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Trying to make a choice - Mac or PC for Studio Production?


Tomy
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so basically i need windows as most of my production because of the duo is done on windows i have a mac for everything else but it's slowly replacing my PC.

so i choice is this. buy a new PC purely for studio computer, which bang for buck is good can get something high powered for a bit less.

OR should a get another mac pro / mac book pro and run windows off it. The main advantage being i can transfer everything over pretty easily.

any one got any advice. windows takes up a shit load of space... just not sure its worth it on the mac. will cost me heaps.

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I dual boot my mac pro desktop into windows it is pretty sweet like that. However space isn't an issue as I have 4 hdd's in it being the desktop. Dual booting a laptop is a different story though.

If your current macbook pro is good for everything else & you are just buying a new computer for production, may as well get a windows computer.

Are you looking at getting a desktop or laptop for the production computer?

If desktop go custom build PC (i could even build you one and post it to you if you wanted/needed).

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I built Cupe's PC earlier this year, and from memory it was 1300ish + postage.

Specs:

Cooling - Corsair H60

PSU: Thermaltake TR2 Bronze 700W

HDD: 2 * 2TB Seagate Barracuda (Running in Raid 1 for auto redundancy) - all data is saved to two hdd's at once so if 1 fails your pc keeps working, + you can replace the faulty one with no downtime, etc.

SSD: Intel 330 Series 120GB SSD

Graphics: Gigabyte Geforce GT 640 OC 2GB (runs up to 4 screens)

OS: Windows 8 64 bit

RAM: Kingston Hyper-X 2x8GB 1333 (16GB total)

CPU: Intel Core i5 3570

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H77-D3H-MVP

Optical: Samsung Sata DVD Drive

Chassis: NZXT Phantom 410 with built in fan controller

5 fans (1 front, 2 top, 1 rear (water cooling fan) + psu fan)

Windows Experience Index Rating: 6.9

Startup time = 17 seconds (roughly)

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haha it does look the goods and the price is certainly in the right area. just that thought of re-installing / re-downloading everything makes me want to cry.

I experienced this and let me say it's sooooo annoying.

I'd say go Mac simply because I've never had any problems with them.

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my current windows is XP though...... would that work moving across to 7 or 8 lol.

not sure if i would....... so many cracked things i don't need on there .

also if i was using windows on mac you can switch between them without having to re-boot these days yeh? but you still can't cross over programs so it's like have 2 computers. So for ableton i'd have to license 2 computers

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Yer you can't migrate apps from xp to 7/8

You can run both @ once on a mac - have a windows 7 session running inside a window - however performance is nowhere near as good as fully rebooting into the windows install, and won't be very suitable for ableton use

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  • 4 weeks later...

hmmmmm thoughts on imac ? quad core..... sounds alright. only thing i'm worried about is the firewire connection or "thunderbolt" as they call it. i mean it sounds like the business. but new technologies always stuff up

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Firewire and thunderbolt are two separate things.

Firewire has been around for as long as I can remember.

Thunderbolt is fairly new in its field (been around a few years). Used for a bunch of external devices that are ridiculously expensive and nobody has purchased (a lot of the devices aren't even available here yet). However it is stable. Also, you don't even have to use it

:thumright:

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but you can get an adaptor from thunder bolt to firewire 800 right? otherwise its useless.

my new setup involves a high end firewire audio interface so the fire wire thing is rather important. so hard to do this shit on a budget.

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Another option:

-Buy a used 8 core mac pro (2008 or newer). Then upgrade the hdd's & ram.

This is what i did about a year ago.

the 8 core 2008 mac pro itself cost me about 800 from memory (i did hunt around a little bit). Picked that up for under 1k.

since then i've upgraded

-upped to 10GB RAM

-1 SSD + 2 x 2TB HDD's

-HD 7950 graphics card (don't have to do this if you don't want to run more than 2 screens or game)

You do run the risk of no warranty though. However it worked out more powerful than a new mac pro for half the cost

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xeon's are the processors they put in servers, so they are high grade, and were far more powerful than what most people required at the time in a desktop.

They then did a minor bump in 2010, but otherwise it's still relatively similar stuff with minor spec bumps.

Only concern is because it's getting older, they technically don't have to support the model after this year.

New mac pro's should be coming out later this year, and most people buying them will be upgrading from 2008/2010 mac pros, so it may be worth waiting.

Depends how long you can hold out?

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yeah true. i could probably hold out for a while if i put windows on the mac book pro for now. the PC is starting to freak out a bit every start up. lol. might clean it up a bit too should help.

shame that i don't trust the firewire stuff through the imac that would probably hold up well enough for a year or two

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just found this

All of Focusrite's FireWire interfaces are fully compatible with Thunderbolt using simple FireWire to Thunderbolt adapter. Focusrite fully supports the use of Thunderbolt with our FireWire interfaces. For more details visit the answerbase.

as part of my studio re-build i was wanting to get the focusrite saffire pro 40 at some stage. so this is another little push towards the imac. Still biting my time until there is more news about the mac pro.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/06/new-mac-pro-2013-unveil-expected-at-wwdc/

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