Getting started in production...

[~BetaMax999]

I intend on buying a copy of Reaosn, a MIDI controller keyboard, and most importantly a PC. I need PC recommendations. The only thing I plan on using it for is internet, listening to music, word processing, and most importantly, production, therefore I don't need a terribly beastly machine or anything. I want something relatively inexpensive but still very powerful.

Right now I'm actually looking at buying an eMac. They seem very powerful relative to cost. Other people tell me to stay away from Mac. I was always under the impression that Macs were one's best bet for things like graphic design, audio, etc. So what do you people recommend? What kind of specs? Mac or PC? Thanks.

[~delobbo]

If you have a completely blank slate, i.e. you are open to getting a Mac or a PC, I say get a Mac. Yes it is the industry standard for graphics, audio, and publishing. If you have been using PC's all your life and don't want to change, then you can go the PC route and be OK.

[~pop]

PC is more bang for the buck for the CPU POWER...
My friend (MAC) only can run 7 absynth tracks while i can run 14.
My pc is about 400 dollars cheaper.

[~skylla]

just wanted to add that if you're seriously considering getting into production then you DO need a beast of a machine.

we (my band) are using a 1.8 GHz pentium pc and still on occation have to bounce together bass or drum tracks to be able to run an entire song smoothly.

note: we run all individual tracks as 24bit, 48Hz wavs and a song ususally consists of about 20 individual tracks.

[NJOberheim]

What would happen if you ran every track at 24 bit, 96hz, i wonder? Im about to get into PC production too and that's what I was planning to do. My machine is 2.4 GHZ Pentium.

[~Quixote Chapter]

If you have the money, buy a Mac. My Mac(OS X) is far more stable then my PC, which gives me more time to create. I'm more focused on songwriting, so I don't need over a trillion tracks or plug-ins running at the same time. If you need to run 56 different reverb plug-ins at once then get a PC, but I think the slight performence difference is worth it to get a well designed and engineered computer. My iBook + mBox combination serves me well.

*just an opinion*

-Kevin

[~skylla]

Originally posted by NJOberheim
What would happen if you ran every track at 24 bit, 96hz, i wonder? Im about to get into PC production too and that's what I was planning to do. My machine is 2.4 GHZ Pentium.

well, at least with a machine like that you simply see if you can run the desired ammount of tracks... and if you can't you either settle for 48 MHz or wait until the performance of the newest pc rises :)

oh, and of course it all depends on the ammount of plug-ins you need to use for effects. we generally use 2-3 per individual track and 4-6 on the master out. if you use less than that you'd definately be able to run everything on 48 Hz (which you probably will anywayz... we almost get by with 1.8Mhz) and i wouldn't be surprised if 96Hz would run smoothly as well.


Originally posted by Quixote Chapter
If you have the money, buy a Mac. My Mac(OS X) is far more stable then my PC, which gives me more time to create.

are you sure that this is still true? apart from when we run out of processor power, our setup runs in a very stable way. can't remember the last time it simply just crashed. (we use logic btw).

[~delobbo]

Definitely agree with Pop regarding "bang for the buck" factor concerning PC's. Another very important thing to keep in mind is hard drive speed/access time, arguably more important than processor speed. For PC's, a great solution on the EIDE side (i.e. not SCSI) are Western Digital's "Special Edition" hard drives with 8MB cache. These are blazingly fast and I think they go up to 200GB in size now. I myself run a 120GB SE and a 180GB SE, ideally I hope to soon be running a dedicated music machine with a dual 200GB RAID configuration. Right now I use my music machine also for some crazy gaming, lol. It's a P4-2.26 with 512MB RAMBUS memory (I think memory access speed is very important also).

I know Macs are the industry standard but I just can't use em.

-d

[~skylla]

yeah... the harddisc setup is definately important. we generally have very good experiences with ibm harddrives. and be sure to use a dedicated harddrive for music on a dedicated controller.

and another thing... if you go for the pc-solution then be absolutely sure you get a chip-set from intel. i know a guy who tried to use a via-chipset with a 1.8 GHz pentium processor and a delta 10i10o soundcard and he got into trouble at 6-7 tracks where the sound became sorta chopped.

[~Quixote Chapter]

Originally posted by skylla


are you sure that this is still true? apart from when we run out of processor power, our setup runs in a very stable way. can't remember the last time it simply just crashed. (we use logic btw).

In my expirience the latest versions of OS X (10.2.3 and above) are more stable then Mac OS 9.2 and XP. OS X is a memory hogging monster however, so get as much ram as possible if you choose to take the Mac path. I have my iBook maxed out with 640mb of ram. I also suggest a dedicated audio hard drive (I'm using a firewire 120gig 7200rpm drive.) We use ProTools LE (24bit 44.1khz), which I absolutly love. It's so intuitive, and even the low end Protools hardware sounds great.

-Kevin

[~pop]

One is not better than another for a personal use.
How it is configured determine the stability.
I didn't had a single crash for over two years.
I am only running Windows 2000 PRO with service pack3.
Don't start another Mac vs. Pc thread.
It is an idiotic and I can pull some benchmark numbers for CPU threads.
Key is to buy whatever you are comfortable with.
If you are used to boxers, wear boxers.
Don't wear a tong, because someone told you it is cool.

[~skylla]

Originally posted by pop
If you are used to boxers, wear boxers.
Don't wear a tong, because someone told you it is cool.

sounds like you've had a bad experience :laugh:

[~darklink]

Whatever you do however, don't run windows ME *curses his studio*

[~pacperson]

if you have zero experience with either pc or mac, then go mac !
(yeah, i love macs, and loathe pcs) ;)

Seriously though, spend an hour testing each one, and you'll easily make up your own mind. I find macs more aesthetically pleasing to use.

Macs are found in the vast majority of all pro music studios. I dont know about any statistics, but I'd safely say %90 of all pro music productions are done with mac. Same goes for art & design, but that's a different topic.

Sure, you'll get a greater bang for the buck, as far as how many plug ins you can run, on a pc. If it's important to run 567 compressors on a mix, then get a pc. Keep in mind though, that this won't make for a good mix. On the contrary, it'll probably end up sounding like crap. Quality is more important than quantity.

Which programs are you gonna use ?

Logic ? get mac, they stopped making it for pc
Protools ? get mac, better plugins for mac, thats not available for pc
cubase ? reason ? work on both systems

If you're gonna setup a gigasampler workstation, i could see getting a pc.

This is not an attempt at a pc vs mac debate either, but like i said earlier just test out both systems, and get the one you find most pleasing to use.

Think Different !

:)

My 2 cents from a biased mac user

One last thing, the person who mentioned the western digital 8 meg cache drives being pc only:

They work on both systems. Eide drives work on both macs and pc.

I actually have a few WD drives in some of my macs.

[~system22]

i have found that while reason maybe easy to use and is easy to get into...every song you will ever do will sound like it comes from reason. it does not have the capability to do professional grade engineering techniques that logic and cubase sx provide. it may sound decent but its never going to sound big. based on this i strongly suggest if you insist on using it, use it merely as a scratch pad before popping over into a pro sequencer. as for sequencers go - get logic 6 if you are going mac or cubase sx if you are going pc. i have used both systems for different jobs and don't really notice much of a difference other than cubase seems to run better on a pc and logic 6 is only available for mac.

run at the very least 7200 rpm hd's @ ATA 133+ or SCSI. firewire drives seem to work pretty well with bandwidth as do USB 2.0 drives, although i personally would still prefer firewire.

you will get much better performance if you have a physically seperate hd than the one your OS is running on. likewise its good to have another one as a sample drive to push things like Kontakt or Atmoshpere etc...

doing things at 24 bit is great but 96 khz is only gonna eat up unnecessary bandwidth unless you are mixing 5.1, 7.1 DTS DVD stuff.

a gig of DDR memory increases performance pretty dramatically, as does a decent graphics card. i also recommend XP (with visuals turned off) for PC and OS X for mac (if you get the plugin fixes etc...)

apogee ADC/DAC's rock. period.
just my .02

cody - system22

[~delobbo]

I agree with you about Reason. Its kind of sad actually. The first time I made a somewhat decent sounding (imo) segment in Reason, I played it for someone online, and they recognized it as being created from Reason. I think the main problem here is the Reason soundbanks. Think of how many people have Reason. They are using the same sounds because there are a certain amount of drum sounds that are very good, and those are the ones people use. ok that was a terrible sentence... so I too find myself going back to my hardware. Plus I don't think there is any substitute for the combination of hardware synth sound plus the hardware knobs....... you just can't tweak the sound effectively and efficiently with software. Sure you can get a MIDI controller, but then you have latency to worry about. Hardware = no latency, no issues, great sound.

I gotta say this though, people have made some great stuff with Reason, probably using external samples and loops, and just modifying the hell out of the presets in the soundbank...

-d

also I must add I've been doing a lot of work "on the road" lately - and for that, programs like Reason are invaluable. And I do use it more as a "scratchpad" to work from. It does have a ton of sounds to choose from and I do think there are many possibilities.