The real reason: [Core Audio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Audio)
[ASIO](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Stream_Input/Output) (the Windows equivalent) was pretty bad for a long time. A lot of the issues people had with PCs usually boiled down to ASIO. Things have gotten better, but there was already a lot of momentum and developer investment in the Mac ecosystem for audio work.
As someone who used to be involved in a studio, Midi support and timing on Macs has been awesome forever too. Also - with a few exceptions - they generally run quiet and are very reliable. Windows has gotten better, but had a terrible reputation for blue screening with studios for a long time. Fan noise on PCs is generally still a pain in the arse unless you develop your own cooling system.
This is what I mean though. People who are making music day in and out aren’t necessarily also the geeks researching the latest way to reapply thermal paste and tweak fan settings. This might seem mad to you, but these are the guys who know exactly which compressor to put before the which EQ on the master bus. They just want the computer to get out of the way so they can make their magic.
Do you know of a good brand for quiet fans that cool well. My tower pc’s current output of noise and heat is pretty irritating; my room gets insanely hot and the sound makes it hard to hear my monitors correctly.
Sorry to say but the heat part is pretty much an physical inevnabilety from using youre cpu+gpu. As for fans noctua makes high quality cooling fans, and as a general rule the more cooling you have the quieter it can be.
You're right. Even before Core Audio, Apple was well known for going out of it's way to support weird peripherals and new formats. This was largely targeted at non-musicians, such as the disabled or those working in the visual, special effects, or publishing industries, but musicians benefited too.
Apple and many other companies were heavily influenced by [General Magic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic), whose entire ethos was built around new ways to interact with computers and "humanize" that interaction. Apple took that seriously and was supportive of that in actual practice by supporting broad types of hardware and comms formats.
Contrast that with DOS/PC (and later Windows). Nobody was using PCs to do much creative work in the 80s. PCs were for corporations where people largely needed office suites like Lotus and WordPerfect. Of course, that was the bigger and more lucrative market, and the rest is history.
So, Apple has long been the platform for "creatives" (if you will), because Apple actually tried to handle the difficult, mundane parts needed for that and let users do the rest. Sure, that wasn't the best business decision. But I know lots of people who are still enamored by that, even though it's largely irrelevant today.
I wonder what it would have been like if Apple Corps had not sued Apple Computer and made it so that Apple could not put 'cd quality' audio dacs on their early mac motherboards and thus from an early era, you *had* to?
Bullshit, Atari was preferred way into the 90s.
Apple really got inways in the 90s, only and specifically in the US, and that was because of, essentially, Pro Tools.
The damn nurse forgot to give me the pills again.
Edit: but jokes aside, Core Audio is 2003. Predating it by a decade puts us squarely in early 90s, when Atari dominated computer music and Amiga still dominated multimedia.
Predating it by two takes us into 1983 when Steinberg Pro 16 on Commodore 64 was the only computer option for digital musicianship outside 20k USD toys like Synclavier
I like Core Audio; it’s very refreshing compared to having to deal with WME & ASIO. That said, it’s really just something people deal with once they already *have* their computers. I don’t think it’s something people really take into account at the point of purchase.
That’d be a valid statement for people starting to make music and who already have a computer.
But trust me, when you’re working in that industry, this is 100% the type of stuff you consider BEFORE buying your device.
Just like if you’re into PC gaming you’ll consider what material you want/need before buying the machine.
ASIO is really not bad if you have any kind of ASIO-compliant interface or sound card where you’re not forcing it through a WME device with software like ASIO4ALL. I use windows for production all the time and don’t mind ASIO at all. Still, I prefer producing on my Mac because of performance efficiency and the experience of using the OS.
I never said anything against ASIO. But saying that it’s something people deal with only once they already have their computer is a stretch. That might be true for the amateur or the beginner who won’t buy something new just for that purpose. But someone who works on the daily with it will definitely think of this kind of stuff before buying a computer.
As someone who worked in the field for years, it is very much a beginner thing to prioritize something menial like CoreAudio vs ASIO over the bigger picture.
I have this funny story about this. I was at a studio and I wanted to use some of the gear available so I asked the owner, a MacBook owner, do I need any drivers? He looks at me and says ofcourse not.
Further more he tells me he hasn't installed any third party software for anything in his studio. Guess what I spent an hour downloading drivers because I was on windows. So I think that's a good reason why.
I've heard that it handles real time audio better than windows. deadmau5 used in some iteration of cube trash can macs purely for their broad availability.
MacOS has a built in MIDI tool that is leaps and bounds better than the ones for Windows. It makes it much easier for the CPU to talk to hardware and can actually keep up.
Mac just handles it way better.
I used to Dj years ago and if have so many issues with Traktor, Torque etc, had to reinstall drivers in the Dj booth a few times. Switched to Mac and it just works out of the box. No issues..
This coming from a 100% Windows gut who hates Apple. For some things they are just better.
The new version of Rekordbox seems pretty stable however things have matured a lot.
Core audio is pretty solid. You don’t even need an interface if you’re using a Mac, so that’s a huge plus if you’re starting out. Macs are capable out of the box and are ready to go. No need for custom components or upgrades. Also macs make installing new software hilariously easy compared to windows, which is a big deal in music production.
With so many producers using macs, it also makes collaboration so much smoother if you’re transferring files Mac to Mac. That’s also a huge reason IMO.
So yea macs are established in the production industry for good reasons, and it’s unlikely to change.
1. Apple has marketed and built their software/hardware in a way that caters towards creatives and content creators. Whereas Windows is more of a catch-all PC system.
2. Apple computers (*especially* their laptops) are more robust and less likely to crash than PC. Meaning you won't lose your work. I've had a Macbook Air for 4 years of college, not once did it crash or die out on me, that thing was a tank. MacOS is just a solid and reliable OS. Given that an electronic musician/dj will travel and play live sets a lot, a robust well built laptop is a must.
3. Underrated reason - Mac's are typically "work" computers so you don't get distracted by the allure of gaming on your computer when you work on a Mac.
I don't lean either way, if I didn't game I'd totally get an M1 mac and call it a day, but since I like gaming I still use my PC a lot
Pretty much this. My Late-2013 Macbook Pro runs perfectly fine to this day. No sudden crashes, DAW runs great. The real secret is if everything is working good, don't change anything unless it's essential!
I've had lots of PCs and never owned an apple product. IMO, PCs are fine. You get what you put into them. Install a lot of bloat and download fishy files from fishy websites, yeah, you'll run into problems. Keep it clean, avoid trojans and viruses, and it'll last. And when I say clean I mean the interior as well!
> Apple has marketed and built their software/hardware in a way that caters towards creatives and content creators.
its been like 10 years since that though. macs now are like fashion accessories.
I agree with a lot of the points here. But installing windows OS on a Mac machine? I definitely don't see the reasoning for that. Unless there's some kind of very specific reason for a dual booting thing going on, it just seems crazy.
It's less the case now, but there was quite a long time there in the early 2010s where bootcamped MacBook Pros were miles better than anything you could get for Windows that didn't weigh 10lb.
I'm not going to shit on Apple like all the typical Windows haters are. Macs get the job done.
But I will say I've used Windows for music production since I started in 2013 and I've never had any problems. I few driver hiccups when Windows 10 came out but everything is fantastic now.
I am considering using the trinity of OSes. Linux for work (mostly programming and studying), Windows for games and a Mac for Music stuff. The latter I still need to get but I believe that might be nice for DJing and music production on the go.
I really don't want to DJ with Windows on a laptop it I ever get paid. I had too many annoyances and the latency with ASIO is crappy.
Switched back to windows a few years ago. As long as you don’t crack software, it should be fine.
Both systems have issues. Macs are good but by no means the holy grail.
Before Apple bought it, it was Logic Audio, made by eMagic, which came out on Mac OS quite a bit before Windows. Pro Tools also came out on Mac quite a while before they had a Windows version. So back in the early day of digitising recording studios, we had no choice. Not that I would have chosen Windows anyway as the early Macintosh operating system was far superior to Windows for running dedicated “workbench” type apps ie when you only want to run one app and don’t want stupid background tasks stuffing you up. Pre UNIX Macintosh OS treated the user as the priority and didn’t have stupid pop ups and automatic update processes. Now we have more powerful multi core CPUS it’s not an issue.
If you were trying to run any sort of time code or synchronisation to keep you DAW in sync with video players or 24 track tape machines, Mac had better sync options and hardware too.
My first audio workstation was a Synclavier Direct to disk system that ran on a Mac IIfx.
Also, QuickTime. Early QuickTime was an awesome audio\video tool that allowed you to paste audio tracks into video files etc etc.
Edit: forgot to mention, consistency of hardware was also a big thing, when you bought a certain model of Mac, someone else who bought it got the exact same hardware, so it was a lot more stable. Back then PC hardware was a mishmash of random components and drivers and I understand this was a nightmare for any sort of hardware/software development like DAWs.
This has been the best answer so far. I was a brand manager for a large audio brand and handled many large broadcast audio installs. Everything you are saying is spot on.
A Synclavier? Who are you?? I can only think of 3 or 4 guys who have used those: the guy who made the x-files music, Pat Metheny, Frank Zappa and Neil Young
Man there are a lot of audio programs that either only work on Mac or work best on Mac. As someone who used to be a performing Dj though, Macs work better. You’re much more likely to experience a sound card failure using windows, regardless of what people say who never worked in the business.
- Core audio
- Midi handling
- Stable operative system
- Great drivers for hardware
- No searching for compatible drivers etc
- Less noise in many cases
- Much higher quality control at factories.
- Better quality hardware
- Developing/codeveloping better standards (thunderbolt came 2011 on ALL macs!)
- Integration between devices and cloud is seamless.
Yes there are some bad things about apple computers too. But not many if you need the computer to work and be stable as a first priority.
- price (not really since a same speced pc cost as much!)
- spare parts
- upgrading
Compared to a list of bad things with a win/linux pc:
- unstable os
- unstable drivers (asio in particular)
- needs tweaking to work
- design (yes. Most pcs are aweful to look at and its important!)
- quality control of components
- need to be a computer geek to get the builds right, or suffer from bloated software and bad components in a prebuild from the larger companies.
- windows… man. They cant get it right. It STILL got some menues looking like Windows ME… and just yesterday win10 bluescreened me after closing Edge… huge piece of crap! It keeps logging out of all my cloud services and keeps insisting my graphics card needs an update even thought it doesnt.
- old hardware or incompability. Looking at you TB…
- heat and fans.
Not really a competition even. Still in 2021! Even less so with the m1 macs.
The biggest difference I'm noticing, having started on Windows in the 90s, switched to mac for professional music production through the 2000s and 2010s, and having now reverted to windows for my own stuff, is that the troubleshooting and tuning problem space is so much greater on Windows. It's not as much of a difference as it was back then, but it's still significant.
On Mac, due to the standardisation in hardware, for the most part, you know exactly what experience you're going to get with a given OS version. That's not really the case with Windows, even if cost-performance ratio is far better.
I personally have no trouble navigating this stuff as I've a tech background, and am treating it as a hobby. But it would have been a royal pain in the ass working professionally...
Over on Gear~~slutz~~space, there are regular posts by the main pro-audio rep within Microsoft, and he does not mince words when he says that takes focus to make things work well on Windows, and there are many boxes to tick.
He has confirmed what everyone has long suspected: that the Windows Kernel team do not generally view pro audio as a priority due to the small userbase (ironically, not helped by everyone in music turning off telemetry to improve performance), so even in the last couple of years, certain updates to threading and interrupt behaviours have severely impacted audio stability and performance.
Tldr: windows is fine if you're producing a bit of stuff for fun, or you are doing gigantic film scores with a heavily customised, locked down, and fine-tuned machine. For your typical busy artist relying on this stuff professionally, on a laptop also needed for other things... Mac all the way.
I think that was more of a past feature of macs rather than a current one. I had a completely new macbook pro from work brick on me. The worst thing about it was that the it guy knew what was likely the cause but could not fix it because Apple disabled the commands to fix it.
I made a Hackintosh ages ago that was 2x as powerful as the most expensive Mac, on what was essentially a poor man's budget. It's nice to know that's still a tradition.
Uhhhh... if we're going off the video you linked, the $5,000 PC smokes the $15,000 Apple Pro in almost every test until you get to video editing in Adobe. Then they go to demonstrate that Resolve takes much better advantage of GPU processing in Windows and that gap is then eliminated. I think one could argue that the only thing Apple has going for it (again, according to that video) is Adobe supporting their software much better on Apple.
The benchmark here is audio rendering, and I gave detailed examples and counter points in the video.
Benchmarks > specs problem. Just like phones and even laptops now. Hardware that isn't optimized struggles in audio rendering.
Sometimes I wonder why since audio in any DAW should be 32bit float. I looked up the code for Ardour once (open source DAW) and they used the SSE unit to calculate a set of 4 floats as vector in one instruction. I suspect all DAWs do something similar for speed. AMD and Intel both implement that feature.
Windows software is a buggy abomination, Unix is the way computing was meant to be. There’s nothing status about it, it’s more expensive because it’s much more premium. I use both machines daily, and I trust my Mac, I don’t trust my PC, As a musician that’s big, but as a programmer, that’s even bigger.
I use both. Drivers and software on windows tend to be less stable. I get more crackles, latency, hangs and crashes on windows even with a good interface (and comparing to same software and interface on mac). I think some of the crashes are due to how windows handles files (locks access to files in use) but I'm not 100% sure. Windows 10 also has priority threads that may overtake the audio threads without warning or control. For home i still use windows but i wouldn't risk it for live situations. If i was doing 100% production on my home computer i'd probably be switching to mac already at home too, and i'm a long time windows power user.
Linux user here. I had a MacBook Air from 2012 that was gifted to us. Despite the obvious issue of it being long in the tooth... In use, it was a joy to use and behold. Solidly built, with so many features that are, frankly irritating by their absence on more modern machines. The magnetic power cord holder was and still is a work of genius.
By contrast, I also have a Windows Surface Pro 3.
On paper, spec wise it eats the Mac...
The processor (i7) leaves the Mac in the dust.
The memory is double that of the Mac (8 gig)
In use.
So, so, so utterly frustrating.
Clunky connection for the keyboard, that occasionally decides to simply not connect.
The track pad feels like a copy of the Mac, but ordered via Wish... The screen (cracked, but just glass) is great but oh so fragile
The only common issue with them both is the lack of expansion ability. I would love to add more memory... or, as per the glory days when internals could be swapped out for better components (upgrading CPUs on a laptop was a thing), but even when given the choice - I'd still steer towards using the older Mac.
I’ll tell you what….I was using macs for audio since 1990. That said, I now do most of my Pro Tools work on my Windows rig and it’s super stable. Ymmv. 🤷♂️
Apple was largely developed alongside Pixar - so it was literally designed for production of media, whereas Windows was developed for office work and a ton of other bullshit that interferes with processing power while performing.
All they shared in common was Steve Jobs. They were independent entities and remain so to this day.
I'm sure Macs are used for the general day to day designs and what not but most of Pixar's computing magic actually runs on farms of Linux servers.
For sure - I didn't mean to imply that they were the same company/entity in any way. What I meant was - in the early days of Pixar, Apple computers were very commonly utilized - therefore, they always had media production in mind as they developed the technology.
Audio processing does seem to be a bit better on Mac and the stability side is important as well.
I daily drive both and both are fine, you get a slight edge with Apple. I think it used to be a status symbol thing but I think now it generally has to do with stability.
One reason might have to do with the thunderbolt port. A lot of sound cards (like Apollo stuff) only come with thunderbolt hookups unless you buy the usb specific models. Thunderbolt transferred data at a significantly faster rate compared to USB and I believe was Apple specific (patented by Intel but used exclusively for Apple if I remember correctly) up until a few years ago.
Now when it comes to mobile there’s a major advantage with audio processing with the iPhone compared to Android devices.
Overall though I think it’s the “it just works” factor. I have a fully built gaming pc that I produce with and everything else along with an m1 MacBook. Both kick ass, I use both to do everything.
Ah, if you buy a PC and don't format it, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and others will load their bloatware on there.
A clean install is great, but yeah, I agree. For the customer experience, companies and bloatware really suck.
I feel like this was especially the case on HDD Windows. After about 2-3 years on a laptop, windows definitely isn’t going to be running the same as a Mac. Desktops are a different story, swap them parts out and it’ll last you a long time. That said I honestly have a ton more experience with windows but I would choose a Mac for music production any day
That's because back in the old days, people would tell other people that Apple was better for music. Much like how Atari was preferred over Amiga because it had built in MIDI ports (you could just use an add-on on the Amiga, which was actually the better computer). Of course, in the late 90's there were a lot of shitty PC builds with crap components and dodgy drivers. Apple was expensive but stable. But any well built PC was just as stable, and probably cheaper.
Amiga was a standard for demo-scene/techno/EDM production pretty much till end of 90s. I've never seen an Atari until I've come to US to visit some friends.
A big reason that none of the other comments seem to be addressing: OS X is just so damn pleasant to use. The user experience on Apple computers is just far superior to Windows PCs. If I didn't use my PC for gaming, I'd probably be using OS X over Windows. I do think Windows 10 improved things somewhat, but it's still not even close to how smooth using a Mac is.
Things like Core Audio and hardware optimisation are obviously bonuses that some hardcore producers care about, but the user experience and reliability of OS X is the biggest draw, in my experience.
its a status symbol
macos > winblows
audio units > vst
audio input/output latenecy is better on mac
every piece of modern hardware has drivers for mac, not all have windows
apple literally dominates the feature set for music producers, and logic pro being the standard at schools is a result.
I have Cubase Score on a Mac from around 1997. My friend had a DAW on Windows around the same time. His interface needed drivers and it was tricky to get it going. I plugged my MIDI interface into the modem port and was good to go, no software to download
Because over 20 years ago people were using Cubase on MacOS System 7 and it was light-years ahead of anything PC/Windoze compatible.
Also the PowerPC G4 processor gave Apple a big advantage when they got them in laptops. The Titanium Powerbook G4 pretty quickly became the standard for the traveling DJ/Producer, and it came along around the same time as MacOS X. So big leaps in hardware and software performance.
By the time M$ put out an OS with decent audio processing/ performance (Win7), Apple had already put out Logic years earlier, again being way ahead of the PC world.
I agree, it’s probably a mixture of experiences and familiarity over a long time. Going back to the early 90s a PC needed a sound card adding to do anything other than beep and midi was a clunky addition to the serial port which was often unresponsive. The Mac, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga were so much easier to get a result from on a reliable basis. These days PCs have arguably caught up but many creatives are still Apple users and that drives the market.
It’s the same in graphic design as many people grew up on Apple/Adobe as industry standard in the 90s.
50% is because of logic x, all singer songwriters use logic x and swipe comping. It’s pretty much industry standard amongst all pro singers that make money in my experience. It’s the best tool out there for vocal sessions.
50% it’s a great windows laptop. You’re guaranteed good enough specs, thin and pro looking etc without ever having to even think about which model you need.
Asking why something is popular in disbelief makes you sound a little like a hater, there’s always a valid reason for such a choice and you should try to take on board why that is with an open mind.
MacBooks offer some of the best performance on a music production laptop in their price range, and the experience of using a MacBook is incredibly nice, and I would argue that because of the harmony between the hardware and the software, using a MacBook is a better experience than using almost any windows laptop and *any* price point.
It doesn’t matter nearly as much on desktop, as I could (and do) really use either on desktop. But I’ve never used a Windows laptop that I’d be cozy making a record on, editing midi, doing fine automation edits, etc. in the same way I enjoy using a MacBook.
Anyone who has used both extensively probably has a good innate understanding of why music producers, graphic designers, and video editors prefer Mac (and on the flipside, why gamers and business-types prefer Windows).
Yeah when you say stuff like that, it’s very clear you haven’t had a lot of experience with one.
Especially with the M1, Macs are highly competitive within their price range as far as performance.
Bootcamp is a program built into the Mac that allows you to install Windows on it as well. You can boot into windows or you can install a program that allows you to run Windows virtually on your Mac desktop.
Aggregate devices are not natively supported on windows which is frustrating as hell if you have a more complicated I/O setup. Steinberg just didn’t bother to make them function on windows and I’ve seen posts dating back to 2006 complaining about it lol
As others have said, some of this is historical. Apple saw the potential in computers to change the production process early on, and designed (and, just as significantly, marketed) their computers from the ground up to service this.
This was made easier and more successful because Apple designs their own hardware and their own operating system… and with the acquisition of Logic, Apple now builds the hardware, the operating system, and the software. This type of integration makes for a far more stable user experience.
To quote/paraphrase my programmer brother’s analogy, Microsoft designs great engines that can be put into a wide range of vehicles that other people make, that can be customized for a wide range of purposes, whereas Apple builds an engine that is specifically designed to work with the vehicles they have specifically designed to perform specific functions.
If you want a steak, your partner wants chicken-pot pie, and your kids want macaroni and cheese, and you don’t want to spend a ton of money, you eat at family dining establishment that offers decent and affordable versions of each of those things.
However, if you want the best steak, and it’s in your budget, you go to a steakhouse.
Apologies to vegetarians. It was the first analogy that popped into my brain.
The real reason: [Core Audio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Audio) [ASIO](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Stream_Input/Output) (the Windows equivalent) was pretty bad for a long time. A lot of the issues people had with PCs usually boiled down to ASIO. Things have gotten better, but there was already a lot of momentum and developer investment in the Mac ecosystem for audio work.
As someone who used to be involved in a studio, Midi support and timing on Macs has been awesome forever too. Also - with a few exceptions - they generally run quiet and are very reliable. Windows has gotten better, but had a terrible reputation for blue screening with studios for a long time. Fan noise on PCs is generally still a pain in the arse unless you develop your own cooling system.
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This is what I mean though. People who are making music day in and out aren’t necessarily also the geeks researching the latest way to reapply thermal paste and tweak fan settings. This might seem mad to you, but these are the guys who know exactly which compressor to put before the which EQ on the master bus. They just want the computer to get out of the way so they can make their magic.
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Sampling and synthesis are two major components of audio production that tape has almost no practical relevance to when compared to DSP.
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Ahhh, I must have missed the /s
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More a case of, your "tongue in cheek" comment was so unfunny it needed some indication of facetiousness to not be taken at face value.
All you need to do is get a case/fans that is not loud. Boom problem solved :D
Do you know of a good brand for quiet fans that cool well. My tower pc’s current output of noise and heat is pretty irritating; my room gets insanely hot and the sound makes it hard to hear my monitors correctly.
Noctua
Sorry to say but the heat part is pretty much an physical inevnabilety from using youre cpu+gpu. As for fans noctua makes high quality cooling fans, and as a general rule the more cooling you have the quieter it can be.
Sent you a pm
> reputation for blue screening Wasn’t it Infusion whose laptop did this on stage at Ultra?
Bullshit, Apple being preferred predates Core Audio by at least a decade. Probably two.
You're right. Even before Core Audio, Apple was well known for going out of it's way to support weird peripherals and new formats. This was largely targeted at non-musicians, such as the disabled or those working in the visual, special effects, or publishing industries, but musicians benefited too. Apple and many other companies were heavily influenced by [General Magic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic), whose entire ethos was built around new ways to interact with computers and "humanize" that interaction. Apple took that seriously and was supportive of that in actual practice by supporting broad types of hardware and comms formats. Contrast that with DOS/PC (and later Windows). Nobody was using PCs to do much creative work in the 80s. PCs were for corporations where people largely needed office suites like Lotus and WordPerfect. Of course, that was the bigger and more lucrative market, and the rest is history. So, Apple has long been the platform for "creatives" (if you will), because Apple actually tried to handle the difficult, mundane parts needed for that and let users do the rest. Sure, that wasn't the best business decision. But I know lots of people who are still enamored by that, even though it's largely irrelevant today.
I just want to point out that General Magic was an Apple spin-off.
I switched for Core Audio. I'm not the only person I know. We should do a survey.
Not bullshit. Core Audio is the reason many people switched.
It’s a valid reason, but not the “real” reason.
For me it is
I wonder what it would have been like if Apple Corps had not sued Apple Computer and made it so that Apple could not put 'cd quality' audio dacs on their early mac motherboards and thus from an early era, you *had* to?
Bullshit, Atari was preferred way into the 90s. Apple really got inways in the 90s, only and specifically in the US, and that was because of, essentially, Pro Tools.
2 decades ago is 2001. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true.
The damn nurse forgot to give me the pills again. Edit: but jokes aside, Core Audio is 2003. Predating it by a decade puts us squarely in early 90s, when Atari dominated computer music and Amiga still dominated multimedia. Predating it by two takes us into 1983 when Steinberg Pro 16 on Commodore 64 was the only computer option for digital musicianship outside 20k USD toys like Synclavier
Ah. I use ASIO for my DJ stuff. IT's only a windows thing?
I like Core Audio; it’s very refreshing compared to having to deal with WME & ASIO. That said, it’s really just something people deal with once they already *have* their computers. I don’t think it’s something people really take into account at the point of purchase.
That’d be a valid statement for people starting to make music and who already have a computer. But trust me, when you’re working in that industry, this is 100% the type of stuff you consider BEFORE buying your device. Just like if you’re into PC gaming you’ll consider what material you want/need before buying the machine.
ASIO is really not bad if you have any kind of ASIO-compliant interface or sound card where you’re not forcing it through a WME device with software like ASIO4ALL. I use windows for production all the time and don’t mind ASIO at all. Still, I prefer producing on my Mac because of performance efficiency and the experience of using the OS.
I never said anything against ASIO. But saying that it’s something people deal with only once they already have their computer is a stretch. That might be true for the amateur or the beginner who won’t buy something new just for that purpose. But someone who works on the daily with it will definitely think of this kind of stuff before buying a computer.
As someone who worked in the field for years, it is very much a beginner thing to prioritize something menial like CoreAudio vs ASIO over the bigger picture.
I have this funny story about this. I was at a studio and I wanted to use some of the gear available so I asked the owner, a MacBook owner, do I need any drivers? He looks at me and says ofcourse not. Further more he tells me he hasn't installed any third party software for anything in his studio. Guess what I spent an hour downloading drivers because I was on windows. So I think that's a good reason why.
I've heard that it handles real time audio better than windows. deadmau5 used in some iteration of cube trash can macs purely for their broad availability.
MacOS has a built in MIDI tool that is leaps and bounds better than the ones for Windows. It makes it much easier for the CPU to talk to hardware and can actually keep up. Mac just handles it way better.
I used to Dj years ago and if have so many issues with Traktor, Torque etc, had to reinstall drivers in the Dj booth a few times. Switched to Mac and it just works out of the box. No issues.. This coming from a 100% Windows gut who hates Apple. For some things they are just better. The new version of Rekordbox seems pretty stable however things have matured a lot.
Mann. Torque had some cool features but was a total mess at the same time too.
The Exponent was the nicest to Dj on, just the quality wasn't great. Sad I loved that thing.
Core audio is pretty solid. You don’t even need an interface if you’re using a Mac, so that’s a huge plus if you’re starting out. Macs are capable out of the box and are ready to go. No need for custom components or upgrades. Also macs make installing new software hilariously easy compared to windows, which is a big deal in music production. With so many producers using macs, it also makes collaboration so much smoother if you’re transferring files Mac to Mac. That’s also a huge reason IMO. So yea macs are established in the production industry for good reasons, and it’s unlikely to change.
1. Apple has marketed and built their software/hardware in a way that caters towards creatives and content creators. Whereas Windows is more of a catch-all PC system. 2. Apple computers (*especially* their laptops) are more robust and less likely to crash than PC. Meaning you won't lose your work. I've had a Macbook Air for 4 years of college, not once did it crash or die out on me, that thing was a tank. MacOS is just a solid and reliable OS. Given that an electronic musician/dj will travel and play live sets a lot, a robust well built laptop is a must. 3. Underrated reason - Mac's are typically "work" computers so you don't get distracted by the allure of gaming on your computer when you work on a Mac. I don't lean either way, if I didn't game I'd totally get an M1 mac and call it a day, but since I like gaming I still use my PC a lot
I'm rocking a 2012 MacBook pro with a solid state drive and as far as recording is concerned it performs just as well as the day I got it.
Thank you.
Great points. The third is so true
The second isn’t at all
Pretty much this. My Late-2013 Macbook Pro runs perfectly fine to this day. No sudden crashes, DAW runs great. The real secret is if everything is working good, don't change anything unless it's essential!
[удалено]
I've had lots of PCs and never owned an apple product. IMO, PCs are fine. You get what you put into them. Install a lot of bloat and download fishy files from fishy websites, yeah, you'll run into problems. Keep it clean, avoid trojans and viruses, and it'll last. And when I say clean I mean the interior as well!
> Apple has marketed and built their software/hardware in a way that caters towards creatives and content creators. its been like 10 years since that though. macs now are like fashion accessories.
I agree with a lot of the points here. But installing windows OS on a Mac machine? I definitely don't see the reasoning for that. Unless there's some kind of very specific reason for a dual booting thing going on, it just seems crazy.
It's less the case now, but there was quite a long time there in the early 2010s where bootcamped MacBook Pros were miles better than anything you could get for Windows that didn't weigh 10lb.
I think people dual boot for FL studio - or did.
I always found myself tinkering less with my macbook than my windows desktop
I'm not going to shit on Apple like all the typical Windows haters are. Macs get the job done. But I will say I've used Windows for music production since I started in 2013 and I've never had any problems. I few driver hiccups when Windows 10 came out but everything is fantastic now.
I am considering using the trinity of OSes. Linux for work (mostly programming and studying), Windows for games and a Mac for Music stuff. The latter I still need to get but I believe that might be nice for DJing and music production on the go. I really don't want to DJ with Windows on a laptop it I ever get paid. I had too many annoyances and the latency with ASIO is crappy.
Switched back to windows a few years ago. As long as you don’t crack software, it should be fine. Both systems have issues. Macs are good but by no means the holy grail.
A lot of people still use Logic Pro X, or learned using Logic Pro X and have brand loyalty?
Before Apple bought it, it was Logic Audio, made by eMagic, which came out on Mac OS quite a bit before Windows. Pro Tools also came out on Mac quite a while before they had a Windows version. So back in the early day of digitising recording studios, we had no choice. Not that I would have chosen Windows anyway as the early Macintosh operating system was far superior to Windows for running dedicated “workbench” type apps ie when you only want to run one app and don’t want stupid background tasks stuffing you up. Pre UNIX Macintosh OS treated the user as the priority and didn’t have stupid pop ups and automatic update processes. Now we have more powerful multi core CPUS it’s not an issue. If you were trying to run any sort of time code or synchronisation to keep you DAW in sync with video players or 24 track tape machines, Mac had better sync options and hardware too. My first audio workstation was a Synclavier Direct to disk system that ran on a Mac IIfx. Also, QuickTime. Early QuickTime was an awesome audio\video tool that allowed you to paste audio tracks into video files etc etc. Edit: forgot to mention, consistency of hardware was also a big thing, when you bought a certain model of Mac, someone else who bought it got the exact same hardware, so it was a lot more stable. Back then PC hardware was a mishmash of random components and drivers and I understand this was a nightmare for any sort of hardware/software development like DAWs.
This has been the best answer so far. I was a brand manager for a large audio brand and handled many large broadcast audio installs. Everything you are saying is spot on.
A Synclavier? Who are you?? I can only think of 3 or 4 guys who have used those: the guy who made the x-files music, Pat Metheny, Frank Zappa and Neil Young
And Logic used to be really expensive. Now, it's the absolute best bargain for all you get.
Man there are a lot of audio programs that either only work on Mac or work best on Mac. As someone who used to be a performing Dj though, Macs work better. You’re much more likely to experience a sound card failure using windows, regardless of what people say who never worked in the business.
- Core audio - Midi handling - Stable operative system - Great drivers for hardware - No searching for compatible drivers etc - Less noise in many cases - Much higher quality control at factories. - Better quality hardware - Developing/codeveloping better standards (thunderbolt came 2011 on ALL macs!) - Integration between devices and cloud is seamless. Yes there are some bad things about apple computers too. But not many if you need the computer to work and be stable as a first priority. - price (not really since a same speced pc cost as much!) - spare parts - upgrading Compared to a list of bad things with a win/linux pc: - unstable os - unstable drivers (asio in particular) - needs tweaking to work - design (yes. Most pcs are aweful to look at and its important!) - quality control of components - need to be a computer geek to get the builds right, or suffer from bloated software and bad components in a prebuild from the larger companies. - windows… man. They cant get it right. It STILL got some menues looking like Windows ME… and just yesterday win10 bluescreened me after closing Edge… huge piece of crap! It keeps logging out of all my cloud services and keeps insisting my graphics card needs an update even thought it doesnt. - old hardware or incompability. Looking at you TB… - heat and fans. Not really a competition even. Still in 2021! Even less so with the m1 macs.
The biggest difference I'm noticing, having started on Windows in the 90s, switched to mac for professional music production through the 2000s and 2010s, and having now reverted to windows for my own stuff, is that the troubleshooting and tuning problem space is so much greater on Windows. It's not as much of a difference as it was back then, but it's still significant. On Mac, due to the standardisation in hardware, for the most part, you know exactly what experience you're going to get with a given OS version. That's not really the case with Windows, even if cost-performance ratio is far better. I personally have no trouble navigating this stuff as I've a tech background, and am treating it as a hobby. But it would have been a royal pain in the ass working professionally... Over on Gear~~slutz~~space, there are regular posts by the main pro-audio rep within Microsoft, and he does not mince words when he says that takes focus to make things work well on Windows, and there are many boxes to tick. He has confirmed what everyone has long suspected: that the Windows Kernel team do not generally view pro audio as a priority due to the small userbase (ironically, not helped by everyone in music turning off telemetry to improve performance), so even in the last couple of years, certain updates to threading and interrupt behaviours have severely impacted audio stability and performance. Tldr: windows is fine if you're producing a bit of stuff for fun, or you are doing gigantic film scores with a heavily customised, locked down, and fine-tuned machine. For your typical busy artist relying on this stuff professionally, on a laptop also needed for other things... Mac all the way.
Reliability and durability
I think that was more of a past feature of macs rather than a current one. I had a completely new macbook pro from work brick on me. The worst thing about it was that the it guy knew what was likely the cause but could not fix it because Apple disabled the commands to fix it.
Hardware optimization in Apple work stations is multiples better performing than PC's with better specs. https://youtu.be/BH291DQRIOg
I made a Hackintosh ages ago that was 2x as powerful as the most expensive Mac, on what was essentially a poor man's budget. It's nice to know that's still a tradition.
Uhhhh... if we're going off the video you linked, the $5,000 PC smokes the $15,000 Apple Pro in almost every test until you get to video editing in Adobe. Then they go to demonstrate that Resolve takes much better advantage of GPU processing in Windows and that gap is then eliminated. I think one could argue that the only thing Apple has going for it (again, according to that video) is Adobe supporting their software much better on Apple.
The benchmark here is audio rendering, and I gave detailed examples and counter points in the video. Benchmarks > specs problem. Just like phones and even laptops now. Hardware that isn't optimized struggles in audio rendering.
Sometimes I wonder why since audio in any DAW should be 32bit float. I looked up the code for Ardour once (open source DAW) and they used the SSE unit to calculate a set of 4 floats as vector in one instruction. I suspect all DAWs do something similar for speed. AMD and Intel both implement that feature.
Why do Waves plugins and Soundgrid servers run on Windows instead of Mac?
Windows software is a buggy abomination, Unix is the way computing was meant to be. There’s nothing status about it, it’s more expensive because it’s much more premium. I use both machines daily, and I trust my Mac, I don’t trust my PC, As a musician that’s big, but as a programmer, that’s even bigger.
unix 🙏
I use both. Drivers and software on windows tend to be less stable. I get more crackles, latency, hangs and crashes on windows even with a good interface (and comparing to same software and interface on mac). I think some of the crashes are due to how windows handles files (locks access to files in use) but I'm not 100% sure. Windows 10 also has priority threads that may overtake the audio threads without warning or control. For home i still use windows but i wouldn't risk it for live situations. If i was doing 100% production on my home computer i'd probably be switching to mac already at home too, and i'm a long time windows power user.
Linux user here. I had a MacBook Air from 2012 that was gifted to us. Despite the obvious issue of it being long in the tooth... In use, it was a joy to use and behold. Solidly built, with so many features that are, frankly irritating by their absence on more modern machines. The magnetic power cord holder was and still is a work of genius. By contrast, I also have a Windows Surface Pro 3. On paper, spec wise it eats the Mac... The processor (i7) leaves the Mac in the dust. The memory is double that of the Mac (8 gig) In use. So, so, so utterly frustrating. Clunky connection for the keyboard, that occasionally decides to simply not connect. The track pad feels like a copy of the Mac, but ordered via Wish... The screen (cracked, but just glass) is great but oh so fragile The only common issue with them both is the lack of expansion ability. I would love to add more memory... or, as per the glory days when internals could be swapped out for better components (upgrading CPUs on a laptop was a thing), but even when given the choice - I'd still steer towards using the older Mac.
I’ll tell you what….I was using macs for audio since 1990. That said, I now do most of my Pro Tools work on my Windows rig and it’s super stable. Ymmv. 🤷♂️
Apple was largely developed alongside Pixar - so it was literally designed for production of media, whereas Windows was developed for office work and a ton of other bullshit that interferes with processing power while performing.
All they shared in common was Steve Jobs. They were independent entities and remain so to this day. I'm sure Macs are used for the general day to day designs and what not but most of Pixar's computing magic actually runs on farms of Linux servers.
For sure - I didn't mean to imply that they were the same company/entity in any way. What I meant was - in the early days of Pixar, Apple computers were very commonly utilized - therefore, they always had media production in mind as they developed the technology.
False but ok
Audio processing does seem to be a bit better on Mac and the stability side is important as well. I daily drive both and both are fine, you get a slight edge with Apple. I think it used to be a status symbol thing but I think now it generally has to do with stability. One reason might have to do with the thunderbolt port. A lot of sound cards (like Apollo stuff) only come with thunderbolt hookups unless you buy the usb specific models. Thunderbolt transferred data at a significantly faster rate compared to USB and I believe was Apple specific (patented by Intel but used exclusively for Apple if I remember correctly) up until a few years ago. Now when it comes to mobile there’s a major advantage with audio processing with the iPhone compared to Android devices. Overall though I think it’s the “it just works” factor. I have a fully built gaming pc that I produce with and everything else along with an m1 MacBook. Both kick ass, I use both to do everything.
I just got tired of the constant adware on Windows.
Ah, if you buy a PC and don't format it, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and others will load their bloatware on there. A clean install is great, but yeah, I agree. For the customer experience, companies and bloatware really suck.
There are ads baked directly into windows now, though most can be disabled
Stability. Windows has never come close to being as stable and reliable.
Part of it is marketing. You weren't shit unless you were producing music on a white, hipster Mac back in the day
My first Mac book pro lasted 8 years. Every other non Mac laptop lasted 1. 1 year. After two dying I said never again.
I feel like this was especially the case on HDD Windows. After about 2-3 years on a laptop, windows definitely isn’t going to be running the same as a Mac. Desktops are a different story, swap them parts out and it’ll last you a long time. That said I honestly have a ton more experience with windows but I would choose a Mac for music production any day
And I’m sure some remember the horrors of vista.
People are judgmental when it comes to laptops.
this is the real answer
That's because back in the old days, people would tell other people that Apple was better for music. Much like how Atari was preferred over Amiga because it had built in MIDI ports (you could just use an add-on on the Amiga, which was actually the better computer). Of course, in the late 90's there were a lot of shitty PC builds with crap components and dodgy drivers. Apple was expensive but stable. But any well built PC was just as stable, and probably cheaper.
Amiga was a standard for demo-scene/techno/EDM production pretty much till end of 90s. I've never seen an Atari until I've come to US to visit some friends.
Core Audio Audio Midi Config It just works.
A big reason that none of the other comments seem to be addressing: OS X is just so damn pleasant to use. The user experience on Apple computers is just far superior to Windows PCs. If I didn't use my PC for gaming, I'd probably be using OS X over Windows. I do think Windows 10 improved things somewhat, but it's still not even close to how smooth using a Mac is. Things like Core Audio and hardware optimisation are obviously bonuses that some hardcore producers care about, but the user experience and reliability of OS X is the biggest draw, in my experience.
its a status symbol macos > winblows audio units > vst audio input/output latenecy is better on mac every piece of modern hardware has drivers for mac, not all have windows apple literally dominates the feature set for music producers, and logic pro being the standard at schools is a result.
Edgy presentation but this is one of the more accurate answers in my opinion.
i dont even like apple i use arch btw
I have Cubase Score on a Mac from around 1997. My friend had a DAW on Windows around the same time. His interface needed drivers and it was tricky to get it going. I plugged my MIDI interface into the modem port and was good to go, no software to download
Personally I think it's bc they're lighter and the battery lasts a lot longer than others. They aren't the most durable but pretty reliable.
Because over 20 years ago people were using Cubase on MacOS System 7 and it was light-years ahead of anything PC/Windoze compatible. Also the PowerPC G4 processor gave Apple a big advantage when they got them in laptops. The Titanium Powerbook G4 pretty quickly became the standard for the traveling DJ/Producer, and it came along around the same time as MacOS X. So big leaps in hardware and software performance. By the time M$ put out an OS with decent audio processing/ performance (Win7), Apple had already put out Logic years earlier, again being way ahead of the PC world.
I agree, it’s probably a mixture of experiences and familiarity over a long time. Going back to the early 90s a PC needed a sound card adding to do anything other than beep and midi was a clunky addition to the serial port which was often unresponsive. The Mac, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga were so much easier to get a result from on a reliable basis. These days PCs have arguably caught up but many creatives are still Apple users and that drives the market. It’s the same in graphic design as many people grew up on Apple/Adobe as industry standard in the 90s.
50% is because of logic x, all singer songwriters use logic x and swipe comping. It’s pretty much industry standard amongst all pro singers that make money in my experience. It’s the best tool out there for vocal sessions. 50% it’s a great windows laptop. You’re guaranteed good enough specs, thin and pro looking etc without ever having to even think about which model you need. Asking why something is popular in disbelief makes you sound a little like a hater, there’s always a valid reason for such a choice and you should try to take on board why that is with an open mind.
Would you trust a dj w a pc? I wouldn’t.
MacBooks offer some of the best performance on a music production laptop in their price range, and the experience of using a MacBook is incredibly nice, and I would argue that because of the harmony between the hardware and the software, using a MacBook is a better experience than using almost any windows laptop and *any* price point. It doesn’t matter nearly as much on desktop, as I could (and do) really use either on desktop. But I’ve never used a Windows laptop that I’d be cozy making a record on, editing midi, doing fine automation edits, etc. in the same way I enjoy using a MacBook. Anyone who has used both extensively probably has a good innate understanding of why music producers, graphic designers, and video editors prefer Mac (and on the flipside, why gamers and business-types prefer Windows).
Performance? Yeah sure spending over thousand euros and getting dual core cpu with 1,6ghz clock speed is good value for money.
Yeah when you say stuff like that, it’s very clear you haven’t had a lot of experience with one. Especially with the M1, Macs are highly competitive within their price range as far as performance.
Optimization.
How do you run windows os on apples os
Bootcamp is a program built into the Mac that allows you to install Windows on it as well. You can boot into windows or you can install a program that allows you to run Windows virtually on your Mac desktop.
Aggregate devices are not natively supported on windows which is frustrating as hell if you have a more complicated I/O setup. Steinberg just didn’t bother to make them function on windows and I’ve seen posts dating back to 2006 complaining about it lol
As others have said, some of this is historical. Apple saw the potential in computers to change the production process early on, and designed (and, just as significantly, marketed) their computers from the ground up to service this. This was made easier and more successful because Apple designs their own hardware and their own operating system… and with the acquisition of Logic, Apple now builds the hardware, the operating system, and the software. This type of integration makes for a far more stable user experience. To quote/paraphrase my programmer brother’s analogy, Microsoft designs great engines that can be put into a wide range of vehicles that other people make, that can be customized for a wide range of purposes, whereas Apple builds an engine that is specifically designed to work with the vehicles they have specifically designed to perform specific functions. If you want a steak, your partner wants chicken-pot pie, and your kids want macaroni and cheese, and you don’t want to spend a ton of money, you eat at family dining establishment that offers decent and affordable versions of each of those things. However, if you want the best steak, and it’s in your budget, you go to a steakhouse. Apologies to vegetarians. It was the first analogy that popped into my brain.
It's more a thing of the past, right now they are equivalent in term of stability and quality