Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Dr.Mavashi said:
Yo! Ok, I have a lot of gear aquisition planned for this year so I have to budget wisely. considering what I will be doing, what is the minimal upgrade that you will recomend?
Click to expand...


Hey dude I just assembled such a machine. Many times I have to go outside and record things in place (choirs etc) and I did not like the idea of:

- using a laptop
- bumping around my standalone C2Duo studio workstation (hurting the RME 9652 and carrying the Tascam DM24 really scares me)

So I built a rackmount, dirt cheap audio workstation, used / e-bay parts mainly:



MBoard: Abit NF7-S

Proc: AMD Sempron socket A (1700MHz) with Zalman cooling units (dead silent)

HDD: 2x Hitachi ST 160G, SATA raid: mode1 //man that's FAST//

RAM: Infineon 2x1GB (PC3200), matched pair for smooth dual DDR400 memory mode

Firewire card: D-Link FW500

Audio interface: Focusrite Saffire Pro 10 I/O

Backup audio card: Echo MIA Midi (you can never know...)

Power unit: Mercury 400W (cheap, reliable)

Video card: Sapphire X800 GTO (you can even play offline gamez with good frame per sec)

Optical drive: Plextor PX-800A (that's a new one)

OS: XP SP2, audio optimized - No network!

For a start check this out fo good tips:
http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/article.php?id=264
My XP is rather barebone on an advanced level. No bells and whistles - but it performs.


DAW SW: Sonar 6, Adobe Audition 3.0


For approx. $300 (without audio parts), this little oldie beast is capable of recording audio 16 channels simultaneously (2 saffires piggyback) without noticable latency issues or any hiccup and you can run a surprising number of plugins and soft synths real-time.

Bulletproof, cost-effective :fing2:
 
Last edited:
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Thank you dudes,
Now, everybody says that Lambda is the best thing that price can buy, except the sucky pre amps. So what is the next priority, a pre-amp(I will first try to record my guitar using a line out from my MassLite attenuator straight in to Lambda) or the monitors? I have a pair of old-arse JBL Pro-Primium computer speakrs now .... I guess they would not work at all huh?
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Your speakers are fine.

Until you start recording more and getting into the finer elements of things... the stock pre on the Lambda will be fine.
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Virtual Kevorkian said:
Your speakers are fine.

Until you start recording more and getting into the finer elements of things... the stock pre on the Lambda will be fine.
Click to expand...

+1


Those JBLs must be good for a start. I'd recommend the Lambda, too.

You might want to check the Focusrite Saffire or Saffire LE as well:

http://www.focusrite.com/products/saffire/saffire_le/

These units tend to outperform anything in their price range. They are firewire interfaces (better and faster data flow compared to USB) but with a footnote: you MUST get a fine firewire card for a good performance. There are some great FW cards, for exapmle a D-Link FW 500 ($20 approx.) does the job wonderfully.
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

yeah I know, but the word on the street is that it kinda sucks, and with the right pre-amp it really becomes the best unit for the buck around.
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

What street do you hang out on? You're not going to notice the difference between the two pres with the gear and experience you've got now, as harsh as that sounds. It'd be a waste of money for you to pick up a preamp in addition to it, especially considering that the price of the two combined would buy you a better interface with pres likely to be on-par with the standalone pre you just got.
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Ok that makes sense. You right dude, my experience is 0. As far as the street goes, well, I've read a few online user reviews that mentioned the same thing - pre-amp. So, my speakers are ok, I guess for now I dont need a pre-amp or maybe at all, besides upgrading the actuall PC for recording, what would you say would be a good thing to consider.
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Ok, I might pick up a PC before midnight today, here is the problem, most of great deals come with Vista, I know vista is a disaster, but just incase I will ask, Vista - how do you think it will work with Cubase or Cakewalk and EZdrumms with Lexicon Lambda as the interphase ?
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Without reading through the whole thread, how did you arrive at a PC instead of a mac for recording?
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Allright, more specific, 640G on the Hard Drive 7200 RPM, RAM 4 Gigs, Pentium Dual Core 2.2 Ghz comes with Genuine Vista as OS. I will run Cubase, EzDrumms, and Lexicon Lambda as an interphase. Please guys give me cue.
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

reformat with XP and you're set!

FWIW, as much as I love OS X, I just finished setting up my new recording PC (2.4 quad core, 4GB ram, 3 internal drives) because of how much power you get for how little you pay.

Plus, a dedicated PC is just as stable as OS X, for the most part.
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Virtual Kevorkian said:
Plus, a dedicated PC is just as stable as OS X, for the most part.
Click to expand...

If you're lucky. A big problem with PCs is that the hardware is often made by a slew of different companies, and as a result the hardware does not properly communicate with each other. Even big companies like Dell and Gateway are guilty of this - they just assemble the computer for you, and they do so as cheaply as they possibly can. Even new and freshly wiped PCs can crap out.

A Mac is the best of both worlds, if you can afford it - OS X and Windows on the same machine. But then you have to actually BUY Windows, which takes away some of the fun IMO... :28:

Apple makes both the hardware and the OS for their computers, making them much, much less prone to the internal destabilization that runs rampant through run-of-the-mill PCs. Add the whole no viruses aspect, and you've got a pretty appealing machine.
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

alex1fly said:
Apple makes both the hardware and the OS for their computers, making them much, much less prone to the internal destabilization that runs rampant through run-of-the-mill PCs. Add the whole no viruses aspect, and you've got a pretty appealing machine.
Click to expand...

No they don't - they're just picky as hell and build their own cases.

I'm no stranger to Macs. I'm typing this from a MacBook Pro that replaced my old MacBook, and there's an iMac in the house, as well. I know them inside and out, and I absolutely hate what Apple does, hardware wise. I would MUCH rather build a Hackintosh, and that's exactly what I'll be doing next time I want a new machine to run OS X.

Apple's really are quite overpriced for what you get, and if you know anything about the internals of a computer, you can easily put together a machine that will run smooth and fast as hell for a fraction of the cost of a Mac.
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

A big problem with PCs is that the hardware is often made by a slew of different companies, and as a result the hardware does not properly communicate with each other. Even big companies like Dell and Gateway are guilty of this - they just assemble the computer for you, and they do so as cheaply as they possibly can
Click to expand...

You wouldn't use any of the "Brand " PC's if you want a decent DAW. You'd get one with a "real" motherboard ,etc.. Preferably piece it together yourself.
Customize it to suit your needs.:cool2:
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

I ended up buying a Mac based on the praise that they've received as recording machines. It doesn't hurt some developers only make Mac specific hardware (for instance, Apogee and their Ensemble - which I feel is the best sounding, all in one prosumer device out there). Apple may charge an arm and a leg for upgrades, but I haven't needed more than what my Macbook Pro has (atleast for the size projects I'm messing around with).

I guess over time I've grown to dislike Windows. Things seem to just be slower. I'm sure the lower cost of PC hardware could more than easily offset that, but I just hate how vulnerable PCs seem to be (even with the Antivirus/Antispyware programs I have running). With a Mac I just boot it up and its good to go. It's simply really stable (although in PC's defense, I feel XP Pro SP 2 is really stable too).
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Dr.Mavashi said:
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?
Click to expand...

On Linux you get to pick how fat a desktop software you want to run. But even the fancy stuff is lightyears "behind" Windows when it comes to resource trampling.

I found some of the advanced Linux audio software hard to build and hard to run, and some comes with no usable documentation such as the compressor plugins. Had to go into the source code just to find the defaults for the parameters.

Unless you want basic audio stuff you probably have to use one of the specialized distributions specifically built for audio use. There's a variant of Ubuntu that does that.

The ALSA audio driver subsystem is also a confusing and confused piece of software. Once it's up, fine, and more often than not it just comes up right when installing Linux. But some, or most, of the manual configuration is full-scale nightmarish.

Combining all this, just trying to get an equalizer plugin into alsalib (via asoundrc, not using JACK) was about as tough as it gets. Not impressed. Jack didn't run on my Ubuntu at work either, forgot why, or was it just not willing to deal with the EQ plugin?

I do all my recording in Audacity and in my own capturing scripts. Good enough for me, but not for many. Overall I found audio in Linux to be several times more frustrating than doing about anything else in Linux. Even video is easier.
 
Re: Home recording, Mac vs. PC

Thank you all guys, especially VK, I just put an order through for the machine mentioned in last post. Soon, your gaging reflex would be more frequent than you can imagine as you will start seeing my threads here of my horrid playing recorded through mediocre Lambda, by me - a total DAW newb.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Dr.Mavashi
PC specs for practice/writing DAW
Replies
8
Views
2K
songoku
S
R
simple 4 track recording
Replies
3
Views
2K
Cory_Dylan
Cory_Dylan
Back
Top