I have a dual 500 G4 Mac in my home studio that I use mainly for pre-production and demo's. This is complemented by a TiBook for location recording and my main audio interface for both is a Metric Halo Mobile I/O (which is A1, BTW), plus the usual array of mic's, comps, pre's, etc..

For this aspect of my work I use Digital Performer. As everything Mac related is geared towards a shift towards OSX this year I've been recently wondering about alternatives on PC.

I'm considering moving to PC and breaking the Mac stranglehold, but only if there is a good enough DAW to move to.

So, if there are any PC DAW users here, I would be grateful for any recommendations and feedback on PC apps. I think Nuendo is the most luring.

Also, has anyone Nuendo PC/Mac performance experience?

It winds me up when I look how much £ I'll have to put out on a new G4 dual 1.25Ghz compared to a 2.7Ghz Wintel machine !

The other thing I'm considering is holding out a while and getting PT HD and use my current dual 500 with it. About 70-80% of studios I work at have it anyway though, if not we hire in. Does anyone ever charge extra for bringing in their PT rig?

Carl,

> I'm considering moving to PC and breaking the Mac stranglehold, but only if there is a good enough DAW to move to. <

I use Sonar and I love it. It works great, it's affordable, and it's not copy protected. The high points for me are very low latency (1.5 milliseconds on my P4 at 2.26 GHz.), support for plug-in soft-synths and samplers, and the ability to loop Wave files just like Sonic Foundry's Acid.

--Ethan

It would be weird to let OSX be the motivating factor for moving to the PC. Why leave when things are about to REALLY get good? Apple pulled out all the stops to make OSX an incredible platform for audio and MIDI, hiring some incredible peole to accomplish the task.

I can hardly wait until the day when I boot OS 9 for the last time. I'm using OSX on my two non-music Macs, and IMO, everything about OSX literally reeks with quality and stability. It feels like slamming the door on a $100k car.

Lee Blaske

You could always go PT HD/MIX on PC, I started with PT on a NT PC before cross grading to Mac. The only reason I went was lack of plugins, still missing a few companies. Works just as stable, I still miss using Wavelab for mastering after almost 3 years.

Samplitude 6.05 is what we use for 99%, the other 1% of MIDI kinda stuff is Sonar. Samp has just come out with Version 7, which incorporates VSTi and better MIDI...Relatively hi learning curve, but ... worth it.



Samplitude ... also, there is a very good user's group at alt.sekd, at which the developers frequently participate...

After using Cakewalk/Sonar and Logic for relatively long periods on a PC, I'm now a happy camper with Cubase SX on a P4 Laptop (after upgrading from Cubase 5.1). Nothing's perfect, there's as much bitching about Cubase on the Cubase forum (www.cubase.net) as there was about Logic on the Logic forum, but for me the Cubase interface is the one that finally makes intuitive sense (for me), and it sounds great. I don't like the Sonar interface, and Sonar can't do groups normally (there's no master meter when using groups); Logic abandoned the PC platform, and I'm just not interested in giving all my money to Digidesign. I'm also a happy user of Waves plugs and Native Instruments stuff in Cubase. I'll seriously think about upgrading to Nuendo 2.0 when it ships. Your mileage will probably vary.

Good luck,

rlg