Good classical recording software for MacBook Pro ?

[sonare]

Originally Posted by Jan_M

I noticed some of you guys are recording in OSX and then editing later on the Windows side. Any reasons for this?

The Metric Halo gear I record with will not work in the Windows environment, and Sequia will not work in the Mac environment.

Rich

[sonare]

Originally Posted by henryrobinett

The Record Panel of Metric Halo, is part of the 2882/ULN-2 boxes. It's very simple, meaning not a lot of extra bells and whistles. It just records and plays back. Because of it's simplicity, I imagine, it's virtually crash free. In the 5 or so years I've been using it IT has never crashed.

You can play back files from any point, if you use the cursor to point to a location. There's no ability to overdub or set locate points for punch in/out recording.

I believe Boom Recorder is similar, at least it seems to have similar functionality and dependability. But of course it comes built into the Metric Halo boxes, so for us, it's a no brainer, if you have a live session.

What HE said--

Rich

[aracu]

I have always worked with pcs, and have always found that combinations of audio programs combined with windows platforms such as xp work great
when recently installed, but quickly deteriate in functionality over a few days
or weeks, with some combinations of programs worse than others. Probably
due to the windows registry. So I make a Norton ghost image file of all the programs, so that they can be automatically re-installed in 5 minutes as soon as things start getting buggy. Otherwise, audio programs and windows would drive me crazy. I suppose a Mac can be set up in a similar way.

[sonare]

A Mac COULD be set up that way, but there is no need to. It does not deteriorate or get buggy-- at least none of the 6 I have owned did.

Rich

[phil.]

Originally Posted by henryrobinett

The Record Panel of Metric Halo, is part of the 2882/ULN-2 boxes. It's very simple, meaning not a lot of extra bells and whistles. It just records and plays back. Because of it's simplicity, I imagine, it's virtually crash free. In the 5 or so years I've been using it IT has never crashed.

You can play back files from any point, if you use the cursor to point to a location. There's no ability to overdub or set locate points for punch in/out recording.

I believe Boom Recorder is similar, at least it seems to have similar functionality and dependability. But of course it comes built into the Metric Halo boxes, so for us, it's a no brainer, if you have a live session.

Certainly sounds ideal for live sessions!!

Thanks for posting. thumbsup

phil.

[Larry Elliott]

Originally Posted by phil.

Certainly sounds ideal for live sessions!!
phil.

The Metric Halo Record Panel is the most stable computer based recorder that I have used! All that it claims to be it is!

Cant recommend it highly enough.

Larry

[d_fu]

Originally Posted by aracu

I have always worked with pcs, and have always found that combinations of audio programs combined with windows platforms such as xp work great when recently installed, but quickly deteriate in functionality over a few days or weeks,

Not something I can confirm at all...

[videoteque]

After a few days may be exagerated, but several weeks I can confirm all the way!!! And I have worked with XP too (until SP1)...

Daniel if your PC doesn't auto-corrupt over time you can consider yourself very lucky!!!

[David Spearritt]

Originally Posted by d_fu

Not something I can confirm at all...

Me neither. Microsoft do provide certain obstacles to setting up a computer correctly for audio for the lay person, but XP does not deteriorate over time like Windows 2000 used to. For someone who does not wish to know anything about the insides of their computer, the Mac maybe a better choice.

[Jan_M]

Thanks Rich

So its simply a hardware thing on the recording side.

How well does Sequoia work on the MBP? Any stability issues, anything I should know while setting up? Thanks

[resound]

Originally Posted by David Spearritt

For someone who does not wish to know anything about the insides of their computer, the Mac maybe a better choice.

Thanks, but some of us do know a lot about computers: IRIX and linux alum here, and I prefer Mac to Windows. I can do as much tweaking as I want (Unix guts), but simultaneously, I seldom to never have a need or want to.

This thread has gotten stupid with these little platform bias missives going back and forth. Maybe we should focus more on Ivo's original question and leave OS bickering to elsewhere on the Web?

[sonare]

Originally Posted by Jan_M

How well does Sequoia work on the MBP? Any stability issues, anything I should know while setting up? Thanks

Good to go out of the box.

Rich

[ISedlacek]

Well, back to the original question - after thinking about it and hearing various opinions, I think something like Cubase LE just for OSX tracking may be a good solution. I know that Magma makes some troubles with XP (difficulties with driver etc.) while with Vista it works well (no driver needed). But to install Vista on MacBook sounds a bit untasty ... So for tracking I will test Cubase or find something similar, simple and reliable and for Samplitude (if needed) I will use XP ...

[sonare]

You should visit the Samp forum-- I think you will find that Vista is no more unpleasant than XP. Take a look at:

http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/...;keyword=vista

:: the How-To Geek

Be sure and turn off SuperFetch!


Rich

[Don S]

Originally Posted by LX3

For me, Digital Performer has been the most reliable software for recording on a MacBook Pro. Although (in spite of the fact?) I'm still on v5.
.

I get CPU spikes with DP, but not with PTLE. I'm running DP5.1 on a powerbook G4 1.5MHZ OS 10.8 (or 10.9 not sure) with the FF800. Again, the 003R is clean. But audio going to disk gets corrupted on all tracks for a second or 2, but the back up mix out the SPDIF is also clean.
I've been hauling around the 003R just for stability's sake!

[Fliko]

Originally Posted by LX3

I'd disagree that Macs are expensive and slow. Price up an 8-core Xeon machine from Dell and see what happens.

I'm sorry, but what the hell are you going to use 8 cores for? We're talking sound here, not 3D graphics..
And not only that, a Xeon processor? I hope you're gonna overclock that beast.
And why buy from Dell if getting a PC? build it yourself, it's much much much more cheaper.

For the same price as the second lowest iMac you can buy (2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo, 320GB HD, 2 GB ram), you can build a PC with an HD 4850 Video Card (Not even necessary really for recording applications), 4 GB of low latency DDR2 PC2 6400 ram, 2 500GB Hard drives 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache (Could even go down on the video card and upgrade one of those drives to a 1.5 TB hard drive if you wanted. Seagate drives for the record), and an Intel i7 920 Nehalem 2.66 GHz Processor

I'm not gonna argue with Macs and PCs that one is better then the other, and both do have different pros and cons, but a PC is definately cheaper, and it can be just as stable as a Mac if you don't clutter it up.

EDIT: And also as a word of caution on Vista, I've heard that it is a real pain to work with certain programs (Though this has probably changed, seeing as Vista has been out longer then when I've heard about all this.), and apparently stutters, pops, hisses, and clicks do show up on a Vista machine. Never experienced this myself, but a very small time sound engineer I know has.
And to top it off, Vista is simply a resource hog, installing Vista onto a Macbook would make no sense.

[LX3]

Originally Posted by Fliko

I'm sorry, but what the hell are you going to use 8 cores for?.

Let me check, this is "Gearslutz" isn't it? What do people need PTHD3 for? What do they need a UAD-2 Quad for? Or a Powercore 6000?

I definitely get thru that kind of processing power on my projects... though I agree, for classical (which I don't do a vast amount of), not really necessary.

But anyway, I was just saying that, when comparing like with like (off-the-shelf name-brand computers of equal spec), Macs work out much the same price as PCs. If you have the time and motivation to buy all the components separately and screw them all together yourself, then more power to you... although as you point out, you're then stuck using a Microsoft OS, or maybe Linux.

[LX3]

Originally Posted by Don S

I get CPU spikes with DP, but not with PTLE. I'm running DP5.1 on a powerbook G4 1.5MHZ OS 10.8 (or 10.9 not sure) with the FF800. Again, the 003R is clean. But audio going to disk gets corrupted on all tracks for a second or 2, but the back up mix out the SPDIF is also clean.
I've been hauling around the 003R just for stability's sake!

For some weird reason, DP was never happy on a laptop PowerPC in OS X. It was workable in OS 9, but went to pieces with OS X. Purely a DP weirdness, no-one ever figured out why.

But now, on Intel machines, DP rocks. It was a surprise to me too... the problems with DP drove me exclusively towards hardware a few years ago. Then I tried it again post-Intel changeover and everything had changed.

Although I still prefer the dedicated hardware.

[peterwild]

I use logic pro 8. Yes it's very unstable when mixing / using plugins, but now when I have just recorded this and that about 50 hours with orpheus + MacBook Pro, there is 0 crash. Working fine. But I also like Reaper, I have playing with it on PC and it's most stabile program I have used. Reaper has many really nice features over logic. I just wish they will put decent magnifying glass to reaper. I somehow dont like much its zoomings...

[evisto]

May be this is not a question for this site, but Whats your experience about the noise with the pc and mac? I changing all my location recording equipement, and, normally, I used it at churchs, I need absolute silence. I have always use recordings machines, but no portatil computer. Which portable compute is more silencious, pc or mac?

evisto

[ISedlacek]

Originally Posted by evisto

May be this is not a question for this site, but Whats your experience about the noise with the pc and mac? I changing all my location recording equipement, and, normally, I used it at churchs, I need absolute silence. I have always use recordings machines, but no portatil computer. Which portable compute is more silencious, pc or mac?

evisto

MacBook Pro is VERY quiet ... My previous Toshiba Tecra laptop was terribly noisy

[peterwild]

Originally Posted by evisto

May be this is not a question for this site, but Whats your experience about the noise with the pc and mac? I changing all my location recording equipement, and, normally, I used it at churchs, I need absolute silence. I have always use recordings machines, but no portatil computer. Which portable compute is more silencious, pc or mac?

evisto

I dont know why macBook Pro + orpheus = MBP fan is all time on? So not so noiseless. I have also lynx aurora8 with fireCard and that + MBP is very silent.

And I also hate noise, thats why I bought at home PC / Zalmann TNN500 (totally no noise). I use it with reaper. Only moving part is hard drive ( and DVD if you need it). My G5 mac sound like wacuum cleaner.

[just.sounds]

I did not go through the whole thread but have a look at vosgames boomrecorder.
Simple and effective if you are just recording linear.

[luigichelli]

Originally Posted by peterwild

I dont know why macBook Pro + orpheus = MBP fan is all time on? So not so noiseless. I have also lynx aurora8 with fireCard and that + MBP is very silent.

And I also hate noise, thats why I bought at home PC / Zalmann TNN500 (totally no noise). I use it with reaper. Only moving part is hard drive ( and DVD if you need it). My G5 mac sound like wacuum cleaner.

..strange, my early 2008 mbp ( TI fw chip) + orpheus doesn't bother me with noise at all!

[peterwild]

Originally Posted by luigichelli

..strange, my early 2008 mbp ( TI fw chip) + orpheus doesn't bother me with noise at all!

it's soundCard is also very noisy. Here sample, just hit of bongo, all other noise comes from sound card (boosted up)

MacBook Pro's build in soundCard noise

[snaysup]

That PC of yours looks like something the jawas tried sell uncle Owen on Tatooine.

"these aren't the droids your looking for"

[luigichelli]

Originally Posted by peterwild

it's soundCard is also very noisy. Here sample, just hit of bongo, all other noise comes from sound card (boosted up)

MacBook Pro's build in soundCard noise

yeh the build-in audio is something awful...btw with a fireface or an orpheus works like a charm! ;)
if you experience problems with the fans maybe try smcfancontrol, i always have it on (minimum setting...rarely up to 2900rpm) and the mbp is quite silent....

[Teddy Ray]

I've been a windows user since it very first appeared, and been recording with it for I dunno....7 years now or something....

I have yet to see any errors with ANY daw program (wavelab, cubase, nuendo, and now Samplitude and Sequoia) ... with xp, 2000 or vista... myriad hardware/software combinations, motherboard upgrades, ram swaps, additions of HDDs..

the transition to Vista/Samplitude was as seamless as all the upgrades prior.

how are people having all these issues? I mean sure, it takes a tiny(and i mean tiny!)bit of education to learn how to Optimize VISTA for recording, but the same is true of any platform. a modicum of knowledge is all that is needed for computer recording(the same way I believe everyone should at least know how to change the oil on one's vehicle, spark plugs, tires, brake pads/fluid, radiator flush, etc)

If you know/use samplitude, it would make more sense professionally(in my opinion) to base the COMPUTER purchase around the SOFTWARE than the other way around.

Weird.

wife has a fancy little mac. it looks absolutely feminine and trendy.

Windows is so ridiculously easy to use, trivial even, that I sometimes feel that a percentage of these "complaints/bug reports/nitpicks" is nothing more than anti-windows propaganda generated by a cabal of anti-microsoft conspiracy theorists.

want to talk about worthless and recording...LINUX

[BenF]

Ivo,

Someone already mentioned this, but $79 might make it worth looking at for your purposes. It has more capabilities than some of the other programs for that price. I don't own it, by the way, but I have downloaded and tried it out as a demo. You should just to check it out and see if you like how it works Audiofile Engineering - Wave Editor. But there is something to be said for familiarity, if you already have a Cubase license. I'm all Mac here, hoping to be able to buy Metric Halo someday as a part-time choirmaster.

I like reading your posts and adventures. Thanks for sharing them. I seem to be able to hear all the differences, which is why I don't post often or buy much; it is just too expensive for me. However, I love sound recording and hearing the sound files posted.

Best regards,

Ben