Moving to Mac!!

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dinesh

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 28, 2006
Messages
195
Location
India
Hi All,

I am sick of my PCs and decided to move to Mac.

I am using Nuendo 3, Uad-1 and Rme Fireface 800 with my PC. But now I

want to move to Mac.

What you guys suggets to do?

Which Mac is a good choice (Macpro 8 core or iMac)?

Is there a good to go with PT Le & Mac pro 8 core?

or it is better to go for HD-1 System?

or Logic Studio is also a better option? As with this I can use my Fireface 800 too.

Best Regards
Dinesh
 
Hi Dinesh,

just exchanged my Pro Tools Mix3 against an iMac with a Fireface 800 & 2 x Rosetta 800 using Logic Pro. I love it.
No need for a HD1 System
added a mBox mini to use beat detective and to open my old PT sessions.

but of course it depends what you want to do with your system ...
 
Keep the fireface 800, I'm running that with a Macbook (non pro), and am totally happy.

Logic Studio at the new price is a total steal. I'd hit that :grin:

my $.02
 
[quote author="dinesh"]Hi All,

I am sick of my PCs and decided to move to Mac.
[/quote]

Before you order check the buyers guide at macrumors....

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

There might be new powermac models soon.
 
I have been using Nuendo on Mac's since Nuendo 1. I have always had tower machines, G4's and G5's because I wanted PCI slots. About 6 weeks ago I went to a 24" iMac, because I now use an Apogee Ensemble firewire interface.

I couldn't be happier with the iMac, great value for money, powerful, fantastic integration, works perfectly with Nuendo 4. Time Machine, virus free web browsing, it is a great system, silent, with a beautiful display to boot.

If you go for a tower, 8 core IMHO is a waste unless you are a graphics/video guy, you would be spending a lot of money for not much return, particularly with audio apps.

Unless you have a studio and clients expect Protools HD, then why bother with it? If you are a songwriter or composer Cubase, Nuendo, Logic and Reaper are much better compositional tools than ProTools. Where ProTools shines is as a simple, stable, well structured recorder/editor, and it does this extremely well. ProTools is an engineers tool, Cubase and Logic are compositional tools as well as recorder/editors.

PT started out life as a 4 track digital recording system with a lot of proprietry hardware, and slowly added things like MIDI when the demand for it from customers grew too loud. Logic and Cubase were all about composition, MIDI was always central for them, Cubase has had scoring for over 12 years, and virtual instrument integration well before PT. Not putting PT down, it is unsurpassed for many hardcore tasks, and it is the most stable DAW I have come across.

PT LE is too limited by it's hardware and track count, but whichever way you go I would suggest getting a simple PT LE rig as well so that you can open any PT sessions that may come in. Just get the cheapest interface you can find with optical I/O to use as a dongle and as a link to whatever interface you usually use.

Just my 2 bob's worth, it's always a bit confusing when there are so many options out there, and everyone has an opinion... :)
 
I've been using Macs since the end of 1995, that was a Quadra 700 - as seen
on "Jurassic Park" !!
Several systems later .....

Now use an Intel Quad core 2.66 Mac Pro tower and a Macbook dual 2 gig.
It's for writing/recording and production and my Interface is an RME Fireface 800.
It's a superb system and "mostly" stable, though I don't think that I'm getting a whole lot
more in real terms than my previous G5 dual 2 gig machine !
Teamed up with Logic Pro and a couple of UAD cards, it's a fantastic tool.

Have recently used an 8 core system and it was the most sluggish and "bug ridden" pile
of poo that I've ever used ! , with Pro 8 and Leopard ...... NOT good !
( Volker, any ideas on that one ?? )

Chose the system carefully and you'l be fine, don't overload it with memory either, 3 or 4 gig
is plenty and will work happily if it's Kingston/Crucial .

MM.
 
If you are feeling fine with Nuendo and the UAD-1 plugs and it is just the operating system giving you headaches go get a MacPro, usually the middle spec'd models offer the most bang for the buck. If you are on a budget you might even look for a used model, as long as it still has Apple Care.
 
Reaper is so good and effortless. Beats PT by a mile.

In my experience PT is stable and good only if the hardware is on steroids, and all the limitations irritated my to no end.

Reaper does everything PT does (well, not surround editing yet) and uses much less resources.

There was this girl living here (in our artist residency) and had just bought some kind of LE system and after a >2 minute startup time it just couldn't add any tracks because of to little memory.
I pointed here to reaper and it was up and running without problems in a few seconds. I rest my case.

I don't want to use a mac though personally though because I can't live without my free Kjaerhus plugins..
 
If you decide to stick with Nuendo, be aware that version 3 is a PPC application. Apple switched to Intel platforms about three years ago. Nuendo 3 will run on new Macs, but performance will suffer considerably. Nuendo 4 is Universal so it will run natively on Intel Macs. Consider upgrading.

I'm using Cubase 4 on my MBP (Feb. 2008 revision) with a Fireface 800. I haven't done any serious recording yet, but it seems to run pretty well.
 
Hi All,

Thanks for your valuable Suggestions. I have no problem with Nuendo or Fireface 800. I am looking for a more stable & powerfull Computer. I heard that Mac is more stable, although I have no experince with Mac.

Coz Uad is a PCI Card & iMac has no PCI slot, so thats why I thought of Mac pro 8 core. But i can go for TC Powercore X8 with iMac. Is it possible to use Powercore with Logic or Pro Tools?

Logic & Pro tools I just want b'coz, I am running a commercial studio & I need to attract customers. I heard that protools has some great Plugins?

What you suggest?

Regards
Dinesh
 
The newer Intel Macs have PCIe slots, so the later UAD cards and the "Just
released" UAD-2 cards will fit - check the specs at uaudio.com the new
cards are very much more powerful.

A "mid spec" Mac pro tower should be fantastic, stable ? yes pretty much
but you will still get the odd "crash" .... it's 90% a PC machine now anyway !!

PT is a great platform, superb for recording in the traditional style - perfect punch
ins and no " g g g gap" as you go into record !
The other systems mentioned are better for song writing and programming though.

As far as plugins go, UAD are superb and there's also companies like URS / Sound Toys
and Sonalksis etc etc.

Marty.
 
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com

that is a most interesting site. If it is accurate. the big problem with mac is the buyers remorse only when you learn what they release 2 weeks after you buy. all I have to say is iPhone. with protools the pci card switch-e-rooni hit my client a few years ago. buy the old one and have hundreds of plugins. buy the new one and have no plugins untill they convert them over. my client went new and couldnt get anything but bombfactory stuff for a few months. now its all new plugs, so watch the cycle like that site says.
 
Stability?

It all depends on how you set the machines up.

I've never had a BSOD with my windows machine since windows 98. I installed win2k when it was new and ran the SAME installation until 4 months ago when I upgraded to XP because programs simply didn't support 2K anymore. I've not had a single problem with XP either. I simply upgraded hardware/drivers and kept the same installation. Neat eh?

Once I resoldered the graphics processor BGA in the mac, it works fine too save for the quirky nature of OSX, but there isn't any issues with stability that I can tell.

We've all heard of the SCARY windows BSOD, well mac has the SAME thing, it's just called a Kernel Panic.. The screen is just not blue.. :)

No machine can be stable forever unless you really work at keeping them running properly.

I know of at least 3 people who have hosed their windows boxes by playing around with files and things they shouldn't have but I also know 2 people who had total system failures in their Macs. One of those lost 3 months worth of work(photo editor) when the crash killed both the internal drive AND the backup drive at the same time. Yup it died when she was backing up in case of a crash! talk about the luck. Apple told her it was because she wasn't using an Apple backup drive (time machine) and refused to warranty the laptop. Hmm macs never crash.. right?

It's all going to come down to if you want to build your own machine and set it up or just buy it and then how much you want to do with it.
 
[quote author="Svart"]Stability?


I know of at least 3 people who have hosed their windows boxes by playing around with files and things they shouldn't have but I also know 2 people who had total system failures in their Macs. One of those lost 3 months worth of work(photo editor) when the crash killed both the internal drive AND the backup drive at the same time. Yup it died when she was backing up in case of a crash! talk about the luck. Apple told her it was because she wasn't using an Apple backup drive (time machine) and refused to warranty the laptop. Hmm macs never crash.. right?

It's all going to come down to if you want to build your own machine and set it up or just buy it and then how much you want to do with it.[/quote]

All things being equal, and i'm not looking to rag on any PC, but you can't be a MAC user who uses a current or recent mac product.
I have 3 macs all on 24/7 and i have a true crash about once a year.
I get third party apps that quit every now and then, but that doesn't cause a crash, or even require a restart. i have system utilities, but i don't methodically maintain any of them. I would mention one thing though,
it makes a BIG difference to use either REAL apple ram, or apple qualified ram. Cheap ram often causes problems in macs.

There's also no way i believe that apple wouldn't honor a warranty as you
describe. If the machine was actually under warranty, all components covered by the warranty would be covered, regardless of what the backup device was.
They won't cover third party drives installed in a computer, but you can only put one real apple drive in a mac laptop anyways.

I used to work for a guy who did nothing but configure protools systems in macs. We'd go through 50 mac towers a year and the ONLY thing that ever went bad on them, and it was JUST ONE comp, was a bad CD burner, which apple replaced immediately(it's a user replaceable part)
Now, we did get that we were pretty fortunate, no electronic product is infallible.

I also worked at place where we did apple repairs and even though they shouldn't have, they covered certain under warranty obvious DROPS, and obvious liquid SPILLS into the keyboard/guts of a laptop, so your story of warranty DENIAL because it wasn't a "time machine" backup is laughable.
Methinks there is (much)more to that story if they really didn't fix an "under warranty" computer.
The only thing that would literally take out 2 drives at once would be a bad powersupply, or power spike, Which is easily identifiable and as such, if the powerbook itself was under actually warranty, all components IN the powerbook would be covered.
Hell, if it was just the powerbook/macbook hard drive, they could have just gotten them to send a new one, as again, it's a USER REPLACEABLE part.
(on most powerbooks/macbooks)
They literally send a new one out, all but NO QUESTIONS ASKED,
you just need to send the old one back

If your friend was looking for data recovery, or something like that, they won't do that under any circumstances, for anyone. Never have, never will.


Again, i'm not looking to fuel the Mac/PC debate, but lets get the facts right.
 
Again, i'm not looking to fuel the Mac/PC debate, but lets get the facts right......so your story of warranty DENIAL because it wasn't a "time machine" backup is laughable.


Just the messenger buddy. Just the messenger. I do, however, totally believe the account. this isn't the type of person who would lie, she's totally mac and even then I had to extract the story from her because she knows I would tell her that I "told her so"(for buying the mac in the first place).

She's still an avid mac fangirl and bought another mac to replace the one that fried. I believe her when she said that they blamed it on the 3rd party Firewire drive causing the failure. She sent it in for repair and they sent her back a quote saying that they would have to replace everything but the screen and case. I doubt that it was really that bad but this was the period of time when the new macbooks were coming out. I'm sure it was just a *push* in the direction of buying a new one instead of fixing an old one for the same price. She opted to get a new one due to needing to get back to work and redoing all of that lost data.

I can buy that it's totally different if you are a leasing/business account and not a personal user. I've been there many times with many companies. Call up looking for help as an individual and you can't get the time of day. Call up as a company and they roll out the red carpet.

Anyway, there are still a lot of issues with Apple. They still haven't owned up to the Ibook G4 failures from years ago that still cost people money when they send them in for repairs. People send in their G4 Ibooks because they blackscreen randomly and fail to boot. There is two problems here, an SMPS coming unsoldered and the GPU coming unsoldered. It's very well documented that Apple was/is replacing these for 300$ a piece and the motherboards are dying within 1 year with the same symptoms.

I opted to attempt BGA reflow with a heatgun, copper tape and lots of rosin. It worked like a charm for 0$.


Anyway, data recovery admits guilt. Apple will never ever ever admit anything that can lead to class action anything. Just look at the Iphone fiasco..
 
Svart said:
Again, i'm not looking to fuel the Mac/PC debate, but lets get the facts right......so your story of warranty DENIAL because it wasn't a "time machine" backup is laughable.


Wow, really nice snipping to skew a message.
Let me guess, you work part time for the McCain campaign as well?

"no really, she commanded the ALASKA NATIONAL GUARD.........."
that one of yours??


Really tho man, it was always apple's call,not ours, and when i worked for the protools guy, we bought from a reseller, and or used user supplied computers,
and outside of the the repair job, it's always been dealing with apple consumer repairs. They were always easy to deal with.
Now, if you know what you are doing, it always helps. And if you can change
a drive yourself, they may be a bit more willing to bend, as you do all the work.
For example, if you tell Apple on the phone, that you dropped your firewire drive in the toilet while it was plugged into a wall outlet, WHILE you had it connected to your macbook backing up files, and there's now a 2 inch hole where the firewire cable melted your powerbook,
yeah, they might back off THAT one........

I have a Mac bias, but i have story after story of them fixing stuff that was borderline(at best) or down right generous. And you and your PC bias have essentially hearsay, that you are regurgitating.
Yeah, that's fair.

About 2 months ago, a friends daughter spilled Coke into her macbook.
COKE, sweet, syrupy, and impossible to remove or hide, and apple REPLACED the Macbook.(granted it was a refurb they gave her......)

Also, back in the day, Apple would fix the powerbooks i fucked up trying
to overclock or overbuss, while under warranty (and it got pretty obvious)
I had around 8 successes and 3 duds, and apple repaired all the duds.
And i wasn't working at the repair place at the time.

Just curious, Dell or Gateway ever been that good in your experience?

I can't at all make the same connection you propose that "data recovery is an admission of guilt"
There isn't a computer company out there that offers that for any normal warranty, For any reason, implied guilt or not, it's just that simple.
Perhaps if one buys some sort of Platinum protection, but i don't get or buy the correlation.

Ultimately, you've got some ammo, and you sound pretty proud of yourself,
Cool, good for you. They haven't made G4 powerbooks for about 3 or 4 years now, so you might want to get current.
I know they HAVE had problems, and it sucked for some,
but being on the end of that chain at a point, the stuff people do to computers that cost $1000+++ would absolutely amaze you.
Put it this way, even if they made a decent product with a weak link,
the way lots of people treat their computers, those that abuse them will break that weak link, those that take care of them will not have the same problems.
Yes that's oversimplifying and sometimes indeed, shankers are just shankers, i get it, but it happens in every type of electronic product at some point.

I also own an iphone, and haven't (again) had a problem.
i'm not a huge "surf the net on a tiny little screen" kinda guy, so the 3G issues some have wouldn't bother me, even if i had them.

I've owned, or i've bought/serviced for family or friends, pretty much every model Mac since the IIci(and most of the clones too) and they have all been extremely solid, year after year after year. Not perfect, but solid.
Hard drives and cd/dvd drives(that are made FOR Apple, not BY Apple, by the same people who make the drives for PC manufacturers)
go the most, but the basic structures have gone on and on for me.

Now, Os6 was ok, OS7 was great and fast, Os8 was mediocre, and Os8.6 was the bane of my existence for a few months.
Os9 i was a longtime fan of.
X was a tough transition, but the past few years in general, have been fan-fucking-tastic. Protools and audio, and plug compatibility is what it is.
No different from the 2k to xp to vista crap. It happens, no one forces
us to ride the bleeding edge. If one has a system that works, it's one's own fault if they have to have the newest/fastest, then complain when the software doesn't catch up fast enough. I know plenty of people still using a Mix system on Os9 who are happy as clams......

Personally, i partition my drives, always have. The protools drive stays at a functional build at all times, if i make the leap to a new system it goes on another partition and i test it out first, always having the stable system with it's current plugs available. I can boot between them in about 30 seconds.

So, by all means, share your positive PC experiences if you want, and or share the Mac stories you know FOR SURE, are fact, but don't be "that guy"
who spews about something he knows, from lack of actual experience, nothing or very little about.

k?
 
Gwaggin. remember when the Quadra's etc had "made in Canada" on them?
.... solid as hell in those days :)

Just a quickie, I recently had to dig out my old G4 933 tower to get a few
project files bounced and saved for someone, had not used it for at least
3 years.
It all came up "just as it was" on OS-9.2 and Logic 6 - fantastic, not a single
hicup at all.
That machine by the way had it's motherboard "blow" within 2 weeks of my
standard 1 year warranty running out and an engineer came around to swop
it out at the studio !!!
It helped that I knew the head of 'Apple tech' here at the time, but that only
made the "visit" possible more quickly, they would have replaced it anyway.

If you can get to speak to someone and know what you're doing, then the help
seems to increase vastly, I've taken 8600's and 9600's and swopped the guts around
and fitted G3 upgrades etc etc, just recently gave my 8600 G3/500 to someone
and that STILL WORKS !! ( 11 years old )

Marty.
 
You sure do have a chip on that shoulder Gwaggin390.

Someone asked for experiences and I gave mine, then was actually compelled to defend myself from another forum member who denounced that experience as FALSE because you didn't have the exact same experiences.

I don't like being called a liar just because you don't want to believe me.
 

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