tlw

Larry Jones

tlw
To get it set up to handle audio with a stable round trip latency of around 6ms I had to do.... Nothing. 

Purely anecdotal. Here's my anecdote: I bought a new PC, plugged it in, installed Sonar, and everything has been beautiful for three years now. Of course, this was a machine that I had specced just for audio/video recording/editing/mixing.

I've been building my own PC DAWs for 20 years. Built a few for other people as well.

To be clear: I think Apple computers are just as good as PCs. But they cost too much, and Apple doesn't seem to care about backward compatibility (which is really just another cost factor). These days everybody knows you can do audio and video equally well on a Mac or a PC. Those who think you must have one or the other probably think that because of the one they started with, whenever that was.
 
For me, it was a PC, 35 years ago. I took it apart in the first week to install a modem, and I've been "playing" with them ever since. I didn't buy an Apple computer back then because they simply were not a good value. That's a good point about interchangeability, but it really only affects touring musicians who are in a position to tell the venue to supply "two Macbook Pros," or whatever. People in that category are the musician equivalent of the one-percenters. The rest of us have to bring our own stuff. When you're paying for it yourself, the PC looks a little better.
 
Maybe it's because I enjoy tinkering, but I have been doing it so long that I really don't have a problem making a decent PC into a music machine. Maybe I'm tweaking the machine without consciously thinking about it, but my feeling is that if you build a powerful enough PC and install the OS yourself (that is, without addons and trial software and such), you can pretty easily get right to using it as a DAW. And it only gets better if you do tune it up.
 
I think Sonar is a mature product and I'm OK with it running only on PCs. I'm also not concerned with who's a pro and who's an amateur, and which DAW the pros use. I was a pro, and now I'm an amateur, and my software of choice is Sonar. The quality of my work has not gone down. It's just that my reason for doing it has changed.
 
Finally, I admit I don't know much about Macs, but the main thing I don't understand -- partially based on your post about the various problems they have -- is the religious fervor some people have about them. I mean how does one fall in love with a computer?
 
A car, now, that's another matter...

I also build my own PCs and am comfortable enough to make them do what I want. But that is also a case of "one-percenters".
My Mac using friend sent his Mac tower to a service guy to install an SSD for seven-hundred-something euros!

When I'm saying "no setup" I really mean you just get your Mac from the store, download Logic from the appstore (which they can also do for you at the store), plug in your midi keyboard and you're good to go. That's hard to beat for the folks who don't even understand what a driver is or how to get it on their system. This makes those users feel empowered and suddenly they can work with this professional software without getting stopped before they even got started. How many setup/driver/latency questions do we get on here? I'm not saying everything is always peachy on Mac but I'll bet money that most of those initial hurdles are non-existent on Mac.

Again, I'm a devoted PC user, but CoreAudio is better than ASIO/MME CoreMidi is better than the Windows implementation right now.

Doktor Avalanche
Linux!

Bless you!

Larry, broadly speaking I agree with you.

I managed to use computers for 35 years without owning a Mac, it's only collaboration with people who only use them and Logic/Mainstage that got me to get one (low end iMac) in the first place last year.

Apple's approach to backwards compatability is indeed poor. Not that PCs and Windows have been immune to the same thing. When the original pentium cpu was launched software rapidly began to appear that simply would not run on a 486 chip because it required the pentium instruction set. ISA became SATA and PCI has undergone several changes over the last 20 years with old hardware becoming incompatible. The move from 16 bit to 32 bit left quite a lot of old software behind. Now we have 64 bit. The system requirements for PC software have steadily required more powerful PCs for optimum performance. Even the current version of Sonar isn't compatible with older versions of Windows.

One of the oddest things about Macs is that the fixed design (in some ways a strength), which is then manufactured for a period, means they are never cutting edge in hardware terms and a PC built for the same (or less) cost can usually hammer a Mac in terms of brute processing power. Macs are prettier though.

Yet, as you say, there are people who have an almost religious cultish attachment to Macs. I know people who still use old G4 and G5 Macbooks that are almost museum pieces but their owners have an emotional attachment to them that's hard to break. Personally I can't imagine having an emotional attachment to a computer so strong that I would ignore a decade's worth of technological advance, but obviously some people do. And there are the true believers, people who wish to be seen as "independent, creative, free-thinkers", who queue for hours or days to get the 30 seconds of glory associated with being the first to own the latest iGadget. Never underestimate the "cool factor" as a marketing tool.

You're right about the 1% reference, but the consequence of the 1% is that almost every time you see a computer on stage it's made of light alloy with that big, glowing Apple logo visible to all. So aspiring musicians get to associate Apple with being the computer of choice for musicians, and in turn will tend to buy Macs.

It's the same marketing logic that lies behind Roland, Korg or whatever written in big letters across the backs of synths, Marshall's black with gold control panel, script logo in white and distinctive 4x12s, even Leo Fender's 1950s tweed and big Strat-style headstocks. If potential customers see what they regard as successful people using your product then the next layer of musicians down from the 1% will be inclined to follow suit, and every time a customer sees your product on stage it reinforces in them the feeling that they bought the right thing. So next time they'll buy another.

As for Sonar, I think Cakewalk are correct to not develop a Mac version (having said that they'll now prove me wrong and announce on :-/ ). It would mean two code bases, two different sets of bugs to worry about and so on for potentially little additional return. Better to be the best PC DAW, with the best integration with the hardware and Windows than yet another Mac DAW trying to enter the market and compete head to head with the established players.