If I was going to get a PC laptop I would choose one of the top Vaio’s range with i7CPU, 8gigs of RAM and 7200rpm hard drive OR an audio specialist PC, which seems to be quite hard as the 3XS laptops are not available right now. If I was going for a Macbook, I would get the one with the 2.2 I7 CPU, 7200rpm hard drive etc etc.
The thing is:
I am WILLING to pay the high price of the Macbook Pro because I know they have great built quality that no PC laptop has right now. And I know they offer a stable OS. However the point of my topic is that I DON’T want to spend all that money just to find out that a Macbook Pro performs WORSE than a same spec’d PC laptop! Imagine how frustrating it would be if I could run fine a project at 256 buffers with 30 Play instances, 20Vienna Pro Instruments instances and 10 Omnispheres, and on a Macbook Pro to have to raise the buffer size to 1024 or 2048!
Then I would go “Where the f*** did I spend my money on?”
What is it with these Sony Vaios? Is it just that they’re expensive, and are styled rather like MacBooks? They aren’t particularly optimal for audio use.
In my opinion, no PC laptop is “optimal” for audio use. And as far as price is concerned, they offer a lot for the price. For example, for 1700 euros you get 640Gb’s of 7200rpm drive, i7 CPU, 8gigs of RAM, eSata, USB3.0, Blue ray .
If there was a way to know what their DPC latency is, then I would think no more. I would get a Vaio instead of a Macbook pro any day.
Some are selected to be by the specialist music-computer suppliers. And they don’t seem to be offering Vaios.
The question we’re ignoring, of course, is why anyone in their right mind would be considering a laptop for a high-performance DAW at all. If you need a portable solution for capturing tracks, fine. (Maybe a Zoom R16 would be a better idea than a computer anyway?) But once we get into high track counts and heavy-duty plugin use - this surely is a job for a desktop machine?
well to begin with, no firewire nor usb audio interface can match latency/perfomance of PCIe card based audio interface. its like 1.5gb bandwith or something like that.
As such, any further reference with macbook is ridicilous.
i spent my first 10 years in studio with pc. Last 7 with mac. oh my god what a waste of decade. lol
one of the guys above summed it all good about the workflow feel. On pc i felt like i had to constantlly service the system instead of doing the work.
once i swithched to mac, set everything up and just… work… amazing… lol
anyway, currentlly i run 16-core Nehalem Mac Pro with 15gb of ram and honestly, im not sure what more could i want perfomance-wise in years to come.
64-bit is working just fine, running 120 tracks average per sessions, usually have multiple Omnisphere’s loaded and bunch of other vsts, Bosendorf as well.
so if u can do that on pc on 32-64 buffer then yeah, pc is better.
Best DPC latency of a laptop in the shop very recently (february) was this cheap Acer…Big bucks Sony Vayo was many times worse (well in the red, regularly) without even moving a window. Was Vayo of about 1500 Eur…
I went originally for a HP…cheap 62g models (600 Eur range) where “ok” until moving a window, bang in the red…
More expensive models (the DV’s) where BAD!
So as you see brand, build quality (my acer is a bit flimsy, haha), processor speed (I3, haha), memory (only got 3 gigs) …all down the toilet when DPC latency comes into play…
My lenovo was such a bland machine…and slooooow…but very nice DPC latency, and you could feel that…Very low buffer sizes possible…
This is turning into one of those “Mac VS. PC” debates, seen all over.
I’m using both a MBP 2010 model, and a QuadCore PC. I must say that those trying to say that mac is slow must think again. Offcourse you can’t use the built-in soundcard on neither a PC or a Mac. Who does that?
I have no problem what so ever with running Cubase 5 or 6 on my MBP CoreDuo 2.66 with 4GB Ram. Running in 64bit is totally unnecessary because I only have 4GB Ram. It would actually be slower because of the large overhead of the computation. I have tried running in 64bit, but I have plug-in issues and must run in 32bit for the time being.
Performance is not noticeably different between Mac and PC, but I think the OS X is more stable in the long run.
In Windows I often have to reboot because I loose connection with one or the other device, something I have never experienced in OS X. CPU usage is also lower when using the Mac compared to the same projects in windows.
But it is not black or white, just a matter of taste.
The era is over for which Mac is superior for Audio production. It is all a matter of preference…
EDIT:
To summarize, if you’re satisfied with running your DAW on Windows, I see no reason to cash out a Mac solely for music production. Other areas of computing though, personally I prefer OS X.
Guys
I’m posting for KZ - I’m an old IT guy with an explanation for you about the difference between Mac and PC.
First - a history lesson. Back in the 80’s when Windows NT came on the scene, the hardware could not keep up with the os. NT 3.51 was a great Unix-like OS and actually had the potential for replacing Unix. Because NT ran sluggish on the hardware, Microsoft figured the only way they could make things run faster on 586’s (Pentium) was to break the operating system and open up the access to hardware. This weakened security and so when NT went from a stable clean 3.51 to NT 4.0, it forever became an open target for viruses and spyware. NT became XP and it took them 10 years of fixes to get it right and then kill it with Vista and then kill Vista with 7.
OSX is essentially an unbroken theologically clean Unix. Security is paramount, and while some say that OSX’s popularity will make it a target for viruses and spyware, those who write virus and spyware will have to work much harder to penetrate the security than they did on Windows.
I said all that to say this - the very weakness of the Windows platform with its openness for the hardware is its strength with what you guys are doing with Cubase. This is a reverse situation with mac OSX, which makes for latency as the very nature of the OS is trying to keep things safe, and forces the application to go thru a tighter channel to the hardware.
I used Cubase on PC for years and then made the decision to switch to a Mac Pro. PCs were FAR too unstable. BSODS, hardware/software conflicts, you name it. Ultimately it comes down to overall workflow. Macs make me want to rip my hair out far less than PCs. With regards performance, the Mac works great for me and all my sessions are 1200+ tracks, with VE Pro networked over 5 external PCs. It holds up just fine.
Been using cubase 4 & 5 on pc 32bit win xp i7 proc and now few months Q6 on macbook pro i5 32bit and i will never i say never! go back to pc.Q6 is most imperssive and stable in my experience anyway…even logic9 sucks on macbookpro, crashes and stuff, Q6 on the otherhand is smooth as a mf just my 2 cents
Sorry for the late reply… I hadn’t seen your question back then, excuse me!
You need two 8 GB modules in order to arrive at 16 GB’s of RAM in the 2011 MBP’s. Apple doesn’t offer this officially but it works (and unfortunately it is quite expensive…):
