….I’ve never had to replace a motherboard due to a failure only to upgrade….like when I built my Intel 9900k machine….I tested it benched it realised it was a furnace and power hungry piece of trash and sold the motherboard and chip 2 weeks later….To have zero downtime I kept the 9900k until the 5950x and x570 motherboard arrived removed chipset drivers….shut down the 9900k I swapped out the motherboard for the X570 and plonked in a 5950x and used the same windows install and water cooled system just changing the mounting mechanism on the block and was back up and running in 45 mins.

Windows did its thing installed the base drivers…then I quickly activated windows installed the drivers in minutes has I had them ready in a folder.

And was back to where I was with a superior system, less heat, less noise, more performance in under an hour.

ill rinse and repeat this method if Intel release a chip that destroys AMD Ryzen on AM5 socket,or the gains are big enough from AM4 and 5950x to AM5 and 6950x..


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## rezoneight

StefanoM said:


> Sure..
> 
> but before maybe I've to think about the people that go by Car every Day ( I take my bike)
> 
> On a desktop computer, I genuinely care that it works better. And it works better and costs less.


But it doesn't work better, thats the problem with these comparisons. These platforms work equally well for most tasks but then it comes down to personal preference or narrow use cases for which you choose one or the other. 

I will not use Windows for day to day computing needs or my work requirements. It doesn't have the apps that *I* use to get my personal work done and I don't do Windows or Microsoft-related software development so the Mac works far better for the development work I do. Has squat to do with stability. I have not had any stability issues with either macOS or Windows in like a decade.

I am also not interested in "upgrading" my machines anymore. I buy them as I want them and move on with my life. Looking back I never saved a dollar because when I was a Windows/PC user and able to upgrade I was always upgrading because it was fun to have the newest graphics card, CPU, whatever. So not only was I spending money on the new stuff I was taking time away from other stuff to do the upgrades. Ultimately it did NOT cost less. Hell, I was just watching a Simeon Amburgey vid on YouTube where he's doing an upgrade like 2 years out! 



> At the beginning of 2020, I put together a new computer system. Now in 2022, I wanted to make sure I had enough power and cooling to keep things stable.



I haven't worried about having enough power or cooling since Apple moved to the Intel platform like 15 years ago. If Simeon likes spending his money on that stuff and he enjoys it good for him. But I don't buy that in 2 years suddenly his system isn't capable to keep doing what's he's been showing us in his YouTube videos for the last 2 years.

I don't feel the need to show benchmark results that don't prove a thing other than a given CPU is marginally better in a certain kind of workload determined by the benchmark. I generally notice that these are always bandied about by over-enthusiasts who somehow feel the need to not only justify what they've purchased but bash others over the head with it like they're doing something wrong by not coming along. You know what all of those benchmarks show? That Apple is right there in the performance arena. The numbers don't lie but if you don't like Apple don't buy their products. Again, nobody really cares.


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## StefanoM

rezoneight said:


> But it doesn't work better, thats the problem with these comparisons. These platforms work equally well for most tasks but then it comes down to personal preference or narrow use cases for which you choose one or the other.
> 
> I will not use Windows for day to day computing needs or my work requirements. It doesn't have the apps that *I* use to get my personal work done and I don't do Windows or Microsoft-related software development so the Mac works far better for the development work I do. Has squat to do with stability. I have not had any stability issues with either macOS or Windows in like a decade.
> 
> I am also not interested in "upgrading" my machines anymore. I buy them as I want them and move on with my life. Looking back I never saved a dollar because when I was a Windows/PC user and able to upgrade I was always upgrading because it was fun to have the newest graphics card, CPU, whatever. So not only was I spending money on the new stuff I was taking time away from other stuff to do the upgrades. Ultimately it did NOT cost less. Hell, I was just watching a Simeon Amburgey vid on YouTube where he's doing an upgrade like 2 years out!
> 
> 
> 
> I haven't worried about having enough power or cooling since Apple moved to the Intel platform like 15 years ago. If Simeon likes spending his money on that stuff and he enjoys it good for him. But I don't buy that in 2 years suddenly his system isn't capable to keep doing what's he's been showing us in his YouTube videos for the last 2 years.
> 
> I don't feel the need to show benchmark results that don't prove a thing other than a given CPU is marginally better in a certain kind of workload determined by the benchmark. I generally notice that these are always bandied about by over-enthusiasts who somehow feel the need to not only justify what they've purchased but bash others over the head with it like they're doing something wrong by not coming along. You know what all of those benchmarks show? That Apple is right there in the performance arena. The numbers don't lie but if you don't like Apple don't buy their products. Again, nobody really cares.




Of Course

But

I don't use Logic, or any Apple App for doing my Composing, Sound Desing, or developer Work.

So The use of a Mac Studio of 6800 Euro that performs quite similar to a PC Machine with a 12900K and 128GB that has 1/3 of that cost of Mac Studio with similar specs, has no sense for me.

If we talk of laptops and Mobile machines, ok Maybe these M Processors are Amazing, in particular for the low energy request.


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## rezoneight

StefanoM said:


> Of Course
> 
> But
> 
> I don't use Logic, or any Apple App for doing my Composing, Sound Desing, or developer Work.
> 
> So The use of a Mac Studio of 6800 Euro that performs quite similar to a PC Machine with a 12900K and 128GB that has 1/3 of that cost of Mac Studio with similar specs, has no sense for me.
> 
> If we talk of laptops and Mobile machines, ok Maybe these M Processors are Amazing, in particular for the low energy request.


Well then why talk shit if its not even on your radar? I honestly don't get that attitude. But you don't need to use an Apple app for composing, sound design, or software development. I don't use any of those on my Macs. If you're happy with your PC and Windows that's awesome. It's good there are options out there for everyone.

And just to note low energy use is great no matter what the format of the chip is. It means lower electricity bills, less heat, and lower noise.

Last I will say on all of this as its beating a dead horse at this point. But nobody from either camp should be talking shit. Each platform has its good and bad points. And at the end of the day they're tools to get work done, not religion or politics (no matter how much they seem to be sometimes).


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## dts_marin

In my experience, living in a not so prosperous country, Windows have always been a toxic necessity because Macs are unreachable. I say necessity because it's not a choice.

The moment I was able to afford a low-tier Mac I got one. The hardware sucks but I'm glad I did it.

I'm really thankful that an alternative to Windows exists even if it isn't perfect.

I use both platforms daily for different tasks. I get to have my pie and eat too.

But if I could get rid of Windows for Linux I'd be a really happy man. I'd always keep a Mac in hand though because of some stuff you can't do anywhere else.

IMO the real fight shouldn't be between Macs vs PCs. Macs are a niche and you really don't need them to survive. Consider yourself lucky you don't have to get a Mac. But Windows are an invasive parasite and you can't avoid them. That's why I hate Windows. I hate being forced into a platform I didn't choose for its good aspects.

PCs are great Windows are not. I love repairability, upgradability, affordability and all the good things PCs have to offer but I won't attribute any of those aspects to Windows.


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## Superabbit

Nicola74 said:


> Is there a guide to optimize W11 for audio?


My favorite is the 3-part series by Pete Brown, a musician and Microsoft developer:








Unofficial Windows 10 Audio Workstation build and tweak guide - Part 1


Part 1 of 3. Tweaks and optimizations for getting the most out of your Windows 10 workstation, when using with a DAW.




devblogs.microsoft.com





He recently updated it for Windows 11 in part 3.



StefanoM said:


> Disable the Turbo Boost of Intel to have all the cores ad a fixed value.


I used to follow that one religiously, but then I was messing about with my Dell Optiplex 7010 i7-3770 system and turned Turbo Boost on as an experiment. My CPU clock, which had always sat at its "stock" frequency of 3.4GHz, jumped up to 3.67GHz and never budges from that speed. Not a huge increase, but with trailing edge tech, I'll take whatever I can get.

So this may be one to experiment with. My Dell notebook has an i7 mobile processor running at 1.87. I turned on Turbo Boost and it floats around, but never below 1.87 and sometimes it jumps to about 3.1GHz.

I check with Task Manager or HWINFO to make sure everything is still chugging along. The Intel BIOS feature I keep turned off is C-states, which is a power-saving gimmick not needed in a desktop computer.


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## easyrider




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## TomislavEP

Where I come from, Mac was always considered a luxury. Come to think of it, I don't really know anyone in the flesh owning Mac.

Regardless of the cost factors, in my book, a PC always represented good merit between invested and gained. I also like its open nature and the ability to build a "perfect configuration" for my purposes according to needs and budget.

Windows itself has its quirks and downsides but since W7 came out I haven't faced any serious and "unsolvable" issues despite intensive use and demands. This applies not only to my DAW but also to the other systems that I regularly use. From my experience, with regular maintenance and a few optimizations, W10 is a very solid platform. I hope that W11 will continue this tradition after I finally "update".


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## easyrider

That power shell script is fooking excellent….


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## rezoneight

dts_marin said:


> Macs are a niche and you really don't need them to survive.


I know I said I wouldnt say more but not really arguing Mac vs. PC here . "Niche" depends on where you live. I see a LOT of people with MacBooks of various sorts. They're far more popular than they used to be.


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## easyrider

rezoneight said:


> I know I said I wouldnt say more but not really arguing Mac vs. PC here . "Niche" depends on where you live. I see a LOT of people with MacBooks of various sorts. They're far more popular than they used to be.


I see a lot when walking past Starbucks….usually hipsters with beards…sat drinking a coffee mocha choc ‘o’ lotta on their Macs….😂

I was asked once to install windows on a Mac so the person could sit in Hyde park and look cool pretending to be using a Mac. 😂


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## rezoneight

easyrider said:


> I see a lot when walking past Starbucks….usually hipsters with beards…sat drinking a coffee mocha choc ‘o’ lotta on their Macs….😂
> 
> I was asked once to install windows on a Mac so the person could sit in Hyde park and look cool pretending to be using a Mac. 😂


Not sure where you live but where I live in the Midwest US hipsters don't frequent Starbucks. There is nothing "hip" about Starbucks, or mochas. See MacBooks at the library, on the train to work, etc. Here they're popular. I can't speak for how the Brits do it. But that isn't the case here.

As to your person who wanted to look cool, a Mac sale is a Mac sale. But note nobody is buying PCs to look cool.


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## Bender-offender

rezoneight said:


> Dude nobody cares. For that small increase in one benchmark your i9 is drinking power like its someone lost in the Sahara in the middle of the day while the Ultra is sipping with its pinky stuck out at a fine coffeehouse.


🤯


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## MarcusD

rezoneight said:


> I can't speak for how the Brits do it. But that isn't the case here.


Lots of people have iPhones and Apple watches. But the only people I’ve ever seen whip-out a MacBook in public are accountants, salesmen (they bloody love flashing their 🍎s ) and DJs doing a set. Otherwise, don’t tend to see them. Then again, I don’t live in a city, or go out in the daylight. Tough being a vampire.


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