what is the best mac to do audio recordings on?

aside from a G5?

well since i'm entering college i was thinking more of a note book? would the macbook be good enough or should i step it up to a macbook pro?

if you can afford it macbook pro. i just bought one, incredible machine.

Dude, build a quad core amd based pc. It will smoke any mac for audio recording. Check out www.digidesign.com in the pc forum and you can check out the tests yourself. Im not trying to start a mac pc war see the results yourself.

i'll take that into consideration.... i'm going to look today at the mac store and ask some of the workers... i know they will tell me that the cpu i can't afford is "it" but i'll also look into building my own pc if the prices are right.

"Dude, build a quad core amd based pc. It will smoke any mac for audio recording. Check out www.digidesign.com in the pc forum and you can check out the tests yourself. Im not trying to start a mac pc war see the results yourself."


You could do that but its not worth all the hassle of having a computer that is going to crash and burn a year from now when its obsolete. I have had my mac g4 for 4 years now and never once has it crashed or got a virus. It is a dream come true. Theres a reason why every recording studio uses mac instead of pc and its because of the endourance that they have. The only way this could work is if you never used the pc for any other purpose other than recording. Once you start using it as a everyday comp you will load it up with spyware and all kinds of other crap.

I don't think that system would become obsolete. And I've never ever had viruses or spyware on my PCs.

so long as you keep track of what you download and what sites you visit you can virtually eliminate spyware, adware and virii on a PC. it also helps to keep up to date with virus definitions and spyware definitions.

I'll give credit where credit's due, and acknowledge that Mac's are nice pieces of hardware. the fact that there are little to no virus' around for them is largely due to the fact that they're too expensive for a run-of-the -mill hacker or script kiddie to afford to learn the OS and figure out how to do serious damage. another helpful point is the fact that it's built on a UNIX backbone (or at least it used to be) and if anyone knows *NIX OS's they know how stable and reliable they are. The major part fo the stabillity in a Mac comes from the software, before the hardware.

I'm more of a PC guy, mainly for the cost & massive amount of available games, but when you break it down blow for blow, Mac's just do some things better

I use a PC for audio recording. Its FINE. Accept some things are only available for Mac's, like Digital performer for example.

my pc has no spyware on it. dont use internet explorer and you wont get spyware. also, dont go to gay sites like ebaum's world and random porn sites... and understand what you are downloading from p2p programs and you also will not get viruses and/or spyware. i have had my comp since january and it has not crashed once. it is used for mmorpg, cd burning. music downloading, music playing, photoshop, and all that jazz. a mac would be a great machine if you didnt have to bendover backwards and suck off apple just to get a few decent programs and games. not only that... macs are EXPENSIVE. getting a mac repaired is even MORE EXPENSIVE. PC's are cheaper to repair and have so many parts that you can interchange and whatnot. besides... not all macs are bulletproof. my brothers crashes a fuckton more than any pc i have owned.

OH.... and i know a couple people that have owned mac laptops... both of those people pretty much spent what they paid for it, in repairs on it.

i would never buy a computer that i did not put together myself. (aside from laptops) i just like being able to pick out my own hardware peice by peice so i can get exactly what i want. and there's no sense buying a preloaded PC since the first thing you should do when you get a new computer is to wipe it clean and reload the OS. I've never had a problem with my windows box though. Pretty much if you just stay on top of things and watch what you're doing, you wont have any problems. I do admit that "Windows rot" is pretty annoying and i sometimes wish that i could have an uptime of more than 3 weeks but you gotta take the good with the bad.

*sigh* if only there was semi decent software for linux

yeah that whole mac=stable pc=unstable is a bunch of crap, I dual boot my pc one partition is for audio recording and one partition is for everything else, works great. You could also just drop in one of those knoppix cds when you want to surf the web and leave your DAW untouched and offline to avoid all the spyware/virus crap. and like everyone else is saying if your not a idiot and surfing porn sites and ebaums world you will be fine, the only diff between a mac and a pc today anyway is that macs are better looking.

it all boils down to what you really need your computer to do, if you do a LOT of high end graphics, video editing, or run a top end recording studio, and have lotsa money to spend, then you may want to go the Mac route.

I agree with dertoxia, and I won't ever use a computer that I didn't put together myself.

and Watchmaker has a great point about using a "Live" linux distro that runs right from the CD. Knoppix isn't the only one that does is, I think most major Linux distros have a "live" version of their OS

i know i know... tasteless^

LMAO

i mean if you had no anti-virus software or spyware software on your PC would it survive? A friend of mine does not have either because he says it slows his DELL down and he reinstalls the OS every month, this doesn't sound smart to me.

I have to say I have used Apple Computer since 1983. My father use to be a programmer for them back in the way day (1983-1987). My parents still have the following in their basement (i think, maybe they junked them):
1983- Apple IIe
1984- Apple IIc
1984 - Macintosh 128k, 512k, LISA (used for programming I guess)
1986 - Macintosh SE I used this computer all the way till 1996! (but in college I was forced to use PC)
1996 - Power Macintosh 5200
2001 - Power Mac G4 Quicksilver
2003 - Powerbook G4 12"
2004 - iMac G5 20"
2006 - Macbook Pro 15.4" 2Ghz Intel

Sure the Macs had their problems back in the day but since 2001 to now I have NEVER EVER had a serious problem with the Macs. They are just great machines even though I do own a DELL for work.

its all a matter of pref. some are die hard mac haters while others are die hard windooze haters.

porn = viruses that's all i know

you won't get one if you use a mac! heh

I hate macfags.

Or at least now I do.

i've had a mac for about 2 years. I've had waaaaaay fewer problems with it compared to what I've had with pcs.

Still, once my computer becomes obsolete, I'll go back to PCs. Mac's are just too expensive. You can do the same things with either.

alright i went today and i had to rule the mac book pro out because of money issues... anyways what would you say for money the 60 gb hd or the black 80gb hd

if you're really serious about audio editing you'll need to get a large portable firewire drive

dertoxia said:

Nah, it would be better to have a smaller drive. Something in the 80-120 GB range is good. There is no sence having the recorded media scatered throughout a 200 gb or more drive, while its being recalled. Unless your recording @ 96kHz, but 2 harddrives are recomended for that task.

wait.... how much do you plan on spending? because thats a HUUUUUUUUUUGE factor in what you end up buying, obviously.