I live 1/3 of my life on a DAW and now have extensive experience on both PC and Mac platforms. I'm on my fourth hardware/software platform at this point. After I spent seventeen years on 24 track analog, finishing up with an SSL 4048 console and Sony APR-24, my company tried Avid Audiostation on Mac (the predecessor of Protools), followed by Fairlight MFX-3 on a proprietary, five-processor platform, then Nuendo on PC. We currently run three Mac dual quadcores running Nuendo that are the primary DAWs used for all recording chores including multitrack Audio Post Production for video, multitrack music, editing, and mastering. We have two PCs used to record live events. My Mac works with interfaces offering 32 track I/O. My computer experience began on IBM mainframes with punch cards in 1974 and went through Digital Equipment Corporation PDP1104s with reel to reel data drives, Hewlett Packard mainframes, a Timex Sinclair, Atari eight and sixteen bit computers, PCs and Macs.
Enough background. The point here is that I didn't just roll off the turnip truck when it comes to computers and audio. What do I think of Mac-based DAWs?
It's just another platform. Every platform has its pluses and minuses. People say that the Mac is more reliable, easier, more straightforward, etc. Me? We've been in the Mac platform for about a year and have already had to transition to new audio interface hardware due to reliability and utility issues. We've spent a year tweaking our Mac's to get them as reliable as the previous PC platform. To be fair, it took a year to get the PCs reliable as well. We've had multiple hard drives crash. We've had units simply loose their OS and have to be formatted from the ground up. We've had units that required being rebooted four or five times in the morning everyday just to get started. We've had units routinely loose USB and Firewire connectivity.
It's just another platform. It does fine, once you shake out all the kinks. Meanwhile, the Mac devotees stand around grinning and bobbing their heads while my machine is being serviced to make it work again, and say, "Isn't this 100% better than a PC?" Whatever. It works.
Bob
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"It is said, 'Go not to the elves for counsel for they will say both no and yes.' "
Frodo Baggins to Gildor Inglorion, The Fellowship of the Ring
THE MUSICIAN'S ROOM (my website)
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