computers for music use: does Apple/Microsoft still matter? &cie

[dubkitty]

i'm approaching the point where i need to have a dedicated computer of my own to serve as a music workstation. so there are several questions i'd like input on:

• like it says on the can, are Apples still better for music processing than Windows units? when i was last considering this it was barely even a question, more of a truism. i was always an Apple guy, but i'd sure love to spend half as much.

• are reasonably-priced laptops able to do what i'd call serious production work? or would a desktop unit be better?

• how modern does a computer have to be to be made useable? i have my last functional laptop, a 2012 MacBook Pro whose HD died. is it entirely obsolescent? i know about the chip switches and whatnot. when i inquired about this with a local Apple mechanic back around 2016-17 the answer as "limited usefulness." i assume by now i couldn't even get on the Internet with it.

• what would you recommend for someone who mostly records alone but needs a lot of tracks for complete songs?

i'm literally clueless about this because i haven't had the financial space to think about it for years. so anything you have to offer on the topic is welcome.

i have a late 00s Mac Mini that was my main music box when i was still in California which can probably be revived and used as a start, and a Scarlett interface that's never been out of the box. i'll be perfectly happy to go back to that for waveform editing and burning CDs, and got pretty good results in GarageBand. but i rather expect i'll need something with more brains as time goes on. though i was really happy with the unfinished reggae version of "Novelty" by Joy Division i did in GarageBand. putting together a horn section out of different samples from multiple sources was a hell of a lot of fun. one of the first things i'll do is when i revive the Mac Mini is to copy that off to a CD so i can hear it again. one of the next things will be to do the guitars, lead vox, and backing vocals. back in the early 00s i was talking online with a guy from Scotland about how JD would make great reggae material and swore i'd do a 4-song EP that did not include "Love Will Tear Us Apart" because that was so obvious. i still intend to finish that project someday. definitely using "Failure," probably "Transmission" and a 4th song to be named later. there's also a version of "Wind Chimes" from the Beach Boys' Smile project that needs a lot of help in the drums and also needs added guitar and layered vox.

[alexsga]

-apple machines being better than PCs for music production is a wives' tale

-i assembled my own 19" 1U rackmount PC 13yrs ago for >$1000 & it still performs very well+still can access the internet

-i use the same torrent of ableton i got when i built my computer that i've made a number of albums w strings, horns, vocals+digital instruments over the years that i really liked the outcome of

-i think for the sake of both your own time allotted to creativity as well as your potential audience's ears, perhaps dont do reggae Joy Division

[dubkitty]

it's for fun and as a learning experience. i learned a lot about GarageBand doing "Novelty" that might come back years later LOL. particularly assembling stuff from different sample packs.

that also raises the question of what software would be good. i liked the GarageBand interface a lot, but wasn't crazy about some aspects. didn't care for Ableton when i tried it. and i'm not going to do the Logic thing where you now buy a subscription and have to renew every year.

[Gone Fission]

My perception is that OS doesn’t make a lot of difference for typical home-studio music use apart from specific choice of DAW or some hardware. (UAD has famously bad/non-existent PC support for interfaces, though that may just be the DSP-running ones?) On that level, if you’re buying a new machine, you might just want to lean into the OS you already know to make life easier.

I will say from my experience the Apple Silicon machines (M1 and on) do live up to the reputation of performing very well with low heat and high efficiency. I’m not sure my MBP is fanless or whether I’ve just never pushed it. (Just looked it up—has a fan; never heard it.)

[moid]

I can’t offer any advice on computers but Joy Divisions successor; New Order did perform a cover of a reggae song on a Peel session ‘Turn The Heater On’

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BYsRIdB3sc8

Incidentally this was the first piece of music I ever heard on a CD. I bought my first cd player in 1988 and bought this cd to play on it. The sound quality difference compared to the cheap secondhand record player I had owned beforehand was stunning. Now of course, I wish I had kept that record player; it could play vinyl at 16rpm which turned everything into sub bass drone music. Which to 15 year old me sucked terribly… I could kick myself!

[echorec]

If you're more comfortable with Mac, I would suggest avoiding an Intel machine. The current reporting suggests that with Apple's next OS update, none of those machines will be supported (2019 and earlier). (so an M1 or newer would be preferable. I imagine there are some decent deals on used/refurbished M1/M2 machines.)

I'm using a Mac Studio (2022 M1 Max). --Had an iMac and a couple Mac Minis before that. There was a significant upgrade in performance from the 2010s iMacs to M1 Mac Mini...then to the Mac Studio line.

A few years ago, there were still some plugin developers working exclusively with Mac. That has changed, so Windows has caught up a bit on that front. If you're using an iPad and want to use some stuff across both platforms, that might be something else to tip the scales. There are certainly some cool apps that are available for the iPad, that haven't been shared with desktops. (Gauss field looper, Fluss synth)

There's a free DAW for Macs called Hosting AU. That's as stripped-down and simple as it gets. ---No Tetris screens or MIDI mapping. (good for quick demos and saving ideas) It's only 4 tracks, so if you need a lot of tracks, you'd have to use it like an old school 4-track. (record everything and then dump that audio file onto a track and then record new sounds on parallel tracks)

If you need recs on free/cheap plugins, let me know. I can probably tell you the plugin version of any pedal you'd like to have at your disposal.

Without knowing your budget, it's hard to know what to recommend. I haven't used a Windows machine in years, so I don't really know which plugins or DAWs don't cooperate with PCs. Developers spend a lot of time debugging stuff, but it seems there's always a few things that never work. (I've only had to deal with crashing plugins once or twice, but I've got a fairly powerful machine with RAM upgrades, secondary drives, et cetera.)

[crochambeau]

I'm a terrible metric, as I prefer doing most all of my work outside the box.

But Ubuntu Studio has treated me well. There is a definite schism between open source and profit based platforms. For example I can't use MOTU converters because they are protective of their IP and so code level communication between OS and user interface was denied. I'd presume a host of VST and cloud products exhibit a similar recalcitrance.

But, open source does not benefit from life cycle in the same way big business does, and my old PCI card based Echo Layla 24/96 was plug and play.