Music Creation

I use my PC to create and produce music w/ Reason. I am considering making the move to a Mac Pro...how much of a difference is there between the quality of an audio recording on a pc, and on a mac...any links to some sound samples of your bands would be appreciated...I just need to get an accurate idea of what Macs are capable of, musically speaking, before I commit to the switch.

The quality of the end result would be the same. Macs and Windows PC's use the same hardware, more or less. Also, it isn't the computer that makes the music, it is the musician. How good a final result sounds depends on the person doing the editing and producing, not the computer used to do so.
The applications have the same result as well. The difference is how those easy/simple the application is to use for the person doing it. That being said, I prefer the applications used on a Mac as opposed to ones used in Windows.
On Windows, I have used Reason and Cakewalk in the past.
On Mac, I use CubaseSX or GarageBand, depending on what I am doing. I find those apps just easier to use than Windows-based programs.

if it helps I am a musician that uses both PC and Mac for music making and production and Mac's are always my first choice.

D3v1L80y is right it's not the machine making music but the musician.
I have used mainly a G5 Power Mac for the last two years and I have never had problems.

I just switched to a mac pro (cough:some issues there...) and I plan to use macs for music as long as they are made

Making music on a pc, which I still do was always frustrating since there is always something that does not work and I always spend more time fixing, installing , fine tuning, then acctually making music...given that I don't make any music on a pc any more but just edit and mix pc projects.

I always hated updating and upgrading on a pc, thats why i still have my two old pc racks running cakewalk and sonar in their original form, I think i added only memory.
Most of the studios I go in work with mac formats and that helps alot too.



if you can afford a mac go with something that has plenty of ram if you like running alot of plug ins, effects, audio tracks...etc

My old G5 (2.0ghz 4 gigs) never complained at anything I threw at it and they are fun to operate.

I belive macs are the way to go ....

It depends on the quality of hardware on the PC side - all things bring equal, the Mac will always do better. Core Audio on the Mac has amazing latency considering the audio hardware is pretty tame. I have been using Logic since I got my Mac, along with Ableton Live and have experienced fewer audio drop outs, clicks and latency issues than I did on the PC.

This may sound like typical Apple fanboy raving, but quite honestly, OS X handles audio far, far better than Windows, unless you're used to ASIO 2 with dedicated professional audio hardware and a PC configured entirely for audio recording.

I had the Reason 3 demo running under Rosetta on an intel Mac and had less latency than on the PC on an AMD64.

One quick thing: I understand that Vista improves audio playback and audio processing quite significantly, so the gap may close a little now.

Yes, Ive heard that vista may make music production a little better for PCs. As for the upgrading and finetuning...thats one reason I love PCs. I am a HUGE tech-head/computer nerd, and its all part of the fun for me. I love macs too, in part because of Logic Pro...which brings me to another crucial question, which DAW do you guys prefer and why? Logic, Pro Tools, Live, Other?

chad8589 said:

Yes, Ive heard that vista may make music production a little better for PCs. As for the upgrading and finetuning...thats one reason I love PCs. I am a HUGE tech-head/computer nerd, and its all part of the fun for me. I love macs too, in part because of Logic Pro...which brings me to another crucial question, which DAW do you guys prefer and why? Logic, Pro Tools, Live, Other?

Click to expand...

Well I'm using Logic with Live, so that has to be my answer. I used to love Cubase, I even had it on the Atari ST (now that's going back a while), but it just became so bloated, you felt more like a space shuttle engineer than a musician. Cubase SX 2 upped the feature set, but I have always felt Cubase was slightly mean with plugins and features, dollar for dollar, against Logic or Cakewalk.

I only really use Live for mixing pre-made samples in real time but it has a lot more to offer than that, so I only probably use 10% of what it can do. I'm only just getting used to Logic after years of using the Cubase workflow - it takes years to master these programs now.