should i get a brand new maxed out windows laptop or just go for 2015 retina i7 ?

edit:

logic pro x 10.5 (used before) or presonus studio one pro 5 (never used)

whats your opinion?

Haven't recorded on a PC since 2012 so I can't rightly say, to be honest. But Opinions? I got!

I like that Mac uses Unix. It's a noticeably more stable OS than Microsoft.
So is any Linux/Unix-based system, IMO. (used to be a programmer)

But... with speeds today, and better performance of Windows 10 vs pre Win7, I have no doubt PC Recording can be as enjoyable IF you got the right specs.

What I've noticed first off, hardware-wise, is that CORE is the key. A 2008 Mac Pro with 4 Core will perform as well as a 2020 iMac with 2 Core. That tells you ALL you need to know about RAM, or i5 vs i7, or Hard-drive type, etc.

Next thing I've noticed is an SSD will be 2x faster than a spinning drive booting up and opening programs. Kudo's to Dr. Jerome Cuomo of NCSU (current job, I know him as Jerry, haha) for inventing the optical disc, but SSD is the New Age for Music Production (not for video tho, too many over-writes which will use up the SSD ability which gets used up fast by that type of tech. Recording uses non-destructive methods, so is perfect for SSD) So... IF you record music to match to movies? DO NOT USE SSD. Stick to Spinning Drives and max out all the other ****. If you can use SSD, you can stick to as low as 16GB and i5 if that helps the $$$. The multi-core will make up the difference.

If you want to see something cool: https://www.imore.com/retro-review-2009-mac-pro-2018

Remember, ooold Mac Tech is very upgradable. New is much less so, intentionally.
So PCs can be built and have parts swapped like Old Macs were. That might be a consideration? (future upgradability vs latest Mac that are much less capable of that.)

One thing I LOVED about PC's was file manipulation. I could work with thousands of files and organize to my hearts content and loved it. On the mac? More than a dozen files is a B I T C H to deal with. Terrible file programs and only gets worse each OS. Mac didn't drop the ball. They rocket blasted file organization ease into the sun. (well, it was never good to begin with, so it started on Mercury)

I think, in the end, its probably more like choosing a DAW. Both get the job done. Which one do YOU prefer working on?

Last consideration? You get a maxed out PC and in 5 years you have a door stopper. No one will buy it from you. Get a 2020 iMac and you can sell that **** for 1/2 what you bought it for. Macs... Hold... Equity...

So think of HALF your Mac cost as 50% savings account and the other half as equal to your PC cost. A $2,000 Mac is equal to a $1000 PC because you'll get $1000 and $0 in 5 years from them, respectively.

Last consideration. IF you dare get a Mac, NEVER EVER upgrade the OS until at least a year after it's dropped. It takes the music industry at least that long for everyone to become compatible. iZotope, Spectrasonic, Waves, FabFilter, ToonTracks, Reaper, **** not even friggin' Logic Pro X is compatible Day One of a new OS Drop. Apple is stupid that way. Get used to it.

(text put in bold by me).

You have input gain and polarity controls built-in to each strip as well as pan and level.
The interesting thing about that is that for stereo channels, in the console you'll see a separate polarity switch for left and right channels, so I would expect that at some point they will also add a separate pan control for each too.
Or maybe not, who knows

I can see why people would want/expect this, I make a mod for controllers for Studio One and I've included something that should help a bit in this regard until they do implement those built-in separate panners.
The way I've approached it is to add an insert mode that allows you to step through insert 1, then insert 2 etc for each channel, just as you can with sends and cues (same functionality for regular MC devices in send mode when you perform multiple presses).
What this allows you to do is to have a template where the first insert on every channel (or 2nd, or whatever) is the dual panner.
This in itself isn't enough because you want instant control over the dual pan plug for each channel as well as just being able to see the channel name and plugin name.
You can expand the plug as mentioned but that means having to click into the mixer with the mouse and then using the mouse to change panning values - either that or have to go into plugin mode to view and adjust values, then out again.
It's not the end of the word having to do this but it's cumbersome and forces you off the controller and onto the mouse which is something I strive to avoid.

To make life easier, I've added a section to the on-screen-display which shows the currently selected channel's name, 9th fader and jogwheel plug assignments for any focused plugin, and added the zoom button as a plug control, which is also displayed on the OSD .
These can be control-linked to the dual panner plug (9th fader left pan, jogwheel right pan and zoom button = toggle link.
Therefore you can step to whatever slot you have your dual panner in, and you'll see and can control those parameters for the selected channel without having to go to a different mode or use the mouse at all.

Those values don't appear unless the device rack (plug gui) is open, so when you enter the insert step-though mode the plug gui will pop open automatically avoiding the necessity to do that manually as well (and same for normal plugin mode now).

It's definitely a workaround rather than an all-out solution but seems to be pretty effective in use.
I'll post a pic in a bit as it'll be easier to see what I mean

You can do this for any plug that has a minimal control set where one fader, the jogwheel and a button will suffice, although I'll work to add another layer using shift so you can double up.

If you need more than that for any one plugin then you can just switch to plugin mode as usual where you have the full complement of 50 controls.

Get a blown out laptop PC. I have two blown out PCs

I just finished reading through a majority of the Presonus S1 5 related threads hoping to find some positive news about crashes. It looks like the volume of problem related posts have reduced but I haven't seen many (actually any) posts that have isolated root causes and mentioned their problems are now resolved. Apathy? Gave up? Reverted back to 4.6.2? Regardless of why the complaint volume is lower, I'm far from convinced it's because the problems have greatly reduced.

I took the plunge during Black Friday and upgraded to S1 5. I was optimistic that many of the problems were overstated as a byproduct of frustration, or that we were only hearing from the minority of users who were experiencing issues vs. the majority who were running the new version without a hitch. I'm now rapidly coming to the conclusion that I was wrong after experiencing my own heavy volume of problems.

In these 3 weeks, over half of my work sessions have ended as a result of crashes. Today it happened while editing vocals in Melodyne. The day before, it happened when I disengaged the bypass on a Plugin Alliance compressor. Four days ago it happened when I tried to copy a plugin chain from one track to another. I'm onboard with concepts like crashes are 3rd Party plugin related, or result from other programs running the background, or over-extending the capabilities of inferior hardware components. I don't expect my CPU to be a bottomless pit of capacity.

It's not realistic to expect a software company to account for every possible scenario upon release, or for every 3rd party plugin maker to have worked out the kinks with Presonus. It's also not realistic to expect everything to work perfectly 7 months after release, but it is reasonable to expect some progress.

The large variety of user applications of a DAW means some folks will likely never stumble into scenarios that lead to a crash. If your reliance on 3rd Party plugins is minimal then you probably can't relate to what all the complaining is about. If you don't ever experience latency issues it's largely a byproduct of the types of virtual instruments / digital plugins vs. physical gear you are using, not because your personal copy of DAW software is special. Obviously your system specs and audio interface are critical variables but I think that's a given.

If your problem is latency or some other limitation resulting from a computer system not up for the task, then the issue is really in your hands to fix. Especially latency. As an example, as a PC user I came to the conclusion that my best interface option was RME. Simply buying a piece of hardware isn't going to make it completely go away so I also got comfortable recording instruments and vocals dry, learning to "hear/feel" the pocket without listening for it - then removing the headphones from one ear (for acoustic gtr and vocals), and got super comfortable editing tracks as needed. Crashes? That's an entirely different issue. The first part is still on you - use a reasonably spec'd system, take the the time to optimize it and minimize conflicts, know the impact specific to your system that will result from multi-tasking, background programs, and remaining online. If you've done these types of things and have gotten comfortable enough with your DAW to handle basic troubleshooting, but are still experiencing crashes, then you are in the group with me and it appears a significant number of other people. It can be frustrating when the answer to the question, "what do I do now", is I don't know and it seems neither does anybody else.

The thing is, by the time Presonus released S1 4.6.2, that version had become highly resistant to crashes and functioned quite efficiently regardless of the strain I placed on it. I ended up pushing the auto save feature back from 5 minutes to 20 minutes because I had very few worries of losing work. In the rare instances something went wrong, I could almost always trace it back to something I did or another program/process on my computer. It's highly likely this will be the case with S1 5 too.

However, in the short-term the crash I experienced today was the last straw for me until someone at Presonus acknowledges there are still some systemic problems and does something about it. I backed up the current track I'm working on before opening it in S1 5, but I think I'm stuck finishing it in the new version. There's no backwards compatibility and I don't want to lose my modifications. I'll revert the auto save back to 5 minutes and put up with the minor annoyances it causes and accept I'll have to reload S1 on a daily basis after it crashes.

One nice thing about the installation process is that it leaves the previous version of S1 fully intact. It's a choice available to all previous users of S1 and for me it's an easy decision. I'm going back to using S1 4.6.2 and chalk up the money I spent upgrading as waste for now. I'm still reasonably confident the kinks of the new version will get worked out at some point, but until then it's causing too much re-work to even consider starting another project in S1 5.

I really don't like writing posts like my last one, as the potential benefit to others is limited to people who are on the fence about upgrading, considering choosing S1 as their go-forward DAW, and stupidly on my part I'd like to continue believing S1 has people periodically scanning the major message boards for feedback of threads with "Presonus" in the title. So, the purpose of this post is to mention something I've noticed from the 2 crashes I've experienced since my previous post.

I previously mentioned my belief that the crashes I've experienced are most likely 100% 3rd party plugin related. My PC is fairly powerful and has ample free memory and drive space available. I mix and edit with a buffer size of 2048 samples. When using S1, I temporarily disable my virus protection and turn off any application that could ping (like "My Phone"). In fact, I don't leave any other applications open when using S1... other than the background programs that load during start-up... hmm? I'll come back to this thought in a moment.

I'm looking forward to switching back to 4.6.2 but for now I have no choice but to continue using S1 5 to finish my current song. I've resorted to yet one more compromise (when I remember to do it) to get it done. I'm now turning off all plugins during editing. Unlike recording dry, editing dry can be a significant problem, especially for blending voices/instruments and "non-quantized" timing syncs. The challenge is compounded when the track includes dynamics and spacial automation on delays and reverbs (that I can't hear now since they're shut off). I mix as I go, so this is really messing with my workflow. In my last 4 work sessions I remembered to turn off effects chains twice and the other two sessions I forgot to take this step. I completed the two dry sessions without any problems while the other two ended in crashes.

All of my crashes lately have required a manually forced closing of S1, so one cont-alt-del later I'm looking at the items in my task manager and I notice something strange. PACE (license service) is jumping all over the place in terms of CPU usage (memory usage remains constant at 12.5 MB). Granted, the CPU usage spikes are still extremely small and don't even reach the .1% threshold to show up as a numerical value in Task Manager, but nevertheless a change is happening on a basis of nearly every 1-2 seconds. I can't say I really know what PACE is doing in the background, but it sure looks like its more than simply verifying a license in the opening boot sequence of S1.

I believe every one of my crashes has occurred while I had sections of tracks repeating on loop. I assumed PACE referenced data certificates on my hard drive but didn't directly interact with the DAW beyond an initial user validation. Am I wrong about this, and if so, is it possible that PACE is flooding S1 with messages/requests that are contributing to crashes? The CPU usage meter in S1 is not showing spikes when the crashes occur so I don't think the problem is a result of overloading memory. Could some form of logic disconnect occur to cause a crash? I'm really just grasping at straws at this point and it doesn't seem logical to me that PACE could be behind my crashes. It is however, the only outwardly visable thing I noticed.

Has anyone resorted to re-installing all of your plugins, and if so, did that improve stability? Anyone aware of threads that contain useful troubleshooting ideas beyond the typical bull**** answers of reboot your computer, reinstall S1, or it's not our fault - contact "the" plugin maker (more like the dozens of plugin makers)? I'm going to re-post the portions of my thread with questions/observations on the Presonus site but I've never had much luck getting useful feedback in the past on their forum.