Home recording, Mac vs. PC

[Dr.Mavashi]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Ok guys you are really freaking me out now, with the dedicated no nothing PC. That was not in my plans. I was thinking of getting Lexicon Lambda, and upgrading my PC with more memory/better drive or getting a mack and run recording on it as well as everything else ... cant be done?

No?

[J Moose]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Ok guys you are really freaking me out now, with the dedicated no nothing PC. That was not in my plans. I was thinking of getting Lexicon Lambda, and upgrading my PC with more memory/better drive or getting a mack and run recording on it as well as everything else ... cant be done?

Mac or PC... it's really best to 'dedicate' a machine to audio. Just a few weeks ago I was working at a home studio & the one guy had a G5 tower with a 002, Toolz LE... LOTS of other junk on the desktop & screen savers running etc. We couldn't get more then 14 or 15 tracks and a handful of plug-ins to run at 88.2 without crashing, locking etc.

Bad news all around. That system is/was capable of much more then it delivered.

That may be enough for you... maybe not.

For several hundred dollars you can get a standalone Tascam or Roland porta studio with a CD burner and have NONE of these headaches to deal with...

[StrangeSound]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Mac all the waaaaaaaay...drooooools





j/k


I'm a PC nut and so will I remain

[Dr.Mavashi]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

For several hundred dollars you can get a standalone Tascam or Roland porta studio with a CD burner and have NONE of these headaches to deal with...

Can you recomend any?

[Robert Delahunt]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Dude has a point: some sound stations with CD burner drives are cheaper and more easy to use / efficient than a computer, be it mac or PC.

[Dr.Mavashi]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Dude has a point: some sound stations with CD burner drives are cheaper and more easy to use / efficient than a computer, be it mac or PC.

How about using Q-base/Cakewalk/Ezy-drums etc on those things?

[Robert Delahunt]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

How about using Q-base/Cakewalk/Ezy-drums etc on those things?

I was just pointing out that, assuming you do not own a computer, or your computer needs replacement or major upgrades before it can record, sometimes a stand-alone unit from Boss, Roland, etc, many makers, will do an excellent job recording, and for less. For example, This is only $349 and burns 8 tracks live (or 64 tracks total virtual) to CD. That's actually quite enough for any live garage band to burn with. My friend has a $2300 unit that was a gift, but it will also burn to CD, and run sound, and it is awesome.

[J Moose]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

How about using Q-base/Cakewalk/Ezy-drums etc on those things?

You don't/can't use programs like them on porta-studios. That's the whole point.

Never used this one but it'll probably do everything you've always wanted...

http://tascam.com/details;8,16,35.html

A lotta people like the Roland VS recorders too... lots of stuff out there. Go visit a music store.

[theboatcandream]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

I took a course on Cubase (Mac based). I absolutely hated it. The controls were incredible anti-intuitive because they did so much in the name of making it "user friendly". I'm loving cool edit pro though (Windows). It's very straight forward and transparent. Every engineer I've worked with has used Protools though.

[hanumanlangur]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

I can honestly say that the hardware I used to build my stuff is in many ways superior to Apples... I actually think they make pretty craptastic hardware, and I know I'm not alone there.

+1.

IMO, it's hard to beat a good PC workstation with a high-end audio interface and fast hard disks. For an OS, I prefer Linux, but I don't expect everyone to jump on that boat anytime soon.

A Mac is similar to buying a pre-built PC from the local Circuit City. It's manufactured without any regard to what sort of applications it will be used for.

But for the love of god, do not buy a PC with Vista on it, to use as your DAW. If you do, you might as well kiss your performance goodbye.

[Dr.Mavashi]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Well maybe this thing will make me go back to linux .... Will running Linux require less memory/hard drive resources?
So, basically if I want to do work from home, browse the net, and recod music using Lamda as interphase all on one machine its I am smoking crack? it aint possible?

what is DAW? duh !!! .... I love being retarded.

[Robert Delahunt]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Well maybe this thing will make me go back to linux .... Will running Linux require less memory/hard drive resources?
So, basically if I want to do work from home, browse the net, and recod music using Lamda as interphase all on one machine its I am smoking crack? it aint possible?

what is DAW? duh !!! .... I love being retarded.

It depends on the distribution and how you have it setup. You can run it more minimal, yes, and it has more flexibility and customizeability than it seems its Windows cousin has. I'd use Audacity, personally, on Slackware Linux (my main love).

But you will need a professional sound card, at least in my opinion.

[Virtual Kevorkian]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

DAW = Digital Audio Workstation.

Good luck finding any decent DAW's for Linux.

[hanumanlangur]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Well, for one... http://ardour.org

There's plenty of good software for Linux, if you aren't afraid to get your hands dirty exploring it. JACK Rack is nice for recording guitar tracks (tube amp emulation, distortions, overdrives, compressions, reverbs, parametric EQ's), Hydrogen for a drum machine, Ardour for general DAW work, Audacity for recording and wave editing, Rosegarden for composition and sequencing, etc. Most of this software can be connected together using JACK, a low-latency audio routing network.

For the adventurous, Linux has some very powerful tools. They're not all musician-friendly, but for tech-minded musicians, it's well worth the time and effort, IMO.

[Virtual Kevorkian]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Good luck finding any DECENT DAW's for Linux... let alone plugins to run in them.