Why Mac??? Options

[bagadat]

hi guys... i was wondering if you could help me out here....

i work for the support department of a religious association and the association is looking to upgrade their daw to improve the quality of their products and productivity....

in our media department, my collegue records the live preacing into his pc and processes the audio... to finally burn the end product for backup...

my boss has asked me to do some research on daws and what actually goes on inside of it.... so that we might take a technical approach to either upgrading our present daw or getting something completely new...

being a pc user, i've found a lot of info about how to tweak my pc for optimum performance and what actually goes on inside of it.... the same goes for linux (although i'm not a linus user)...

but now, my boss wants to look at mac as an option too.... but i know absolutely nothing about it.... i've heard that this is what the pros use for daws... but i would like to know why???

n other words, why is mac so powerful, are the softwares that it offers good and user friendly.... what are the recommendations for a mac daw for simple speech editing and mutlitrack analogue recording in terms of HW and SW and why...

do you guys think you could help me out or at least direct me to a place where my quezies could be answered...

thanx a lot......

[lepetitmartien]

well…

i wonder why the mac addicts here left this subject alone ?

- systems are feature for feature price equivalent. (sometimes a bit higher, sometimes a bit lower)
- OS X is rock solid.
- No virus.
- Security issues are not a problem.
- _It_ _just_ _work_ one manufacturer means there's no compatibility issues
- It's fun. (well it may not be an argument for the boss

Optimization wise, the most important things are:

- add RAM, (1 GB is a minimum, to use virtual instruments go about 2-2.5 GB)
- use another internal Hard Drive for audio.
- and don't install little fancy stuff to see snow on the desktop for christmas (but some cool utilities/apps can run just fine along a DAW)
- for usual repair, the provided softwares are enough (some freeware like OnyX can help too)
- run audio apps in an Admin user account.

Other recent threads treat these subject already in getting started or Mac and peripherals.

[bagadat]

ok.... so if i get you right... you telling me that i simply need to buy the necessary software and hardware.... and i shall be up and running.....
but will i need to do some tweaking to optimize the daw?

by the way, one more quezy... as i think i already mentioned... the guy who will work on the daw, will only be involved in speech recording and processing and once in a while, he might need to record some music... what software do you recommend?

[erstokke]

ok.... so if i get you right... you telling me that i simply need to buy the necessary software and hardware.... and i shall be up and running.....
but will i need to do some tweaking to optimize the daw?

by the way, one more quezy... as i think i already mentioned... the guy who will work on the daw, will only be involved in speech recording and processing and once in a while, he might need to record some music... what software do you recommend?

No tweaking, no software, no hazzle.

GarageBand is included and it will probably cover all your recording needs. An iMac G5 and some extra RAM will be sufficient.

The only thing you need to buy extra, is an audio interface and a microphone.

People often make descisions on the initial cost. The first thing they do wrong, is to compare the list price of the computers. With a mac, you get great creative applications iincluded (yes, even a recording program). Firewire is included as well.

But the greatest advantage is that you will save a lot of hours on installation, learning and troubleshooting. Hours=money.

Jan Erik

[bagadat]

makes sense...

ok... i'll try get all this info to my boss and see if that will blow his hair back or not....

[bagadat]

ok Jan Erik...

you mentioned about recording using garageband... but what about speech processing, like applying denoisers and what not??? is garageband good enough???

[tsuliman]

A bit of history for those interested in why the Mac is the leader for computer music enthusiasts:

1. Creative types have always favored the Mac because of its simplicity and elegance.
2. Apple's strict control of hardware compliance ensured that things would work properly, unlike the Wintel platform that was a nightmare for hardware and drivers. It's a little better now, but Mac is still superior.
3. Built-in FireWire. Many Wintel machines still lack this. I hate to be a snob, but USB is not acceptable for audio or video applications.
4. OS X is the most stable OS. Audio users want to work on audio rather than spend hours tweaking the OS or firmware, restarting, overclocking, reinstalling, fighting spyware, etc.

Ironically, several years ago, many in the audio field begged Apple to create standards for audio files, MIDI, cablling, etc. Apple refused, saying that we were too small a market segment, and we ended up with OMS! That is the only reason there is ANY music done on PCs. If Apple had created CoreAudio, AudioUnits, CoreMIDI at that time, they would _completely_ dominate the market.

I have known countless people over the years who have said the same thing, "I chose the PC over the Mac to save a few bucks, but I haven't been able to get my music software/hardware to work."

[erstokke]

ok Jan Erik...

you mentioned about recording using garageband... but what about speech processing, like applying denoisers and what not??? is garageband good enough???

GarageBand is very basic - also on vocal processing. There are only different reverbs. You would have to preprocess in hardware or postprocess in a different program. Or even better: Use Logic Express.

Logic Express is inexpensive and has a lot of inserts: High-pass filter, Low-pass filter, high and low cut filters, equalisers, compressors, noise-gate, denoiser and more.

Jan Erik