Sound Engineering: PC or MAC?

Both work.

Pick the one that supports the software you will want to use and that you are most comfortable with. Mac was the standard because of a series of software that was mac-only, which isn't true nowadays where most software are compatible on both.

I would get a PC and build it up to be a beast for half the price of a mac.

Celestein_sl said:

Depends on budget. First off, computing power these days far outpaces the computational requirements of sound equipment. So you don't need a beefy PC either way until you get to the point where you're mixing or mastering hollywood films, and each composition has 500-1000 tracks. I do most my work on my macbook air, which handles up to around 150~ tracks in reaper or studio one just fine.

Mac is indeed the industry standard, this is apparent in the fact that a fair amount of software doesn't(or only just recently got) Windows release at all.

My personal recommendation, if you have a budget of say...$2000, instead of buying a mac, buy a "good enough" 500-800 pc and then buy things like a mixer, outboard gear, DAC, mics, solid headphones or monitors(as in speakers) or software with the remaining budget. You'll get far more bang for the buck. The computer is the least important part of the chain really(well, least important as long as it really is "good enough").

That said, if budget isn't really an issue, I say Mac all the way, all the tools are built "Mac First" and frankly it shows. Windows has caught up a lot, but if money isn't a concern I'd never recommend a sound engineer use Windows over Mac for any other reason than budget. Ultimately the other gear makes much more difference than the platforms though.

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In what world does a profesional sounding song not cap your computer (even if an i7 2600k with hyperthreading on)??? Just in terms of profesional sounding reverbs, you'll be using half your cpu's on that shit. I understand if you write minimal techno with 5 tracks that you wouldnt cap it...

Unless you do a lot of exterior processing with hardware, the cpu you get is very important...so is using a very fast HD and SSD setup to minimize loading times of uncompressed sounds. Having fast ram helps, having a lot of it isnt really a factor unless you plan to load MANY uncompressed sound files that are all 100's of mb to the point where you fill up...

Having a good sound card matters also, you should be aiming for a card that has the best Digital to Analog and Analog to Digital converters, or if you have a lot of hardware, a sound card that matches the amount of i/o you require.

Sound production very much requires a beastly computer if you plan on doing profesional sounding music. I know for a fact that aside from the video card in my rig, every single other piece is way more important in sound production than in gaming for example and I have an overclocked i7 2600k beast that I often come close to capping out on ressources when approaching final master stages. Hell, I've had a single synth without effects eat up 20% of a thread..

That all being said, it still depends on your level of production, what you plan on doing with it, etc...only you can answer these questions and assess your needs in that regard. I've seen studios use a Mac to do the sequencer bits mainly while a beast PC was doing the VST computation in the background..

Celestein_sl said:

In reality, most DAWs are not multi-thread optimized, so the difference between a dual-core i5 and a high-end i7 are pretty minimal for the large difference in prices(infact, for single or dual-threaded programs, a dual-core i5 will equal/beat the higher-end CPUs because with OC or just turbo-boost, you have higher clock performance per core due to less cooling over-head). $500-$800(assuming you build it youself) is going to get you a fast SSD, 16gb of ram, and an adequate CPU these days. "Beastly" is a matter of preference, the difference in performance between an $800 machine and a $2500 "beast" is going to be less than 20% in real-world usage.

If audio engineering is your prime source of income, then it can be very easy to justify that difference in cost, cause 20% less time can add up quickly when you're getting paid by the hour. But the OP sounds like he's just getting started, and at that level, things like outboard gear, sound cards, other equipment, gives you much more bang per $ at a low budget level. A beast computer is worthless if you don't have a good set of monitors and a good DAC.

I don't really disagree with anything you said, but I think you're over-stating how much power you really need. There's a certain threshold in terms of your career where getting those beast machines makes sense, but I don't think the OP is there yet.

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I'll agree with the last part since he hasn't stated what his use of it will be, if it's recreational or if he wants to do profesional sounding work. In which case, paying for a mac is probably overdoing it unless a specific software he wants to use isnt PC compatible or if he wants an "easier timer" settings thing sup...which is relative really..

If budget is an issue, i would definately scale it down to an i5 and get a faster SSD + better sound card first.

What software will you be using? You may not have a choice if its cubase. Mac mini's are great to start with as they are super freakin cheap, and relatively fast. We have yet to max out the machine, and we do many, many sessions. We spent the bulk of our money on an interface, which costs 2x what the mac mini did. I'm not going to lump in an entire studio's worth of gear into your daw budget. But you will need mics and various cables if you're starting from scratch.

Hyperthreading before OSX went 64-bit actually hurt performance as one of Avid's internal documents revealed. This was years ago though, and I think now it doesn't really hurt, but unless you want to use 4 or 6 plugin effects per track, an i5 will be super. We use one.

hyperthreading improves performance in most of the DAW's nowadays, but the improvement is not very notable, especialy for the price. Hence the part where I would recommend improving other parts of the chain before going from an i5 to i7. I would say invest in a good audio card first, a SSD drive 2nd and fast ram 3rd (you dont need 16 gb..I'd go as far as say 4 gb would be fine, 8 to be safe, unless you plan to work with very big uncompressed files..).

Bit of a correction to some info here:Desktopi5's are quad-cores, not dual-cores (i7's being hexa-cores).

Err, i7's are quad core as well but they have more cache and hyperthreading. There are no consumer grade intel cpus with 6 cores from what i know.

gogusrl_sl said:

Err, i7's are quad core as well but they have more cache and hyperthreading. There are no consumer grade intel cpus with 6 cores from what i know.

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Not according to the Intel's own product page, the Newegg webpage and the wiki, they say 6:

http://ark.intel.com/products/63697

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116492

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...22_.2832_nm.29

Ivy and Sandy desktop i7s are Hexacores. The new Haswells are only quadcores.

99% of the talks here about sandy/ivy/haswell i5/i7 are about the 2500(k)/3570(k)/4670(k) and 2700(k)/3770(k)/4770(k) and they're all quad cores. What you're looking at is the enthusiast platform on skt 2011, not 1155/1150.

Ah, guess they did change them all to 4s past Sandy.

Speaking of sound stuff and PC parts - does anyone know for sure if the GTX 760 will do Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA HD bitstreaming? The mobile version of the card says it does, but I can't seem to find if the desktop version will and there's dick all information on it.

If the mobile can I'd say its a sure thing the desktop version will. From experience with other cards sans-power saving the mobile is usually a subset of the desktop. That said, does earlier versions of the *60 series do Dolby True HD... etc? Most cards won't feature regress either.

Vinen_sl said:

If the mobile can I'd say its a sure thing the desktop version will. From experience with other cards sans-power saving the mobile is usually a subset of the desktop. That said, does earlier versions of the *60 series do Dolby True HD... etc? Most cards won't feature regress either.

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Yes and no to the *60 thing. According to this (click on the graphics card thing on the right side):http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-visi...uirements.html

The 460 and 560 do (I have a 560 specifically for this), but the 660 does not. Only the ones with the little 5 mark can do it and they do not have the 700 series on that list and I don't know if the info for the 600 series is accurate. Nvidia is pretty shitty about this stuff.

Sean_sl said:

Yes and no to the *60 thing. According to this (click on the graphics card thing on the right side):http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-visi...uirements.html

The 460 and 560 do (I have a 560 specifically for this), but the 660 does not. Only the ones with the little 5 mark can do it and they do not have the 700 series on that list and I don't know if the info for the 600 series is accurate. Nvidia is pretty shitty about this stuff.

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Get one at a store that has a return policy and see if it meets your needs. Or you can do what the last generation did and call or email the company and ask.