Help with deciding next computer for production/mixing? Mac or PC?

[Dark Passenger]

PC it is, apparently a G5 wont even support the latest versions of Traktor, ableton etc. Makes sense!
I'l build the PC and do some optimization, should do exactly what I need it to in the end

[Dark Passenger]

Honestly though, I had no idea Mac's were so well optimized, I thought it was all heresay!

[deevey]

Honestly though, I had no idea Mac's were so well optimized, I thought it was all heresay!

I'l build the PC, luckily enough I'm an IT technician and I can optimize the s**t out of it to no end

So am I and its one of the main reasons I switched , Optimizing as a job is one thing, spending time optimizing when I should be doing something creative and constructive is another.

I've found that no matter how fast your PC is, you'll always want a little "more" and end up tinkering around for "just" for another 20 hours only to end up with one millisecond less latency in traktor.

The above is doubley true if you know anything about computers in the first place

Mac is definitely a route I will go down when I can afford, but in the mean time it's PC for me due to a shoestring budget and rent to pay haha. Hopefully windows will handle 6 midi controllers with a little tweaking

A 2011/12 Mac Mini I5 / 8 or 16gb ram / 500 gb hdd will set you back under $400 on ebay ready to rock n' roll out of the box - really not that much more than decent spec case/hdd/ram/motherboard/processor these days.

But you might have spare parts lying around that will save you enough $ to make a big difference.

Don't forget, you'll need to use Intel Processors on your DIY PC for Audio Purposes - AMD doesn't play nice with alot of audio applications.

[elmooso]

Get an Intel based PC with two hard drives, install windows on one hard drive and Niresh Mavericks on the other.

Easy to install and about half the price of an equivalent mac desktop.

These days you could even save more money and go AMD. I just finished building an AMD based Hackintosh for a friend of mine to produce music on. Thing works great and only cost about $500.

[dj wo k]

(on mac you have parallèle desktop.app for working with all os you need .. )

[tilldrop]

Wow I'm thinking about upgrading my 2014 Xeon to something better. How can you work with an celeron dual core or core2quad? What do you usually run on it? Or do you just use it for home-recording a singer and a guitar? I mean how would it handly any new-ish synth with some unison?

[Dark Passenger]

So am I and its one of the main reasons I switched , Optimizing as a job is one thing, spending time optimizing when I should be doing something creative and constructive is another.

I've found that no matter how fast your PC is, you'll always want a little "more" and end up tinkering around for "just" for another 20 hours only to end up with one millisecond less latency in traktor.

The above is doubley true if you know anything about computers in the first place



A 2011/12 Mac Mini I5 / 8 or 16gb ram / 500 gb hdd will set you back under $400 on ebay ready to rock n' roll out of the box - really not that much more than decent spec case/hdd/ram/motherboard/processor these days.

But you might have spare parts lying around that will save you enough $ to make a big difference.

Don't forget, you'll need to use Intel Processors on your DIY PC for Audio Purposes - AMD doesn't play nice with alot of audio applications.

Yup, I'm the kind of guy who "just spend five minutes speeding this up" only to be sat there 13 hours later still tinkering! My PC is going to be incredibly cheap thanks to having a system already going to spare, it will support all the upgrades I'm planning on and really won't cost much at all, my budget is teeny weeny at the moment as I keep blowing it on controllers & speakers

You're very, very right about needing intel, I was using an AMD laptop before I started with Traktor, it was fine for production, but I moved onto traktor and It just would not handle my Sound card, I spent hours fiddling with sample rates and re-intalling Asio4all etc. I stripped the entire operating system down to absolute bare essentials only to find out I needed an intel system so in the end I started using an intel laptop with less power and it did the job better, the things you learn ey! Great advice, most people wouldn't know until they bought an AMD system and realised the huge mistake they made!

[Dark Passenger]

Get an Intel based PC with two hard drives, install windows on one hard drive and Niresh Mavericks on the other.

Easy to install and about half the price of an equivalent mac desktop.

These days you could even save more money and go AMD. I just finished building an AMD based Hackintosh for a friend of mine to produce music on. Thing works great and only cost about $500.

Intel based with 2 harddrives is the route I'm going anyways Hackintosh is really that easy? I thought you had to build a very specific system and spend hours modding to get a working hackintosh build?
AMD is an absolute no go for me as it doesn't play well with my Numark soundcard, unusably so!

[Dark Passenger]

(on mac you have parallèle desktop.app for working with all os you need .. )

Hopefully I'l like the Mac OS so much that I don't need to use that I have been working with windows my entire adult life though, so it's going to really need to impress me for that to happen haha

[Dark Passenger]

Wow I'm thinking about upgrading my 2014 Xeon to something better. How can you work with an celeron dual core or core2quad? What do you usually run on it? Or do you just use it for home-recording a singer and a guitar? I mean how would it handly any new-ish synth with some unison?

I'm currently working with a celeron because I have no choice. I sold my i5 rig before I got into producing and I'm kicking myself now.
Honestly though, you don't need an awful lot of power if you can optimise Windows. This celeron dual core laptop handles Traktor very well, less than 10ms latency with my controllers and no audio dropouts. In terms of production it was doing great. It handles Massive, Nexus, FM8, Harmor etc with no issues. That is until I started building up my presets, it's having a few issues now but this is probably down to lack of RAM. A core 2 quad is with 6-8GB of RAM is a major increase on what I'm currently using & I'm confident that it's going to equate to complete stability and fit my needs perfectly, for a while atleast anyway.
But yeah it handles synths very well, I do full production on this thing.