Audio - mac vs PC

[davebrock]

i have a amd k6-2 pc+ soundblaster awe64 and a dual g4 powermac.
why o why, running cubase vst32 is the 'latency' on the PC 577 ms and on the Mac 29 ms????
can anyone please lemme know why such a huge difference? do PC's suck for audio? Or is it just Win**s?

[psyjax]

qbase was built for Mac.

Mac's are the a staple in the recording industry because digital music grew up around them as did Graphics and Desktop publishing.

You must remember that the Macintosh has allways had excellent sound processing since the beginning. PC's didn't even ship standard with anything other than a beeper till '96 or so.

Some claim that sound on PC's is better because a separet card handles the sound instead of dumping the load on the main CPU.

I personaly never have seen much diffrence. I have seen more problems with audio on a PC than any on the Mac.

[Calum]

yeah well i personally opine that all this Mac vs PCs crap is bullshit and is totally voided by the fact that all the design/multimedia stuff that all the Mac people like to hold up as a benchmark is only ever released for windows or mac or both. Let's see the exact same versions of, say, photoshop, quark, Cubase, Sound Forge, whatever, for LINU vs MacOS, and then we'll talk. Until your PC is free of windows, this trifling talk of seperate sound cards and stuff is totally worthless. The system controls such hardware so until those companies get their fingers out of their arses and port their programs, PC versus Mac arguments will get a big poo poo from me. And even when tht does all happen, MacOS versus Linux arguments will earn my firm derision too, because firstly who cares? and secondly, once you get those apps running under linux, there won't be much to pick from anyway...

[psyjax]

True, very true.

I think more stuff will be hitting the Linux/*NIX shelves thanx to OS X tho.

Think about it. A coco application (written for the Darwin core) is one step away from being ported to BSD, which is one step away from being ported to Linux.

The X11 interface is a snap, and replace aqua with X11 and you got a fully native Linux/*NIX app in less development time than it would take to port a windows app to the Mac.

Now, companies don't have an excuse.

Take a look at interplay. Their next amazing game (Neverwinter Night's) is being published in a simultanious release for MacOS X, Linux, and Windoze. When was the last time a game company realesed a program for Linux THEMSELVES???

Times they are a changing friends. It won't be long that linux, and OS X, beat out Windoze.

Mark my words, I say, by the time there is a KDE 5.0. Linux will be a totaly user friendly OS, whose cost effectiveness will totaly push M$ out of the way.

[Ctrl Alt Del 123]

My experience with sound and computer.

At Gramaphone, a HiFi audio visual store near me, had a custom built PC for audiophiles with a sound out playing on a million dollar stereo with Macintosh tube Mono-block Amps pumping out 500 watts of MOSFET audio and Martin Logan CLS IIz (http://martinlogan.com/art/spgal_cls_zoom.gif ... drool...) electrostatic speakers to compare it to a WADIA CD Player hooked up to the same stereo. (Wadia CD Players START at a few thousand dollars and go up up up!!!) The computer, playing a WAV rip of a HDCD IN WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER, sounded like liquid music, it was beautiful, it retained all sonic characteristics. The Wadia performed THE EXACT SAME, as in, the computer matched a 2,000 dollar CD player. I have since never doubted the quality of WMP and PCs. The owner of the store is a Mac fanatic and one day hooked his system up to it. The Mac did just as good as the PC did, nothing more, nothing less. So quality wise, both can perform the same. For music creation and editing on the PC, 3 words: Cool Edit Pro.

[Calum]

is middle of the road, and crashes lots, just like windows mediocre player.

Use sound forge instead if you must use an audio editor in windows (actually it doesn't multitrack, so use cool edit if that's what yr used to...)

cool edit was coded by an ex M$ guy though, so i expect it to run slow and crash all the time (and it obliges).

[voidmain]

And I just have a lowly pair of Klipsch LaScala's and a pair of KG4's running through a 300wpc DC power amp using Linux on a PC.  Oh well.  The player software has nothing to do with the quality. It's all in the DAC, signal processing, and amplification.

[edit]Holy crap, I just noticed that Paul Klipsch just died 3 days ago. He even signed my speakers when I bought them almost 20 years ago. What a shame.. See: http://www.klipsch.com/

[ May 08, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Ctrl Alt Del 123]

Cool Edit Pro is one of my favorite programs, it does not crash whatsoever. I did multi tracks for a local band and was flying through it, no slow ups or any of that. I use it and it works flawlessly. Granted, nothing's better than a whole studio, but 1) I don't have the room and 2) no money.

As far as Klipsch, I myself don't like horn tweeters, too bright. My favorite speakers are Magnepans (http://www.magnepan.com), I own a pair of MMGs. These speakers defy their size and price. However, they are very critical of placement in your listening room. But for 500 bucks, they're a steal once you listen to them (to me that is).

And you are right about the DAC, but the speaker is what matters more. The speakers are the component that does the most work, it changes an electrical signal into delicate vibrations and trying not to add artifacts to the sound, very hard to do. Then the source matters, garbage in = garbage out.

[voidmain]

I agree about the horn tweeters for confined areas, but for large halls they can't be beat. I used CoolEdit pro with my Layla board and a Mackie SR24 mixer doing multitrack recording for my band. I really liked it too, but that stupid Layla board would only work with Win95 and I can't tell you the days of lost time when that thing got the shits. I had a lot of crash problems with it. Some recording sessions were NOT fun. But after a fresh reboot and a voodoo dance things would work out in the end. I only wish there were a Linux version of it. Then I would get back into music.

[ May 08, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[ravuya]

Personally, I do a few remixes from time to time -- I'd rather touch a Mac, with built-in, standardized sound hardware that works right, than a Winders PC, where the drivers react with the OS in unpredictable ways, causing lag and distortion.

[Calum]

me too, but i don't have a mac.

VoidMain, i get yr point, but surely a sound is only as good as the original signal? if a program is creating duff sound, no amount of good speakers is going to sort the problem.

Actually the cool edit problem is a matter, largely, of opinion, i think my version of cool edit was a lot older than my version of sound forge, so it was hardly a fair test...

Void, maybe you should get a mac for your audio stuff? now that they run BSD and linux, they should be solid as a rock, and have good hardware to match, plus you get to run all those mac multimedia apps on them... (you know this of course, just practising my sales pitch for when i am washed out and need to get a job in a computer shop)  

[voidmain]

I would love to have had a Mac to do it but already had PCs and spend a lot on sound equipment and band gear so money was tight at the time (according to the wife anyway).  And at the time it wasn't BSD based and I didn't know what hardware was available to do what I wanted to do. For instance the Layla board had 8 1/4" input channels and 10 1/4" output channels.  I frequently recorded 4-8 channels simultaneously. Maybe there was a Mac version of that board. It was made by a company called "Echo".  The price was right and had the right number of recording inputs.

As far as software screwing up the sound quality. If said software is just playing a WAV or MP3 file for instance, they all should pump out the same data on the output end (the format that makes it to the audio DAC in the sound hardware). The algorythms used should be the same. The software is not responsible for doing the digital->analog conversion. Of course I am no expert in audio software development so much of this is strong speculation. Hopefully someone who has more intimate coding level experience with audio software could agree/disagree with my speculation.

[davebrock]

I have to say looking at some replies and doin a bit of research....it seems that it is without doubt windows itself that is the major pain in the ass for recording, there's nothin wrong with most pc hardware it's just the crap os that most pc's have (preinstalled of course!!!) :-( Y,know a lot of studios still use amigas? strange but true! bit OT but, anyone used NT for audio? How does it compare? And also are any other Mac users pissed off with the lack of multitrack software for OS X? Cubase SX looks good, but where is Pro Tools??? :-(

[voidmain]

Actually as crappy and crash prone as win95 is, it is much better than NT for multitrack recording etc..  NT has way too much overhead. If only there were good multitrack Linux apps. I believe one day they'll come. I'm pretty sure Cake Walk has a Mac version don't they? Cool Edit Pro and the Sonic Foundry apps would be good Mac apps too.

[ravuya]

Everyone uses Pro Tools, and most custom audio apps (MetaSynth) are Mac-only.

Cake Walk is kind of crap, IMO. Sorry to say so.