re: prevalence of Macs in "in the studio with..." type articles

[NorseHorse]

Macs have a reputation (possibly a myth) of being "better for audio".

Doesn't seem to effect the music...

And they're hip nowadays. My IBM is solid though.

[SFTPH]

they are easier to maintain. Yeah, a PC set-up correctly can be very stable-if you know what you are doing- but a big place that charges 2k+ a day just wants a machine that works straight out of the shrink-wrap and that any free-lancer can walk off the street and use and is familiar with.

[drBill]

When anything (PT for instance) becomes the "norm" for whatever reason and works extremely well, it's extremely difficult for another competitor to knock it off the podium. Macs were first up to really cater to music and musicians. Couple that with their hip image, easy to use out of the box reputation, innovation along with a host of other reasons, and you have your answer.

[s12512]

u dont have to worry bout wizards and dos and viruses and.............

[videoteque]

Yeah, a PC set-up correctly can be very stable

For how much time??

My experience is that Windows auto-degenerates with time. Even if you don't change/install anything, after three months your well set-up PC will work worse. I have had PCs for years, and I don't think I have ever arrived to six months without having to re-format and re-install everything (big PITA in my book). With a Mac, if you don't install/change anything, you can get the same performance for years.

[rlg]

Originally Posted by videoteque

My experience is that Windows auto-degenerates with time. Even if you don't change/install anything, after three months your well set-up PC will work worse. I have had PCs for years, and I don't think I have ever arrived to six months without having to re-format and re-install everything (big PITA in my book). With a Mac, if you don't install/change anything, you can get the same performance for years.

I'll agree with that. I've used PCs for years, and had solid set-ups running Samplitude and Cubase, but I was always having to fix or maintain or reinstall something to keep things rolling along. Now I have a Mac, and have come to the conclusion that Macs need a lot less attention to keep things going smoothly.

[waltermusik]

Hey slutz, this is going off topic a bit. The OP wanted to discuss why most screenshots you see in magazines are MAC. Correct me when I'm wrong.

My 50c:

1. Maybe it looks more professional/posh/musician-like so it is good for a magazine's "pro" reputation.
2. Maybe Apple pays them for product placement.
3. The magazine people might actually like Macs more.
4. Maybe other software used in the magazine business (graphic stuff etc.) is mac-only or mac-preferred so it is simply the hardware they have anyway.

Cheers, Thomas

[H-Rezz]

Originally Posted by waltermusik

Hey slutz, this is going off topic a bit. The OP wanted to discuss why most screenshots you see in magazines are MAC. Correct me when I'm wrong.

My 50c:

1. Maybe it looks more professional/posh/musician-like so it is good for a magazine's "pro" reputation.
2. Maybe Apple pays them for product placement.
3. The magazine people might actually like Macs more.
4. Maybe other software used in the magazine business (graphic stuff etc.) is mac-only or mac-preferred so it is simply the hardware they have anyway.

Cheers, Thomas

Or maybe the reality is that 90% of professionals use Macs

[LeMauce]

Also the newer intel mac's can also turn windows xp + windows only DAW/plug's etc and OSX based DAW. So the best of both worlds.
Then you have the stability, no virus, etc etc with OSX. And you know that your "PC/MAC" works when you buy it and still will working after a year. With selfmade/build pc's your never know in what kind of bad situation you sail if you get a wrong motherboard or memory etc etc.
And Dell/Sony etc pc's are loaded with shit programma's that 90% of the user never will use and it just eat's resource and cpu juice. Be my guest to de-install all that crap / reinstall windows and get the right drivers and your pc stabiel, when you bought it in the shop.

Musician's / Producer are not tech/mech guys, they are artist. They just want something that works right out the box and get busy.

[6strings]

Originally Posted by waltermusik

Hey slutz, this is going off topic a bit. The OP wanted to discuss why most screenshots you see in magazines are MAC. Correct me when I'm wrong.

My 50c:

1. Maybe it looks more professional/posh/musician-like so it is good for a magazine's "pro" reputation.
2. Maybe Apple pays them for product placement.
3. The magazine people might actually like Macs more.
4. Maybe other software used in the magazine business (graphic stuff etc.) is mac-only or mac-preferred so it is simply the hardware they have anyway.

These points are all off the mark.

The majority of artists/engineers are using macs and say so.... the magazine is not inserting that information into the interview.

In regards to screenshots for reviews and tutorials... I see both platforms covered equally these days. No magazine in their right mind is going to snub the Windows-using home studio crowd.

One thing I do find amusing is that in other media (newspaper, television ads, etc.) it's not uncommon for the graphic artist to superimpose a mac screenshot over an obviously Windows machine's display screen. Macs are just as popular in media, but in these cases, I think the artist is having a little fun.

[Sonic Nomad]

Originally Posted by rlg

I'll agree with that. I've used PCs for years, and had solid set-ups running Samplitude and Cubase, but I was always having to fix or maintain or reinstall something to keep things rolling along. Now I have a Mac, and have come to the conclusion that Macs need a lot less attention to keep things going smoothly.

+1

Came from an IT background and since going Mac I've had to un-learn the need for regular system maintenance.

[NoisyNarrowBand]

simple - less headaches with the mac. apple controls both hard- and software of the gadget. that makes quality control easier and the products actually live up to the reputation.

having a your studio rig go down just for half a day will cost you way more $$$ than the price difference between a mac and a pc. if the mac has just 5% less failure rate (and in my experience is more like 15-20% less annual downtime with macs) it makes a lot of sense to stick with em.

it's also easier to find qualified audio-techs for mac's than for pc's. that is another factor that saves you money. try to find a qualified pro-tools engineer who is a pc guy - forget it!

also if you really price out the hard- and software mac vs pc you will be surprised how competitive apple actually is.

last not least: mac hardware and software is p r e t t y. I find aesthetically pleasing stuff in my studio inspirational. a mac shows the valuation of form and detail, they are little art-works in themselves. show me one pc that ever has managed to pull that off! or please explain me the horrible mess of windows user interfaces and how in hell they can please my senses. to me that stuff looks like accounting-tools with flashy lipstick. ..

[jaybadz]

Originally Posted by rlg

I'll agree with that. I've used PCs for years, and had solid set-ups running Samplitude and Cubase, but I was always having to fix or maintain or reinstall something to keep things rolling along. Now I have a Mac, and have come to the conclusion that Macs need a lot less attention to keep things going smoothly.

+2 for this one. About 4 years ago, I bought a stock 2.6 GHz P4 Dell laptop with Windows XP to use to run Reason 3.0 and Cubase SX3. At first I could not get a sound out of the thing, even after plugging my Audio interface into it. After hours, and I MEAN HOURS of tweaking the OS...msconfig this...disable that...blah, blah, blah the thing was finally able to make music. Don't get me wrong, while it worked it was rock solid. Then one day about 2 years later, I was in a situation that I had to use the internet to do something simple...like check email...and this laptop was the only computer that I had available. Keep in mind that this was one of the things that I had to disable, so had to reenable it in the properties to use the web. After I was done. I did the disk defrag and cleanup, redisabled again and...the damn thing would not run 5 minutes of the DAW software without crazy distortion. I tried everything and could not get it solid for the music again. Before anyone suggests that it might have been the hard drive, I still have this laptop and use it for the internet.

Around the same time that the laptop went crazy, a friend of mine gave me his Emac G4 with a 1.25 processor in it because he was moving and did not want to take the thing. I was wanting to make some music and had heard about the Mac for music usage...but had no experience with them at the time. I understood the OS because I was using it at my job for daily tasks, but looking at this thing it resembled a small microwave more than a DAW computer. Anyway, I said what the hell and loaded up Reason on it. I plugged my USB midi controller in not really expecting anything fantastic (cause of the Windows "reprogramming" for music audio that I was already experienced to)...but the damn thing worked. No other configuring of the computer or anything...the music was being made.

My whole point in this story is to support that, from my personal experience, myself and all other musicians I know use Macs for their ability to work without the extra stuff. I was able to use the stock Emac to work the programs, and did not necessarily even need the audio interface for this.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by longbongsilver

It seems like in virtually every magazine that does features with certain producers, if they have a computer in their studio at all it's a Mac. I even notice spillover with the reviews and technique articles, where if it has to do with a cross-platform program it looks like they ran the Mac version going by the pictures.

Now, if anyone is wondering if I'm trying to start a Mac vs PC thing here, no I am not. Far as I know you can do whatever with either. But I was curious if there were a particular reason for this. Is it a Pro Tools thing or something? Force of habit? Or what?

The Mac has an historic place in the studio. In the 1980s, the PC came in dead last in capabilities which made it a good MIDI platform. You could kind of do it, but timing was not as precise as we're used to. (MIDI will never have precise timing because of its serial nature; only one thing can happen at a time, and it takes a certain amount of time to happen, so nearly simultaneous events come out in MIDI 'splayed out' over time. A ten finger chord you pressed down over a period of 2 ms might actually come back in MIDI form splayed out over 10 ms.)

Windows 3.x brought a little more precision to internal clocking but was still quite problematic.

For the release of Windows 95, MS began completely rewriting the MIDI and audio layers of the OS, creating the ability to derive much tighter event timing, as well as laying the groundwork for a robust FX plug in programming interface (that would in time be expanded, with Cakewalk's help, to provide virtual instrument support as well). By 1997/98, the new audio, MIDI, and plug-in layers were more or less complete, making Windows the most advanced audio-capable OS then in existence. (The Amiga and Atari OS's in the 80s had been in most ways considerably more advanced than either then current Mac OS or DOS [especially DOS]. But they simply didn't prevail in the marketplace -- but it was not because they were not superior machines and OS's. They were.)

With working audio, MIDI and multimedia plug in layers in place (the same DX plug-in layer addressed both audio and video signal processing capabilities), PC-oriented vendors, led by longtime PC stalwarts, Cakewalk, began building around them. Cakewalk Pro Audio 6, the first native multichannel DAW for desktop comptuers [please correct me if I'm wrong], arrived in 1997. Soon after, Sonic Foundry (the Sound Forge and ACID developers) adopted the technology to their groundbreaking video/audio editor Vegas. Because they didn't have to "reinvent the wheel," third party developers were able to field multichannel recording applications, as well. And over several years, a flourishing and finally explosive 3rd party plug in market developed on the PC beginning in the late 90s, aided by affordable and free development tools available on the PC.


But most early computer music pioneers had started with Macs. Recalling the dark days of DOS, or the spotty timing of Windows 3 (not to mention the relative instability of Win 3.x, compared to later OS's), it was relatively easy to see why most rejected Windows 9x computers.


For those who investigated the advances, there was undoubtedly deep skepticism that MS really understood the necessities for audio, MIDI, and multimedia. Many probably said to themselves, Gee, sounds like a good idea, this dedicated OS layer for audio, MIDI, and plug ins -- but who could trust MS to do it right? I'll wait for it to be added to the Mac OS.

But things were not exactly rosy on the Mac at the time. There was no multi-channel audio layer in the OS. There was no MIDI layer -- MIDI capability was typically supported by the third party, proprietary Opcode OMS... when Opcode pulled out, the OMS system was effectively orphaned. A plug in standard was just a dream...

Of course, those changes had to wait for the massive sea change of OS X, when Apple followed MS's suit by moving finally to a full 32 bit OS.

Apple had, for years, been trying to develop their own in-house 32 bit, multi-tasking, multi-threading OS -- but had repeatedly failed, eating up diminishing business capital, and leaving the Mac drifting farther behind, technologically.

When Steve Jobs was persuaded to come back, he made it clear he would only do it if Apple dropped in-house OS development and moved to adopt a UNIX based system, developing a GUI on top of an already established code base.

It wasn't quite as elegant as that, of course, since Apple's dev teams cobbled together an OS based around a multi-messaging micro-kernel architecture in the Mach 3 core -- but wedded to the 'old-fashioned' serial-messaging monolithic architecture of the Darwin layer.

That meant that multi-threading was hobbled by Darwin's inability to deal with multiple threaded communications from the Mach 3 kernel, meaning messages that should have been dealt with in parallel had to remain cached so they could be dealt with serially.

And that meant poor performance in multi-threading and/or multi-user applications, vis a vis other UNIX based OS's and Windows. But, by coding around these issues, Mac developers were able to come up with single user/workstation applications that performed more as expected.

As OS X's own audio, MIDI, and plug in layers took shape over 10.1 through 10.3 in the first half of this decade, the Mac finally began to bring onboard to the OS the same kind of audio/multimedia capabilities the Windows users had enjoyed since the late-mid 90s. Still, issues with the CoreAudio layer and AudioUnits slowed the adoption of full integration for third party audio and multimedia applications.

Sensing that they would have to lead the way, Apple began assembling their own suite of multimedia applications, buying what they weren't able to develop, which resulted in time in the well-liked app Final Cut Pro and the still-growing-pained but extremely promising Logic...


Uh... did that sort of help answer your question?

[longbongsilver]

Yeah, I guess it does. Apparently the history there runs deeper than I thought it did.

I run a Windows rig myself, for the following reasons:

1) my main DAW program doesn't have a Mac version
2) I know more about Windows
3) I can build one myself for less than a Mac would cost

I'm no fanboy about it, Windows actually pisses me off from time to time still. To me, the ideal would be an OS that's deeply customizeable yet also light & unobtrusive. It shouldn't even feel like it's there after awhile. No one's made one like that yet unfortunately.

['Ave it!]

Just add in my view for what it's worth...

Like many proffessional composers I run both Macs & PC's in my studio (2 of each) - the whole "are you a Mac or PC person" debate really makes me chuckle. The truth is that what ever works for you, works. No explanation needed.

Personally, my main Daw is Mac and has been for a number of years for exactly the reasons as stated above. When I have a tight deadline I really haven't the time to be messing around trying to get computers to work. The Mac is pretty damn reliable. But when they go, they usually go BIG style!

[macleodgrant]

i set up bootcamp to try pro tools on the windows side and could not get anything to play for more than a couple of seconds. i then checked the setup document and got bored after a few minutes reading the stuff you need to configure

mac is literally just switch on a go - if you're a power user you can optimise performance

[Lagerfeldt]

Apart from Macs being better to work with and more stable in my opinion (and no virus), Logic Pro is the sequencer of choice for many producers. And only available on Mac.

[Bhang]

Originally Posted by Lagerfeldt

Apart from Macs being better to work with and more stable in my opinion (and no virus), Logic Pro is the sequencer of choice for many producers. And only available on Mac.

Very well put.
I used PC's for almost 15 years before biting the bullet to go mac ( shortly after Logic became Mac only). Far more stable and Logic is just far better than anything else I have tried ( Cakewalk, Cubase, Nuendo and DP). On my PC i was re installing the entire system 3-4 times a year, on my MAC, just when the new OS comes out. One thing I found is that the bugs and gremlins you get on a mac can easily be ironed out. Not so on a pc. The only thing I really miss on PC is the number of great plug ins that are PC only. Many of them free. But that is slowly changing too.

[Lagerfeldt]

Thanks,

As long as all the quality plug-ins such as Flux, Sonnox Oxford, Sonalksis and Waves are available on Mac, I really don't care for sorting thru all the free crap software.

Talking of free software, here are some nice plug-ins for your Mac & Logic:

Flux BitterSweet (veru cool transient toy) and StereoTool (M/S)
https://www.fluxhome.com/download/

CamelCrusher (distortion filter)
CamelCrusher - Distortion, Compressor, Filter - Free VST plugin & Audio Unit

Steve Massey TapeHead Medium
smassey.com

Sonalksis FreeG (meter/master fader)
Sonalksis - Quality Digital Audio Software

Logic Pro SSL Compressor presets
http://www.popmusic.dk/download/logi...audiofiles.zip

[allencollins]

A true producer should be able to make great records with any quality gear. Mac or a Windows machine. The 2 platforms are identical from a hardware aspect the software is comparable. This is like a broken record.

The mac pep rally goes on and on an on and on and on and on. I've said this 100 times. The day that you turn on the radio and instantaniously recognize a mix was cut on an xp machine or a mac or even an ssl is the day that the platform matters. Until then it's wasted words and it's nothing but a cheerleading contest. The goal is the quality of the end product. The best end product wins. Not how you got there. The sound of the mix, not what you mixed it on or mixed it with.

[jval]

Originally Posted by longbongsilver

To me, the ideal would be an OS that's deeply customizeable yet also light & unobtrusive. It shouldn't even feel like it's there after awhile. No one's made one like that yet unfortunately.

Although it may not be deeply customizable, OSX feels like it's barely there for me. I was a PC user for years, including when I started in audio. I've been a mac user now for about a year and a half, and I don't think I'll ever go back.

I used to think I was a bit of a computer whiz on windows machines, because I could get into the advanced options and make my machine run better than most people knew how. These days, I think the mac has made me stupid with how simple it is. I used to think of my computer as a piece of high technology that I need to constantly explore and master. Now I see my computer as a machine that helps me complete a task. I turn it on do what I need to do without any interruptions, setups, maintenance, etc.
A few days ago I had a PT crash during a mix session. I was shocked and sat there scratching my head for a minute as I've never had a crash since I switched to mac. The guys in the back of the room were laughing at how confused I was. One of them has a windows PT rig at home and said, "Man, that's a daily occurrence for me - I wouldn't even blink if that happened!"

Obviously this is an age old debate and it comes down to preference, but I think when a product can change the way you look at, think about, and use computers, it's doing something right. There's a reason you see it in so many studio shots.

[cleartrueblue]

After a dozen years on PC's, one day I added it up: I had spent about four months of my life maintaining and troubleshooting Windows.

Two years now on Macs and my experience is that the Mac is a device, not a computer. I don't know a thing about the inner workings of microwave ovens - I just use them when I want to heat something. When I want to do music, I turn on the Mac.

I was a defender of Microsoft for years, thinking computers are just such complex beasts, millions of lines of code...of course there's always going to be "something" to attend to. Turns out this isn't true.

Mac has about ninety percent of the (professional) audio market in the U.S., therefore it only makes sense that magazine reviews would bias toward this platform.

[theblue1]

I keep trying for the life of me to figure out where all these stability problems that some folks complain about come from on XP machines.

I've been using Windows machines for DAW work starting back in 1997 (and before that used a Windows machine for sequencing in a moderately complex five module MIDI rig synced to ADATs). Today, my quite modest machine is used not just for audio production (Sonar Pro) but for video editing (using the excellent and very affordable Vegas), web and database developing (which requires me to run the industrial strength database server SQL Server, powerful enough to run a huge web-served database; I typically disable it to save resources when it's not needed but either way it's proven stable on my machine.)

No question that before Win 98, there were stability issues. When I switched to Win 98 from a thoroughly patched W95, I was able to run four months straight without a crash -- not bad for a machine that had to interface with a real patchwork variety of hardware and software (I had a number of SCSI devices in those days; as you probably recall, the first PC based CD burners were all SCSI; I had cams and hardware control and, geez, you name it).

But, especially after the introduction of XP, I just stopped seeing stability as any sort of ongoing problem on my machines. I mean, I just don't get it where all these supposed stability problems are coming from unless people just keep dumping programs into their machines willy nilly without paying any attention to whether or not they are well-behaved or even have stay-resident components.

[I will say that I have had some stability issues with several specific third party plug ins. But I don't perceive that as unique to Windows or my DAW, from my reading.]

And I do see many and frequent threads about this or that problem or issue with Mac hardware or software. (Now this might be because more professional studios tend to use Macs -- so one supposes you'd see a higher percentage of Mac-issues there -- but overall more people [including non-commercial-studio users] use Windows machines for recording, as far as I can tell from the hard to come by market share claims. And one would expect naive consumers to have the largest number of problems!)

As some of you know, I keep a bookmarks folder called "It Just Works" which is filled with contrary examples -- and it continues to grow and evolve.

I'm not sure how Vista is going to shake out for me -- I've avoided it so far -- I'm beginning to be persuaded that improvements in 3rd party drivers have eased a number of performance issues that were dogging Vista in benchmarks; a recent performance article in a hardcore gamer's hardware magazine suggested that Vista now actually has a performance advantage compared to the same machine running the same games and gaming benchmarks under XP and Vista. But... well, my skepticism can be pretty tenacious.

But, back to XP, it's hard for me to reconcile these complaints with my own experience -- and the experiences of those pained and perplexed individuals packing my It Just Works folder to overflowing... That said, there are a number of people who say they are switchers who find the Mac easier or more stable. I can't reconcile their apparent XP experiences with my own -- but I don't doubt their sincerity.

[Bhang]

Originally Posted by allencollins

A true producer should be able to make great records with any quality gear. Mac or a Windows machine. The 2 platforms are identical from a hardware aspect the software is comparable. This is like a broken record.

The mac pep rally goes on and on an on and on and on and on. I've said this 100 times. The day that you turn on the radio and instantaniously recognize a mix was cut on an xp machine or a mac or even an ssl is the day that the platform matters. Until then it's wasted words and it's nothing but a cheerleading contest. The goal is the quality of the end product. The best end product wins. Not how you got there. The sound of the mix, not what you mixed it on or mixed it with.

This is not the point. Of course there is no audio fidelity difference. It is all about stability and workflow. About working more than installing/ re-installing or trouble shooting. If you can get a stable working pc then you should be happy as long as you like the software. For me this was never the case. When i switched to mac
it just worked.

[longbongsilver]

I think part of the "it just works" legend is that you can't get a customized Mac anyway (at least not "legally" ). So getting a Mac is like a higher-end version of getting a pre-built from Best Buy or something, not as much different stuff to deal with. I get occasional hassles with my computer, but I built it myself and it's about due to be replaced anyway.

Last time I even touched a Mac was back in high school. I think the OS was on version 7 at the time, lol.

[manning1]

i have no pc problems.
day after day i just record traks. q.e.d.

[3rd world order]

the pc OS is bitchy.. it breaks itself.. it talks down to you.. it needs 3-4 anti-virus, register cleaners, & god knows what else to function properly.

the mac works like it's supposed to... the only maintenance i do is run applejack for disk maintenance once a week... i've never even seen a mac virus and i download everything you're not supposed to..

get a pc if you want to play lots of games.

[longbongsilver]

Originally Posted by 3rd world order

the pc OS is bitchy.. it breaks itself.. it talks down to you.. it needs 3-4 anti-virus, register cleaners, & god knows what else to function properly.

Normally I'd just ignore this since, as I said, I didn't want this to become a Mac vs Windows cock-measuring contest (price and knowledge are the only reason I use what I do). But the 3-4 anti-viruses bit...

You aren't supposed to have more than one anti-virus installed at any time, they conflict with each other. The program installs will warn you in most cases before proceeding that you already have an anti-virus, some offer to uninstall it for you even.