Oh What to buy

[jdhogg]

One last thing

Xp and w7 now need no customisation of the OS for music in my experience.

[mazz]

I use both and prefer Mac, mostly because I'm used to it and it's always worked for me out of the box, probably because it's a closed system. Sure, it's more expensive, but what is my time worth?

I just put Windows 7 on one of my slave PCs and so far it's been excellent. It's the most elegant, smooth and Mac-like Windows yet, in my experience (I use Windows at my day gig and we're still on good old, blah, industrial Windows 2000. When I first started working here, everyone was on Macs and then they needed to run some big Enterprise software and switched to Windows. Shortly thereafter, they purchased an entire building to house the now necessary IT support staff. Microsoft = job security ).

If you have a computer built for you, again I stress going the DAW route, unless you really want to spend your time researching motherboards, RAM types, etc., etc. Again, what is your time worth and what do you want to spend it doing? I choose writing music.

Orchestral simulations require heavy lifting, no matter what platform you choose or prefer, but you want something that works as soon as you set it up, IMO, which is why I stress a purpose-built machine if you stay with Windows, unless you really enjoy Googling motherboards.

Cheers!

Mazz

[jdhogg]

Orchestral simulations require heavy lifting, no matter what platform you choose or prefer, but you want something that works as soon as you set it up, IMO, which is why I stress a purpose-built machine if you stay with Windows, unless you really enjoy Googling motherboards.

Cheers!

Mazz

My earlier post is the result of a lot of googling.
I do find it quite interesting having done an electronics degree.
.....in my defence sometimes I need a few days break from music to get a bit of perspective.

[mazz]

If one enjoys building and tweaking computers, then that's awesome!!

If one doesn't enjoy building and tweaking computers, it can be extremely frustrating and creativity killing when a driver conflict or .dll issue or whatever arises. Some folks thrive on troubleshooting and it's a creative process, others wish to have a smooth writing/recording experience.

As I progress more and more to becoming a full time pro, the less time I wish to spend tweaking on my gear to get it to work, because downtime is lost income.

I'm not averse to using Windows machines, obviously, I have two in my studio, but they are both built by DAW experts and both were setup by them and worked perfectly from day one. With Windows 7, tweaking of the OS may be less necessary than in the past, but I still prefer to pay an expert to do the research on the best components, just like I'd hire a sax player when I need that absolutely real sax solo on some exposed jazz arrangement.

It's just a choice, not a religion.

[AnthonyCostandius]

What I get out of this is: Save! Save! Save!

Thanks to all. The PC and Music shops around here are not so clued up and all of this info really helps.

It surprising to hear that even quad cores have trouble running the VST libraries - I had been planning on getting the EastWest sound libraries - so I looks I will have to go BIG!!!

It would be great to get some info from someone who had there machine custom built by Mac - then I could start looking at comparative quotes. Thanks to all for sharing info

Regards from South Africa

Anthony

[jdhogg]

I will add the cheaper gigabyte GA-P55m-UD2 to the list.

Just go to the apple site and select mac pro and build in the extras.

[fusilierb]

What I get out of this is: Save! Save! Save!

Thanks to all. The PC and Music shops around here are not so clued up and all of this info really helps.

It surprising to hear that even quad cores have trouble running the VST libraries - I had been planning on getting the EastWest sound libraries - so I looks I will have to go BIG!!!

It would be great to get some info from someone who had there machine custom built by Mac - then I could start looking at comparative quotes. Thanks to all for sharing info

Regards from South Africa

Anthony

The only way I know of to really save on the mac is to either buy a used one, or to buy a refurbished one directly from Apple. That's what I do. I've never bought a brand new mac, always a refurb. Apple treats it like a new machine warranty and all and you save oodles. I've also saved a bunch buying and bidding through ebay. But either way, you STILL going to spend more with a mac. I'm not going to preach one side verses the other (anymore ) But if you are going to go the PC route, you will have to do your research as anyone can build and sell PC's so you just have to know what you're gonna get. Only Apple makes mac hardware, so its a no brainer what's gonna be inside and how its going to interact with the software running on top of it. I'm all about open computing for learning, experimenting and generally playing and working. When it comes to music, I'm all about the closed echo shpere. I've got work to do and don't have time to fiddle fart around with things that just should work. You know how good you are with machines or not so you are the only one who can answer what you're willing to do, both time and money wise.

Good luck! But doing real heavy orchestra music and Save, Save, Save, ain't gonna go together. I don't like it either.

B

[mazz]

As fun and rewarding doing the orchestral music is, it's a labor of love. In the time it takes for me to do the best 2 minute piece I can do, I could have done at least 5 or 6 ambient/documentary style pieces, plus I'd only have to fire up one computer. And the investment to be competitive is pretty significant both in hardware and in libraries. For electro orchestral, IMO it's more important to have excellent brass, strings and percussion (a good choir doesn't hurt either), but at some point woodwinds will be a necessity, and no one library has the corner on the market for all sections, IMO.

So just be prepared if you want to jump on the orchestra train, because as your skills and ears get better, you'll want to be upgrading your libraries to fill in the gaps. At least that's been my experience.

Mazz

[AnthonyCostandius]

Thanks to all

What I am getting out of this is to look at the Mac Pro. In South Africa this costs (without customization) appr $5000 which is equivalent to ZAR 35,000.

So if I go this route, I would like some guidance of how I should spec the machine for the local reseller. I have read that I would require 3 super fast hard drives, but have also read about 4 core and 8 core, as well as audio accelerator cards. I am not that clued up as to the technical issues, so I would welcome some input as to the ideal set-up for a machine that will be used to write and record sound tracks, using full orchestras and decent sound banks. I would also like to know if I would still require an external sound card and, if so, what is recommended.

Not being Mr Rockefeller, and given the depressed financial situation, I have to make every dime count.

I assume that if I go across to Mac, I will have to go to Logic as well (Finale and Native Instruments Komplete 4 & 6 are hybrids). Alternatively I will have to consider running Cubase in a windows environment, but I am not sure how stable that will be.

Thanks again for all the help.

Anthony

[kevinmathie]

Yowza! $5000?!? That's a lot. And I thought buying my Mac right here in the US was expensive! Sorry to hear they're so expensive for you in South Africa.

I think you'd definitely want an 8-core Mac Pro. When I bought mine, Apple had just released a 4-core that was actually a little faster, but the way EastWest and others utilize the processors, I'd take #'s-of-cores over speed. Especially when the speed of the 4-core wasn't that much faster. As we approach 64-bit capability, you'll want to load as much RAM as you can afford, or at least plan to upgrade as you go along. I started out with 6GB in my Mac Pro, which was fine to start with -- especially given the fact that Logic in 32-bit mode could only deal with 4GB anyway. I've since upgraded to 12GB, which will probably do pretty well for awhile, but as libraries grow, and as developers start utilizing the advantages 64-bit processing affords, I'll bet my 12GB will soon seem paltry. But in the short term, you'll probably get a lot of use out of 12 or 16 GB of RAM.

As far as DAW programs go, Logic is great, but I believe that Cubase -- if you're already accustomed to that program -- has a Mac version, so maybe you'd prefer that one? Also, Digital Performer is a fantastic DAW for the Mac platform. And, of course, ProTools is an industry standard, so that would be a good recommendation too.

I haven't worked with Finale as a DAW yet. I'm a long-time Finale user (since version 1.0!), but I always use Finale for music typesetting, rather than recording. My sense is that the audio editing is rather cumbersome and limited as compared to one of the DAWs previously mentioned. You could probably use Finale in the short-term, though, if you need to wait and save up some money to buy a more robust DAW.

As far as needing an audio accelerator card, you won't need anything like that. A Mac Pro will work with pro audio perfectly well right out of the box.

Multiple hard drives are a good idea. I still only have two internal eSATA hard drives -- one for my programs, and one for my sample libraries -- but I probably ought to get a 3rd drive eventually to store my project files. In addition, I have an external FireWire drive for my back-up drive. The Mac OS includes a good back-up program called Time Machine that I use. It's a pretty inexpensive drive -- a 750GB Western Digital MyBook. All my hard drives run at the normal 7200rpm speed. I've heard of some people running drives that are 10,000 rpms, and I'd love to hear if they notice an improvement of some sort over 7200 rpm drives. But, so far I haven't heard from any composer with a similar set-up to mine that works with the faster drives.

As far as sound cards go, I still use an old MOTU 828. It's not a card, really. It's a Firewire audio interface. If you're just sequencing, and not doing much "live" recording, it's probably not critical for you to have more than 1 stereo input and 1 audio input. So, probably most anything from MOTU, Apogee, Digidesign, M-Audio and such will be great for you.

I gotta go for now, but I'll try to come back to this thread later today.
Kevin