What follows are large excerpts from a tweakheadz.com article on the pros and cons of both Macs and PCs in relation to audio. We've annotated the article showing where we've managed to negate the weaknesses of the PC. The Mac's major weaknesses however remain; the largest of these is cost and built in obsolescence (Macs cannot be upgraded! - how environmentally friendly is that?).

COST FACTORS

Though Macs are getting cheaper for the more basic machines like the iMac, a full-fledged powerful desktop Mac is going to cost more than a PC of equivalent power. Expect to pay $2500-$3000 for the better PowerMacs without any add-ons like extra drives and memory that you will want if you are serious about making full-scale productions. So add another grand. Macs have always been more expensive. Adding to this cost is a hefty future cost of ownership: There is no way to substantially upgrade your Mac, other than adding memory, drives, and peripherals. You won't find motherboards, new CPUs, power supplies, cases and other parts you can snap together to give you a new Mac out of your old one.

That makes the Mac a disposable machine. You can't buy a "bare-boned" Mac without a mouse, keyboard, drives. When you want a faster processor, you buy a new machine. If you are lucky you can salvage the hard drives. Of course, you can keep your USB and Firewire drives. The memory might not go over too well. Cards that are PCI based could be trouble. The current Quads as of this writing have dropped PCI support in favor of PCIe. Apple switches gears a lot. They got their users hooked on expensive SCSI drives, then dropped them. Developed monitors with special ADC connectors, then dropped those. Now PCI is going away, much the chagrin of those of us depending on PCI slots for our UAD-1 cards and SCSI connection to our older Emu and Akai samplers. Sigh. When you go Mac and want to stay Mac you are committing yourself following Apple through these often expensive changeovers. So you may have to pay in more than one way when you feel your computer has gotten old and slow.

PCs are cheaper, not only initially, but also in the long term because they are upgradeable. In fact, it is probably better to build your own from the very start rather than buy one off the shelf. Why? So you can control the quality of the components, and get the motherboard with the the slots and connections you need. You can still buy boards with legacy slots and connectors for old hardware, if you look. When the system gets old, you can usually get away with snapping in a new motherboard and CPU and perhaps new memory. You can sometimes get the equivalent of a whole new, much faster PC for around $400-700. At that cost you could upgrade your PC every two years and always have a fast machine. That has become an hobby in and of itself for many people, and its fun, but it does not help you make music, unfortunately.

PERFORMANCE VS. PRODUCTIVITY

That Macs are faster than PCs is a myth. Lets forget about benchmarks and MIPS for a second and let me be subjective. To me, they feel slightly slower in terms of how fast you can work. Is this a big deal? Not really. The Mac makes up for it by providing a more conflict resistant system, so in the end, the Mac comes out being more productive. The time you save by not tweaking and troubleshooting things on the system gives you more time to work on your projects. Yes, PCs can be tweaked and tuned for high performance. You can overclock the CPU, speed up memory, optimize things all the way to hard disk cluster size. You can add bigger fans, hyped up video cards and tweak BIOS variables for a week if you want and sometimes get it to give up superb performance. Yet all of this tweaking detracts in a major way from making music. The ironic thing is by giving more performance you get less productivity.

[Our Audio PCs are already setup for high performance, they already come with excellent fans, video cards and very stable BIOS settings. Like Macs, they work "out of the box".]

PCs are harder to deal with? Consider. With so many different motherboards on the market and several different chipsets controlling things, conflicts are more likely to arise. Vendors of PC parts typically release products before they are finished and expect you to update them when you uncover the problems. Because of this market tendency, you have no choice other than to try to troubleshoot and fix these problems all by yourself when they occur. Is it a hardware issue? BIOS setting? A driver? The PCI slot in which you installed the soundcard? Or is it in the registry? A virus? Worm? Service Pack incompatibility? You may have to check out "everything" and boot and reboot 3, 10, or in the case of a nightmare issue, 50 times before you get it solved.

[We've tested our Audio PCs over a six month period, we've had no such conflicts. This is in part because we've found it's better to use technology that's been around for a year or two before relying on it. We use Windows XP SP2 and strongly advise against using Windows Vista: a) because it hogs system resources (to achieve the equivalent performance of a system running XP on 512 MB RAM Vista requires between 1 and 1.5 GB, furthermore XP requires 1.6 GB of disk space, Vista uses 15GB of disk space); we prefer the computer to work on our audio projects rather than support a bloated O/S, b) Vista is relatively new and meddles with hardware devices, this section of the article is far more relevant to Vista, but XP is now a very stable and relatively light O/S.]

With the Mac you get it one way, the way it works, right out of the box. All motherboards come from Apple. The OS comes from Apple. Apple puts together all the machines after a lot of testing. There is far less of a chance of failure. If things do go bad it's not so hard to find the culprit. Adding a peripheral or installing software to a Mac is rarely difficult. It is rather amazing how little one does to maintain the machine. That alone makes the Mac "worth it" for many people and it more than offsets any gains made by tweaking a BIOS.

Macs don't have the problems that PCs have with viruses and worms, at least not yet. Some people don't use any virus protection at all, something that is unthinkable on a PC that is connected to the internet. You don't have to subscribe to an internet security regime and wait for it to load every time you boot your computer. You don't have to worry as much about your neighbors prying into your financial information or browsing your system. I think most Mac users don't even think about those issues, sort of like the way computing was in the early 90's, but now with nothing slowing down your internet travels.

[In relation to security issues, this is not so relevant. One of the benefits of Windows having been so under-attack, is the resulting variety and quality of third party security freeware available, which has helped make XP a very secure system. We tend to use FilSecLab or Comodo firewalls, with Avast or AVG (with System Safety Monitor as an optional extra) and no-one here has ever had a virus or a trojan!]

MUSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Notice we have not said a word about music yet. So lets go there now, but be forewarned, these are general statements that might not always apply.

Both platforms share many software titles though important ones are exclusive, that is, they only run on one platform. The PC has Sonar, Sound forge, Fruity loops, Adobe Audition exclusively. The Macs have Logic, GarageBand, Digital Performer, Peak, Soundtrack Pro exclusively. Of course there are more. Both platforms can run Cubase SX, Nuendo, and Pro Tools LE. Thankfully, many (though not all) of the softsynths and samplers and plugins are cross platform. I've compared these enough in other parts of TweakHeadz Lab, so I don't need to do it again here.

[There's more freeware audio applications available to the PC than the Mac. Though, it's not as bad for Macs as it once was.]

But what we can talk about is the raw processing power and speed of operation. In my experience, a fast PC running Sonar or Cubase is outstandingly fast, cutting through audio operations with ease. A Mac G5 has a tremendous reserve of power under the hood for realtime plugin processing, though it may not be as fast with the screen redraws. Its hard to say anything more meaningful than that, speaking generally. Every PC is a different cluster of variables. The important thing on the PC platform is getting these variables right.

Many of the G5s are ultra quiet in operation. A nice feature for doing music in the room with one. You can do things to quiet your PC, like adding quiet fans, power supplies and a better case if yours is deficient.

[Which is exactly what we've done.]

There are some technical differences in the way Macs and PC set up audio and MIDI devices. Clearly, the Mac provides better access to your MIDI and Audio systems in its Audio/MIDI Utility, compared to the Windows Control Panel "Sounds" directory. You can define more details on the Mac. However, this is not a feature you can't live without as in practice, on a Mac or a PC, one rarely goes there. There's also a difference in where plugins are stored. On a PC you can create a VST Plugins folder anywhere you want, whereas on a Mac, they will reside in either your system's or user library under Audio.

Since Tiger (OSX 10.4) came out on the Mac you can now run multiple audio interfaces. Before this upgrade Windows had a clear advantage.

Macs do not "sound better". Nor do PCs. That is another myth. The computer never touches the sound anyway, your audio interface's converters do. Get a RME Fireface for either platform and you have the same, great sound. The math that the CPU uses to execute audio transformations is a function of the application, not the CPU. The plugins and software instruments that affect the sound have nothing to do with platform. Since both machines can use the same hard drives, you won't find a smoking gun in storage either.

PROFESSIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

Back in the mid 90's, Macs were dominant in computer assisted recording studios that actually made money. If you did not have one, you were not going to get as much work. That changed dramatically as we rounded the bend into year 2000. Today it is hard to say which is more popular. Your choice as a professional should be influenced by your clients, that is, by your customer base. Today people will be bringing you projects they started at home on their home computers, and if you want the job, you need to be able to cater to them. You might get a Sonar Project or one made in Digital performer. Of course if you have ongoing contracts with clients that are all Mac based, or with a Pro Tools studio, you might get a clue of what they might insist that you have. If you are exclusively Mac based, you'll be scratched off the list by producers that are working on tracks with Fruity Loops or developing a new video game on the PC.

Source: http://www.tweakheadz.com/Mac_vs_Pc_DAWS.htm



			> home > business > audio PCs > why PC?
	Business OVERVIEW AUDIO PC TRANSFER SERVICE AUDIO REPAIRS Related Information PLAY RECORD PAUSE (analysis) General ABOUT CONTACT		AUDIO PCs: WHY PC? - Mac or PC for a Music Computer What follows are large excerpts from a tweakheadz.com article on the pros and cons of both Macs and PCs in relation to audio. We've annotated the article showing where we've managed to negate the weaknesses of the PC. The Mac's major weaknesses however remain; the largest of these is cost and built in obsolescence (Macs cannot be upgraded! - how environmentally friendly is that?). COST FACTORS Though Macs are getting cheaper for the more basic machines like the iMac, a full-fledged powerful desktop Mac is going to cost more than a PC of equivalent power. Expect to pay $2500-$3000 for the better PowerMacs without any add-ons like extra drives and memory that you will want if you are serious about making full-scale productions. So add another grand. Macs have always been more expensive. Adding to this cost is a hefty future cost of ownership: There is no way to substantially upgrade your Mac, other than adding memory, drives, and peripherals. You won't find motherboards, new CPUs, power supplies, cases and other parts you can snap together to give you a new Mac out of your old one. That makes the Mac a disposable machine. You can't buy a "bare-boned" Mac without a mouse, keyboard, drives. When you want a faster processor, you buy a new machine. If you are lucky you can salvage the hard drives. Of course, you can keep your USB and Firewire drives. The memory might not go over too well. Cards that are PCI based could be trouble. The current Quads as of this writing have dropped PCI support in favor of PCIe. Apple switches gears a lot. They got their users hooked on expensive SCSI drives, then dropped them. Developed monitors with special ADC connectors, then dropped those. Now PCI is going away, much the chagrin of those of us depending on PCI slots for our UAD-1 cards and SCSI connection to our older Emu and Akai samplers. Sigh. When you go Mac and want to stay Mac you are committing yourself following Apple through these often expensive changeovers. So you may have to pay in more than one way when you feel your computer has gotten old and slow. PCs are cheaper, not only initially, but also in the long term because they are upgradeable. In fact, it is probably better to build your own from the very start rather than buy one off the shelf. Why? So you can control the quality of the components, and get the motherboard with the the slots and connections you need. You can still buy boards with legacy slots and connectors for old hardware, if you look. When the system gets old, you can usually get away with snapping in a new motherboard and CPU and perhaps new memory. You can sometimes get the equivalent of a whole new, much faster PC for around $400-700. At that cost you could upgrade your PC every two years and always have a fast machine. That has become an hobby in and of itself for many people, and its fun, but it does not help you make music, unfortunately. PERFORMANCE VS. PRODUCTIVITY That Macs are faster than PCs is a myth. Lets forget about benchmarks and MIPS for a second and let me be subjective. To me, they feel slightly slower in terms of how fast you can work. Is this a big deal? Not really. The Mac makes up for it by providing a more conflict resistant system, so in the end, the Mac comes out being more productive. The time you save by not tweaking and troubleshooting things on the system gives you more time to work on your projects. Yes, PCs can be tweaked and tuned for high performance. You can overclock the CPU, speed up memory, optimize things all the way to hard disk cluster size. You can add bigger fans, hyped up video cards and tweak BIOS variables for a week if you want and sometimes get it to give up superb performance. Yet all of this tweaking detracts in a major way from making music. The ironic thing is by giving more performance you get less productivity. [Our Audio PCs are already setup for high performance, they already come with excellent fans, video cards and very stable BIOS settings. Like Macs, they work "out of the box".] PCs are harder to deal with? Consider. With so many different motherboards on the market and several different chipsets controlling things, conflicts are more likely to arise. Vendors of PC parts typically release products before they are finished and expect you to update them when you uncover the problems. Because of this market tendency, you have no choice other than to try to troubleshoot and fix these problems all by yourself when they occur. Is it a hardware issue? BIOS setting? A driver? The PCI slot in which you installed the soundcard? Or is it in the registry? A virus? Worm? Service Pack incompatibility? You may have to check out "everything" and boot and reboot 3, 10, or in the case of a nightmare issue, 50 times before you get it solved. [We've tested our Audio PCs over a six month period, we've had no such conflicts. This is in part because we've found it's better to use technology that's been around for a year or two before relying on it. We use Windows XP SP2 and strongly advise against using Windows Vista: a) because it hogs system resources (to achieve the equivalent performance of a system running XP on 512 MB RAM Vista requires between 1 and 1.5 GB, furthermore XP requires 1.6 GB of disk space, Vista uses 15GB of disk space); we prefer the computer to work on our audio projects rather than support a bloated O/S, b) Vista is relatively new and meddles with hardware devices, this section of the article is far more relevant to Vista, but XP is now a very stable and relatively light O/S.] With the Mac you get it one way, the way it works, right out of the box. All motherboards come from Apple. The OS comes from Apple. Apple puts together all the machines after a lot of testing. There is far less of a chance of failure. If things do go bad it's not so hard to find the culprit. Adding a peripheral or installing software to a Mac is rarely difficult. It is rather amazing how little one does to maintain the machine. That alone makes the Mac "worth it" for many people and it more than offsets any gains made by tweaking a BIOS. Macs don't have the problems that PCs have with viruses and worms, at least not yet. Some people don't use any virus protection at all, something that is unthinkable on a PC that is connected to the internet. You don't have to subscribe to an internet security regime and wait for it to load every time you boot your computer. You don't have to worry as much about your neighbors prying into your financial information or browsing your system. I think most Mac users don't even think about those issues, sort of like the way computing was in the early 90's, but now with nothing slowing down your internet travels. [In relation to security issues, this is not so relevant. One of the benefits of Windows having been so under-attack, is the resulting variety and quality of third party security freeware available, which has helped make XP a very secure system. We tend to use FilSecLab or Comodo firewalls, with Avast or AVG (with System Safety Monitor as an optional extra) and no-one here has ever had a virus or a trojan!] MUSICAL CONSIDERATIONS Notice we have not said a word about music yet. So lets go there now, but be forewarned, these are general statements that might not always apply. Both platforms share many software titles though important ones are exclusive, that is, they only run on one platform. The PC has Sonar, Sound forge, Fruity loops, Adobe Audition exclusively. The Macs have Logic, GarageBand, Digital Performer, Peak, Soundtrack Pro exclusively. Of course there are more. Both platforms can run Cubase SX, Nuendo, and Pro Tools LE. Thankfully, many (though not all) of the softsynths and samplers and plugins are cross platform. I've compared these enough in other parts of TweakHeadz Lab, so I don't need to do it again here. [There's more freeware audio applications available to the PC than the Mac. Though, it's not as bad for Macs as it once was.] But what we can talk about is the raw processing power and speed of operation. In my experience, a fast PC running Sonar or Cubase is outstandingly fast, cutting through audio operations with ease. A Mac G5 has a tremendous reserve of power under the hood for realtime plugin processing, though it may not be as fast with the screen redraws. Its hard to say anything more meaningful than that, speaking generally. Every PC is a different cluster of variables. The important thing on the PC platform is getting these variables right. Many of the G5s are ultra quiet in operation. A nice feature for doing music in the room with one. You can do things to quiet your PC, like adding quiet fans, power supplies and a better case if yours is deficient. [Which is exactly what we've done.] There are some technical differences in the way Macs and PC set up audio and MIDI devices. Clearly, the Mac provides better access to your MIDI and Audio systems in its Audio/MIDI Utility, compared to the Windows Control Panel "Sounds" directory. You can define more details on the Mac. However, this is not a feature you can't live without as in practice, on a Mac or a PC, one rarely goes there. There's also a difference in where plugins are stored. On a PC you can create a VST Plugins folder anywhere you want, whereas on a Mac, they will reside in either your system's or user library under Audio. Since Tiger (OSX 10.4) came out on the Mac you can now run multiple audio interfaces. Before this upgrade Windows had a clear advantage. Macs do not "sound better". Nor do PCs. That is another myth. The computer never touches the sound anyway, your audio interface's converters do. Get a RME Fireface for either platform and you have the same, great sound. The math that the CPU uses to execute audio transformations is a function of the application, not the CPU. The plugins and software instruments that affect the sound have nothing to do with platform. Since both machines can use the same hard drives, you won't find a smoking gun in storage either. PROFESSIONAL CONSIDERATIONS Back in the mid 90's, Macs were dominant in computer assisted recording studios that actually made money. If you did not have one, you were not going to get as much work. That changed dramatically as we rounded the bend into year 2000. Today it is hard to say which is more popular. Your choice as a professional should be influenced by your clients, that is, by your customer base. Today people will be bringing you projects they started at home on their home computers, and if you want the job, you need to be able to cater to them. You might get a Sonar Project or one made in Digital performer. Of course if you have ongoing contracts with clients that are all Mac based, or with a Pro Tools studio, you might get a clue of what they might insist that you have. If you are exclusively Mac based, you'll be scratched off the list by producers that are working on tracks with Fruity Loops or developing a new video game on the PC. Source: http://www.tweakheadz.com/Mac_vs_Pc_DAWS.htm Jump to: Audio PCs (main page) Background Current Build: Specification Prices & Options Why PC? Mac vs. PC 6 Different Types of Home Studio Setup (opens in new window) Rivalling the Professional Studio Sound (opens in new window)
			© Giant Pygmy 2007

COST FACTORS

PERFORMANCE VS. PRODUCTIVITY

MUSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

PROFESSIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

Jump to: