Pc User Thinking Of Switching Sides... Options

[japanarian]

I'm curious to know why you guys and gals prefer Mac over PC.

A little background on the guy asking:

my setup
Home: Intel Pentium 4/1.8Gig, Creative SB Audigy
Road: Intel Pentium M(Centrino)
WinXP Home
Cubase VST/(VST and DirectX plug-ins)
WaveLab 3.0

Pretty lean right now, but I'm slowly building my setup. Most of what I do is sequenced, but I would like to someday build a home studio and have guests either sing or play on my tracks. I sometimes spend a lot of time on the road for work(the day-job) and I like being able to work on my music in the hotel room(can I get away with a PowerBook in a home studio setup too?)

Any suggestions are appreciated.

The J.

[coldharbour]

Info.

[Podfather]

Japanarian - Ive just done exactly that.

Ive been using a PC for about 5 years with Cubase then Cubase SX. A bout 6 weeks ago I decided to take the plunge and go Mac with with Logic Pro 7.1.



Differences Ive noticed so far.

Pros of Mac

1. When I go back to my PC (on the desk next to my Mac at home) it looks very cartoony.

2. On the Mac - everything just works first time. I installed Logic Pro 7.1 and it worked. The I installed my RME fireface 800 and that worked. Then I installed my Mackie Control and that worked. Guess what - when I installed my Emagic Unitor 8 midi interface that worked as well.

3. Compare this with my PC. Currently the EMU 1212 card in my PC works sometimes and doesnt work other times becasue the DSP patch mix keeps coming up with an error.

4. When I ask a question on a mac forum I seem to avoid the sort of daft answers I used to get on PC based music forums.

5. My friend uses Logic Pr0 7.1 with his new powerbook and it works just fine.



Pros of PC

1. Cheaper by a mile. And you can upgrade them yourself.

2. Apple support is bad - I mean real bad. However, Logic Pro support is some of the best Ive ever come accross.

3. Software is cheap becasue anyone can write a program for the PC. They dont have to have it certified by Apple.

4. More choice of software for the PC and its cheaper.

5. You can integrate with fellow users more easily. I recently wanted a mix for a band I did in Logic Pr0 7 to be mastered by a couple fo friends of mine. Unfortuantley everyon I know with good mastering software uses Cubase on the PC.


Summary - I asked the same question about 3 months ago and am glad I switched. There is something almost ethereal and certainly professional about my Mac that makes music production more of a journey and less of a task.

[coldharbour]

3. Software is cheap becasue anyone can write a program for the PC. They dont have to have it certified by Apple.

Podfather, you have some kind of misunderstanding here.

Anyone can write and release software for Mac, no certifications from Apple are needed. Just like writing software for Wintel machines.

The only thing different with Apple is that no other company than Apple Computer can build Apple (Macintosh) computers.

[gdoubleyou]

Also apps that are cross-platform cost the same, and where there are competing products like Adobe's Video Collection Pro, the Final Cut Studio suite is Cheaper.

[japanarian]

Thanks for your input guys:

Podfather: Thanks for all the info. You've given me some things to think about. One other question for you. How do you find using Logic Pro 7.1 compared to Cubase?

coldharbour & gdoubleyou: I also appreciate your input. Just to be clear, you guys are saying that the difference in the money I'd spend on software as a Mac user would not normally be a factor?

Thanx again,
The J.

[prosthetix]

be careful if your expecting a fully feature-packed audio editing tool like cool edit/adobe audition for the mac, i mean peak is good, but it doesn't do what cool edit can do unfortunately

[Podfather]

I still have Cubase SX3 on my PC as I wasnt too sure myself when I finally switched over. It would be unfair of me to comare the two as my PC cost about 1000 (I built it myself) and then cubase was #399 when I bought it, from memory. Whereas so far my Mac including everything else has come to nearly #6000 so you cant really compare them.

Out of the two - I defintely prefer logic. However, I am very new to Macs and still find it confusing to use, you can see that by my wrong answers above.

I would say that Cubase is quite easy to use even if you have not used a sequencer before. Whereas Logic takes a bit of time and requires more effort from you to get the most out of it. The plugins that ship with Logic are quite incredible, especially the Guitar Amp Pro, I have never heard anything like it from any other software.

If I were going to be on the road and wanted a package that could pretty much be a complete studio out of the box, I would go with Logic.

[prosthetix]

is it a complete studio? I admit I haven't pissfarted around with logic enough to see if it edits audio

[Podfather]

"could pretty much be a complete studio"

QED.