[Rwp] A Mac?

[Chris Belle]

Be aware that just getting a fast processor and drive and such will not
necessarily make you a good daw.

That is because with varying chipsets, and subsystems you might get dpc 
latencies high enough that an ordinarily decent off the shelf machine 
for ordinary tasks could end up being terrible for audio.
Don't confuse dpc latency with latency of your audio interface, they are 
two different things, but one surely affects the other.

The only way to be sure you get a truly worthy machine for audio 
production is to get a purpose built daw from
a place that specializes in such, my go to guy for this is studiocat.com
Jim Roseberry, he's built machines for many of my students as well as 
many of us on midimag,
and he builds machines for the stars, and sons and daughters of the stars,
production groups and such, there are other places,
of course, Sweetwater creation stations, and ADK,
but I really like the personal service and quality and pricing I get 
from Jim.

If you don't want to go the purpose daw route, and
try and coble together your own, then you have your work cut out for you,
some have gotten decent results from running a mac on the windows side, 
but that is not a guaranteed good result, I've heard everything from 
terrible to decent on that side, and you can't
adjust a mac's BIOS eufi to turn off things like c states, and processor 
throttling and virtualization,
and such to get that dpc latency down,
it's a generic one size fits all, and I know our friend Patrick has done 
well with that, but my friend Keith has had terrible results with that 
on an oder mac.

All it takes is one bios revission, or one little thing different on the 
chipset to screw things up, so yes, it's possible to roll your own, but 
you take on all the responsibilities of it that way, and even 
experienced pc builders don't know mostly how to set up a DAW properly, 
these things are special.
If you're not planning to run many real time plugs, and mostly do 
straight audio recording,
then you might get by with an off the shelf machine, and you might get 
lucky and get an off the shelf laptop with low enough dpc to get you by, 
but it's a crap shoot.
I got a dell refurb from
discountelectronics.com
a nice i7 chip and business class notebook wich actually will run sonar 
and reaper,
reasonably but not up to what I consider good DAW standards, that means 
I can load little projects on them, but as soon as I push it, it doesn't 
like it.
But my i5 machine I got from Jim will go like a bat out of hell with 
loads of plugs and tracks, but you see even being a lesser processor, 
because it was picked for parts and tuned for audio it likes that sort 
of work and doesn't complain
so you're even more likely to have issues with laptops because the 
tolerances are closer, not as bad on modern laptops, but still,
because of heat issues, and these things fight you every step o the way 
they're designed for power saving and battery life conservation, and 
such, and depending on what models you get,
you may or may not be able to disable these things at the bios level, so 
this is where your trusty daw vendor will help you out and it doesn't 
really cost you a lot more.
How much is your music worth, if you are really broke and have to settle 
for a 200 dollar bargain machine from tiger,
that's one thing, but if you are serious about your music and want the 
best and you can swing it, go do yourself a big favor and go get a real 
daw machine.

If you want to work strictly with mac, then it's a cookie cutter
they're already done the hardware and software matching, but with 
windows, even mac immulation of windows, it really is
best to get a true windows machine if you want the best performance.

Just make sure what ever you get if you are going to do the off the 
shelf and take your chances that you can return what ever you get.

Wwe have another buddy who is running a sonar build on a mac machine, 
but he can't run his interface down at lowest settings,
but it's good enough for what he does for him.

I personally like to run at lowest settings, because I can't stand 
playing guitar with that little bit of latency, I want to run at 64 and 
32 asio buffers,
but just playing back samples and such you can get by with 96 or 128 or 
even 256
and even worse for just mixing and mastering, so it's all down to how 
much you can put up with and get by with for me since I'm doing work for 
other people,
I put up with off the shelf machines for years and made it work, but 
when I finally went and bit thee bullet, it was like night and day 
difference.

Good luck,
and sorry for the long rant, but this is one of the most important 
things you will do for your studio,
and I want to see people informed and make the right decission.

It's frustrating enough with all the adaptive things we have to deal 
with without having to deal with a dodgy machine as well, so if you can, 
be good to your self, and eliminate that odious possibility.

Just as a real world comparison, my refurb dell I was telling you about 
get dpc latencies in around 100, but my machines from jim get in the low 
double digits and single digits,
around 17 to 10 to 7,
generally anything below 30 is decent,
for a daw, the lower the better, you can get by with dpc's
around 50 to 80 to 100 but that's when you are likely to start having 
problems, and if you are spiking in the high hundreds or thousands, then 
forget it,
you will have trouble doing any real time audio applications.





On 8/16/2015 8:22 PM, Aaron via RWP wrote:
> I am looking for a Windows computer to replace the one that I have. I 
> at least want an Intel I five and eight gigs of RAM. What do you some 
> of you guys use and would recommend? Just curious is a hard decision 
> when needing to buy a new laptop.
>
> Thanks
> Aaron
>
> blindness is not the characteristic that defines you or your future. 
> Every day we raise the expectations of blind people, because low 
> expectations create obstacles between blind people and our dreams. You 
> can have the life you want; blindness is not what holds you back.
>
> On Aug 16, 2015, at 6:38 PM, Jes via RWP <rwp at bluegrasspals.com 
> <mailto:rwp at bluegrasspals.com>> wrote:
>
>> Scott,
>> I am basing my opinion on first-hand experience. I was able to get up 
>> and running with reaper very quickly once I realized how the program 
>> worked. With GarageBand, I found myself fooling around using the VO 
>> keys and it just wasn't very efficient.
>> Of course for all my audio stuff, I have been using windows for 
>> years. I have used gold wave, sound forge and Reaper. When I 
>> installed reaper for the first time on windows along with Reaaccess, 
>> The fact that I could instantly get feedback when I pressed keys, and 
>> didn't have to create my own keymap was really nice.
>>
>> Jes
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On Aug 16, 2015, at 5:31 PM, Scott Chesworth via RWP 
>>> <rwp at bluegrasspals.com <mailto:rwp at bluegrasspals.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Jes, are you basing those opinions on firsthand experience or hearsay?
>>> Reason I ask is that - although it's not as far along as Reaper with
>>> the various addons available for Windows yet - I'm not seeing the huge
>>> gap between Reaper and Pro Tools you're describing with Vic's bear
>>> bones accessibility solution. From my experience, I'd think most
>>> people could get stuff done with a lot less button bashing and
>>> frustration in Reaper on Mac now than in GarageBand for example, which
>>> I found to be a sluggish, frustrating half-baked mess when using it
>>> with VoiceOver. No experience of Amadeus Pro here, so can't pass
>>> comment on that.
>>>
>>> Kevin, how soon is this new computer being acquired? OSARA has plans
>>> for better Mac support on the development timeline, but you're looking
>>> at another 6 months or so before Jamie gets to that assuming
>>> everything runs to schedule. For what it's worth, I'm someone who runs
>>> Apple hardware, but VoiceOver as a screen reader means I find myself
>>> in Windows 99% of the time unless I'm specifically using Pro Tools.
>>> This didn't used to be the case, so it's not an unshiftable bias
>>> against the screen reader, more that I don't dig the directions Apple
>>> have gone in with it lately. Even on an I7 machine with 8GB of RAM and
>>> a fast SSD, I find VO to be unresponsive as a screen reader nowadays.
>>> I'm not saying don't go Mac because in some ways it opens up a can of
>>> worms that you might find useful, especially given the quality of
>>> instruments that come with MainStage for a MIDI guy like yourself,
>>> just offering up a note of caution that if you like working fast, VO
>>> might not be the screen reader for you.
>>>
>>> Scott
>>>
>>>> On 8/16/15, Kevin Brown via RWP <rwp at bluegrasspals.com 
>>>> <mailto:rwp at bluegrasspals.com>> wrote:
>>>> Hmmmmmm!,...Maybe I'll stick to the "PC"...
>>>>
>>>> I'm kind of liking the functionality of "Reaper" so far...
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