Home recording, Mac vs. PC

[Dr.Mavashi]

Ok I am getting tired of windows crap over the years. I am entertaining an idea of Mac's lab top. I am planing to use Lexicons Lambda, MassLite's line out direct to lambda most of the time. Q-base/easy drums etc. I am not looking forward to become a safisticated home recorder, just to use it as a tool for writing and communicating my style to future musicians to work with. Considering this, what would you say, Mac or PC?
Thanks.

 

[innerdreamrecords.co]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

With a laptop you will need a fast hard drive if your projects get into a lot of tracks.
I have a Macbook with Ableton Live on it and a PC with Logic. The PC and Macbook work equally well, my PC is running XP that has been set up as a music work station.

Ableton Live is a rock solid program and a very good price for the Mac.

 

[Virtual Kevorkian]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

With a laptop you will need a fast hard drive if your projects get into a lot of tracks.
I have a Macbook with Ableton Live on it and a PC with Logic. The PC and Macbook work equally well, my PC is running XP that has been set up as a music work station.

Ableton Live is a rock solid program and a very good price for the Mac.

+1

Look into an external harddrive and upgrade the RAM after getting it (Apple charges way too much for RAM). I'd personally go with something other than Ableton Live if you want to collaborate with other people actively, as the only people I've met that really use Ableton use it in a live application. Logic, Cubase, and ProTools are the most used DAWs.

 

[Dr.Mavashi]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

So what you guys are saying, unlike graphics, Mac really does not have anything on PC as far as an overall, more user friendly, better capability home recording platform?

 

[Virtual Kevorkian]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

So what you guys are saying, unlike graphics, Mac really does not have anything on PC as far as an overall, more user friendly, better capability home recording platform?

If you know how to take care of a PC and have it dedicated to recording, it'll function as well as a Mac will.

 

[Dr.Mavashi]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

If you know how to take care of a PC and have it dedicated to recording, it'll function as well as a Mac will.

I am the ultimate newb for home recording, does that mean the start will be easier on a Mac?

 

[Virtual Kevorkian]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

I am the ultimate newb for home recording, does that mean the start will be easier on a Mac?

It might be, but if you've already got a decently powerful system and weren't planning on buying anything new, I wouldn't bother.

 

[wahwah]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Logic Pro 8 on a Mac is a very efficient system. +1 to what the guys said about having a faster drive for audio tracks. I've never used a PC for recording, but I have friends who are using them semi-professionally, they just had to learn how to strip back all of the superfluous stuff that came with Windows to make their system dedicated for recording. Once they did that they had no problems. However, I've never known anyone to go back to PC after extensively using a Mac. There's bound to be somebody, but I haven't met 'em! Spend some time with Logic Pro 8 and I doubt you'll be thinking about Cubase.



Cheers............................wahwah

 

[Virtual Kevorkian]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Logic Pro 8 on a Mac is a very efficient system. +1 to what the guys said about having a faster drive for audio tracks. I've never used a PC for recording, but I have friends who are using them semi-professionally, they just had to learn how to strip back all of the superfluous stuff that came with Windows to make their system dedicated for recording. Once they did that they had no problems. However, I've never known anyone to go back to PC after extensively using a Mac. There's bound to be somebody, but I haven't met 'em! Spend some time with Logic Pro 8 and I doubt you'll be thinking about Cubase.



Cheers............................wahwah

Meet me! I went back to PC after a year of using my MacBook exclusively, because it was more cost effective to build my own DAW than buy a Mac tower.

I also went from using Logic to Cubase, and I know of a few others. It's all about what you're comfortable on. If you start with Logic, chances are that unless you get heavily involved in the industry and swap to PT, you'll stick with Logic for a long while.

 

[wahwah]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Meet me! I went back to PC after a year of using my MacBook exclusively, because it was more cost effective to build my own DAW than buy a Mac tower.

I also went from using Logic to Cubase, and I know of a few others. It's all about what you're comfortable on. If you start with Logic, chances are that unless you get heavily involved in the industry and swap to PT, you'll stick with Logic for a long while.

Yeah, I can understand that using just a MacBook, especially if it was a G4, would present certain limitations that would make the customized PC more attractive. Also, I'm talking about Logic Pro 8, not previous versions. It's well worth a look. But yes, it's certainly a case of finding what you're comfortable working with. I'd love to use Pro Tools, but not at the expense of using the cheap versions of Digidesign or M-Audio hardware and giving up my Metric Halo! The expense of an HD system is what draws the dividing line between the home recordist and the professional studio operator.



Cheers.............................wahwah

 

[innerdreamrecords.co]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Logic 8 is fantastic for the money too. I'm a long time Logic lover.

 

[Virtual Kevorkian]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Yeah, I can understand that using just a MacBook, especially if it was a G4, would present certain limitations that would make the customized PC more attractive. Also, I'm talking about Logic Pro 8, not previous versions. It's well worth a look. But yes, it's certainly a case of finding what you're comfortable working with. I'd love to use Pro Tools, but not at the expense of using the cheap versions of Digidesign or M-Audio hardware and giving up my Metric Halo! The expense of an HD system is what draws the dividing line between the home recordist and the professional studio operator.

It was an Intel Core Duo, but yeah, still pretty limited when I started processing more heavily.

As much as they improved Logic 8 over Logic 7, they didn't fix the one things I had the most issues with, hyper editor and drum programming, which renders it fairly useless to me, considering that programming drums is vital to my workflow.

 

[Robert Delahunt]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

To be honest, I love GarageBand on the Mac. It is easy to use even without the manual and does a good job. I was seriously impressed, and recorded a song while on vacation using that program. It did a nice job and so I'm hoping to soon migrate our entire house to the mac.

 

[Smilemon]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Yeah.. honestly a baseline mac with garageband is all you need for home recording.

 

[Dr.Mavashi]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

All I want the best representation of my Laney AOR tone from line out of MassLite, sometimes I might have 3 guitar parts to record, and i want good representation of drums tone wise, all I want to do for now is to record the very basic structure so that when I am looking for drummers, singers, bassplayers I can send them a CD or they can download it and learn the piece if they like it and come in and play it.

 

[innerdreamrecords.co]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Good sound is going to be related to how you get sound into the computer, a good interface and a intel Macbook with Garageband would work well.

 

[Bludave]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

So what you guys are saying, unlike graphics, Mac really does not have anything on PC as far as an overall, more user friendly, better capability home recording platform?

Macs come with Garage band. For what you said in your original post your not trying to do anything to sophisticated Garage Band will do what you need. For Microphones and Acoustics you will need a preamp of some type. you had mentioned the Lambda. I would recommend a MBox. The Mbox comes with Protools LE and if you plan on doing more sophisticated projects outside of your home system, protools will be more accepted in pro studios.

I am not a pro in the Studio by no means, but the limited items I have done, mainly acoustic guitar Garage Band worked fine.

 

[AmirH]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

So what you guys are saying, unlike graphics, Mac really does not have anything on PC as far as an overall, more user friendly, better capability home recording platform?

Not 100% true... PC's are certainly capable and waaay more cost effective for what you can get(though a student discount helps tons) but Macs still have some advantages. For one the the audio engine in tiger is a bit cleaner than anything windows based- not a huge difference(your interface will have a far greater impact) but a difference nonetheless. Secondly, osx is quite a lot more stable. A dedicated recording pc basically means you don't touch the internet. Macs are also a touch more streamlined toward audio editing out of the box.

Example? My saffire pro was having all sorts of crazy popping when running in windows and none in osx. The culprit(thanks jeff for helping me figure that one out) was my wireless internet card. For whatever reason windows treats firewire as a network device. NEVER had weird quirks like that in osx- just worked immediately.

That said- for the price difference it's still more worth building a beastly pc unless you can throw down for a G5.

 

[J Moose]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

All I want the best representation of my Laney AOR tone from line out of MassLite, sometimes I might have 3 guitar parts to record, and i want good representation of drums tone wise, all I want to do for now is to record the very basic structure so that when I am looking for drummers, singers, bassplayers I can send them a CD or they can download it and learn the piece if they like it and come in and play it.

You could do that with a standalone box too... Get a Yamaha or Tascam porta-studio with a CD burner.

Mac's have little to nothing on PC's these days... not like it was 5 or even 10 years ago. Biggest "gotcha" with any computer based recording system is to keep it off the interknot but much more true with PC's then Mac's.

 

[Rich_T]

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Logic Pro 8 on a Mac is a very efficient system. +1 to what the guys said about having a faster drive for audio tracks. I've never used a PC for recording, but I have friends who are using them semi-professionally, they just had to learn how to strip back all of the superfluous stuff that came with Windows to make their system dedicated for recording. Once they did that they had no problems. However, I've never known anyone to go back to PC after extensively using a Mac. There's bound to be somebody, but I haven't met 'em! Spend some time with Logic Pro 8 and I doubt you'll be thinking about Cubase.



Cheers............................wahwah

Agreed. That new logic is very cool. I just need to upgrade to a mac that will run it now!

I like Macs, but it will take a little time to adjust from Windows. It will become second nature quickly though. I have real trouble working a Windows machine now... which probably says more about my mental capacity that it does about the wonder of Macs, but they are great all the same.