Mac or PC?

Coming from someone who's been using Mac professionally for about 15 years (and also PCs occasionally)...I don't think Macs are magically "a lot better" or have "better options" (whatever the latter even means). They're extremely easy to take into use from the box and require minimal setup, but performance-wise they utilize the exact same hardware as PCs do. You do get a good OS, and it's usually easy to troubleshoot since the systems are preconfigured (so many people will have the exact same machine), but PCs are not inferior if you can bear to use Windows and maybe spend a bit more time tinkering with it.
 
It doesn't matter. both are good. If you do decide to go with a pc then Id recommend going with a gaming pc like alienware or a dell xps otherwise Id go Mac
 
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when it comes to school work PC. You can open PC software on a Mac, but well, ya i vote for Mac. haha :) Faster, cooler, and can still handle everything a PC can.
 
PsychedelicSavage47 said:
I dont really have the money to get a big expensive gaming computer ill probably just get a Mac. You got any suggestions on a DAW to pair with it?
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......But you have the money for an overpriced Mac though right?

Don't just buy a Mac on account of the halo effect which stems from a time when the Mac was used in studios to host Pro tools DSP hardware which did all the heavy lifting instead of the computer, base your decision on the native processing you will be doing with the actual computer itself in this day and age.....don't get me wrong there are legit reasons for using a Mac like if you had to sequence a room full of MIDI hardware using the time stamping of a MOTU MIDI interface in conjunction with core MIDI......but there are also advantages to using a PC tower system, for example you can fill a tower system with hard drives for streaming audio/samples using a protocol which doesn't tax the CPU like USB does, you can run a faster and hotter CPU than a laptop or all-in-one machine and a tower system is a lot neater than a desk hogging laptop or all-in-one with shit hanging off cables and of course most software is coded for Windows and ported over to the mac these days.....oh and then there is the whole backwards comparability vs Macwards comparability (your shit no longer works buy new shit) thing.
 
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You can still run FL on a Mac. I use FL studio and a Macbook air. :) The newer versions of FL are cool w/ mac, or ya can do some H4X0ring for the older versions.
 
Epsilon-144 said:
You can still run FL on a Mac. I use FL studio and a Macbook air. :) The newer versions of FL are cool w/ mac, or ya can do some H4X0ring for the older versions.
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Well, you can't really "run FL on a Mac" unless you a) install Windows on it, b) use a virtual PC software like Parallels or Crossover or c) wait for the actual Mac release which is gonna take at least a year or so.
 
Gaming PCs, by definition, put a lot of emphasis on an expensive graphics card. This is great if you're a gamer, but means nothing for music production.

Mac tries to make everything simpler. This means easy to use software. It also means less hardware options, less software control, and severely limited upgradability.

Unless you're looking to buy a PC from some overpriced boutique, PCs are virtually always cheaper than Macs. Do a side-by-side parts comparison, and you'll definitely find this to be true. And it really doesn't help that Mac essentially dropped the tower form factor: all the all-in-ones have laptop parts with reduced performance and lower clock speeds, and the trashcan-style Mac Pro is unreasonably priced for anyone not requiring the graphics processing (and even then is a tough sell).


If money is at all an issue, I recommend buying a cost effective PC and upgrading it yourself. Upgrading a PC is easy, and often cheaper than buying a more potent machine, since most of the money OEMs make is from expensive upsells. And if you're a little bit more hands-on, building a PC is surprisingly easy. The performance from an $800 home-built machine can be roughly equivalent to a $1200-2200 Mac, particularly if you choose your parts wisely.
 
I don't honestly think it matters as much as it did 10 years ago... There's a lot of swagger that comes with being a Mac owner - there's nothing to suggest that quality of output (your tracks) will be any better though.

Stability was an issue back in the day - not so anymore.

I'm running a (fairly old) i3 Dell with 12Gb RAM and have problems only as frequently as friends who run (newer) Mac's...

Whatever type of system you buy into - budget for a USB interface - some decent headphones (ATH-M50x will cut it) - and a legit copy of whatever DAW you decide on.

For the same money you can get a much more powerful PC (and if you go desktop - easily upgradable...)
 
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Milo Burke said:
Gaming PCs, by definition, put a lot of emphasis on an expensive graphics card. This is great if you're a gamer, but means nothing for music production.

Mac tries to make everything simpler. This means easy to use software. It also means less hardware options, less software control, and severely limited upgradability.

Unless you're looking to buy a PC from some overpriced boutique, PCs are virtually always cheaper than Macs. Do a side-by-side parts comparison, and you'll definitely find this to be true. And it really doesn't help that Mac essentially dropped the tower form factor: all the all-in-ones have laptop parts with reduced performance and lower clock speeds, and the trashcan-style Mac Pro is unreasonably priced for anyone not requiring the graphics processing (and even then is a tough sell).


If money is at all an issue, I recommend buying a cost effective PC and upgrading it yourself. Upgrading a PC is easy, and often cheaper than buying a more potent machine, since most of the money OEMs make is from expensive upsells. And if you're a little bit more hands-on, building a PC is surprisingly easy. The performance from an $800 home-built machine can be roughly equivalent to a $1200-2200 Mac, particularly if you choose your parts wisely.
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Yeah you don't need some high end graphics card in a tower system built for music production, in fact you don't want a graphics card with some noisy fan on it!......just a basic dual head graphics card so you can hook up two screens if you want.

Laptops and all-in-one computers suck ass in comparison to using a tower system for music production......now granted you might not need all the inputs and outputs which can only be achieved with a PCI based audio interface but that's not the only benefit of using a tower system for music production..........there is a lot more room to cool hotter more powerful components and yet when you tuck a tower system under the desk it takes up less desk real estate than a laptop where the body of the computer with the keyboard is sitting in front of the screen with a mess of wires going to shitty USB hard drives which suck resources from the CPU.....seriously why use SATA drives in a separate enclosures using some middleman USB interface shit and a wall wart for power when you can connect that shit directly to the motherboard using the SATA protocol which doesn't tax the CPU like USB does......and yeah you should have a minimum of two hard drives for music production so you can stream audio off one.....throw in a third for sample library too and just load the start of each sample into RAM by using DFD streaming for the rest.......that's the idea and why a tower system full of hard drives will shit all over a laptop with a single shitty hard drive designed to conserve battery power and not get too hot.
 
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