Hey Guys, I usually don't post rants, but this time good ol' Windows finally got to me. I'm not trying to advertise for either company's software, but I will recant my experience and you guys can take away what you like.
I have both a custom built pc with an asus MOBO (mid to high range) and a MBP from 1.5 years ago. Both have SSD and >8 gb ram so installing anything is super fast, and the OS is really fast.
Since I've started doing musical things and recording or at best trying to lay down a beat in adobe audition (when I was in high school) or fruity loops, XP has never cooperated with me and I have always had latency issues and issues with audio drivers, especially that ASIO driver. This drove me crazy! I had a simple 4 bar 4 sample beat running on XP through fruity and after one loop, I got pops and cracks on regular drivers! When I switched to ASIO, it got better, but then windows was highly uncooperative with the driver when playing windows sounds! I felt like no matter what driver I used or what assignment of driver router (through the 3-4 different locations for NATIVE windows audio card routing) that the system could not play anything audio processing related properly. I even had an instance in W7 with the ASIO driver that anything in Reason worked fine through optical output to my sound system, UNTIL a windows sound popped up and crashed the computer because Windows decided to re-route the driver from ASIO to native and downsample to native sample rate, causing both Reason and Windows to crash (I used a special sound card to get optical output).
This lead me to finally buy a MBP after all those annoyances, hoping I would never have to worry about driver assignments. Of course there was a learning curve to the mac, as I had never used on before and took a plunge, but after 1.5 years, I've never had an audio issue! The worst thing that has happened to me was no sound output because I did not chose the correct output in the system preferences (I was running output to laptop speakers, not my interface, a MOTU 6x6). I had also used the MBP without issue with apogee equipment, but that was meant for Mac stuff.
this brings me to today, I decided to hook up my PC to the MOTU with usb, and MOTU (as always) outputs to my Tannoy monitors. After installing the motu drivers and spending 5 minutes assigning the correct output to the MOTU from the pc, I tried the sound test, and everything seemed to work, success no? NO! why? NO CLUE! and I will not even bother checking! Why am I so angry with Windows (7) ? because even though sound test worked fine, I popped open youtube, and what did I get? loud pops and clicks through the speakers, and random ones too! I thought that after about 2 years of ditching the platform for any sound system (outside of headphones) there may be improved driver cohesion, but no! And it amazes me the complexity I have with the issue!
Of course, I understand there are many those who have systems running perfectly on their PC's with audio interfaces, but I feel like for me, anytime I try, I'm beating a dead horse. So I will remain using a Mac for all my audio requirements because I believe their method of integrating audio into the system is done properly with seamless interface integration in mind.
To conclude, I like Mac for audio because it works, and I like PC for productivity because its easier to use. I use my PC and mac extensively and cannot say I will ditch either platform as I find some PC specific apps (cough word cough) are just a poop on the mac, and some programs like Solidworks and MAtlab just work better on PC. But as Audio is my hobby, and looking like a hipster is a side-effect I can live with, I will continue using my Mac for all music related activities.
The End.
PS: sorry If I wasted your time while you read this.
I have both a custom built pc with an asus MOBO (mid to high range) and a MBP from 1.5 years ago. Both have SSD and >8 gb ram so installing anything is super fast, and the OS is really fast.
Since I've started doing musical things and recording or at best trying to lay down a beat in adobe audition (when I was in high school) or fruity loops, XP has never cooperated with me and I have always had latency issues and issues with audio drivers, especially that ASIO driver. This drove me crazy! I had a simple 4 bar 4 sample beat running on XP through fruity and after one loop, I got pops and cracks on regular drivers! When I switched to ASIO, it got better, but then windows was highly uncooperative with the driver when playing windows sounds! I felt like no matter what driver I used or what assignment of driver router (through the 3-4 different locations for NATIVE windows audio card routing) that the system could not play anything audio processing related properly. I even had an instance in W7 with the ASIO driver that anything in Reason worked fine through optical output to my sound system, UNTIL a windows sound popped up and crashed the computer because Windows decided to re-route the driver from ASIO to native and downsample to native sample rate, causing both Reason and Windows to crash (I used a special sound card to get optical output).
This lead me to finally buy a MBP after all those annoyances, hoping I would never have to worry about driver assignments. Of course there was a learning curve to the mac, as I had never used on before and took a plunge, but after 1.5 years, I've never had an audio issue! The worst thing that has happened to me was no sound output because I did not chose the correct output in the system preferences (I was running output to laptop speakers, not my interface, a MOTU 6x6). I had also used the MBP without issue with apogee equipment, but that was meant for Mac stuff.
this brings me to today, I decided to hook up my PC to the MOTU with usb, and MOTU (as always) outputs to my Tannoy monitors. After installing the motu drivers and spending 5 minutes assigning the correct output to the MOTU from the pc, I tried the sound test, and everything seemed to work, success no? NO! why? NO CLUE! and I will not even bother checking! Why am I so angry with Windows (7) ? because even though sound test worked fine, I popped open youtube, and what did I get? loud pops and clicks through the speakers, and random ones too! I thought that after about 2 years of ditching the platform for any sound system (outside of headphones) there may be improved driver cohesion, but no! And it amazes me the complexity I have with the issue!
Of course, I understand there are many those who have systems running perfectly on their PC's with audio interfaces, but I feel like for me, anytime I try, I'm beating a dead horse. So I will remain using a Mac for all my audio requirements because I believe their method of integrating audio into the system is done properly with seamless interface integration in mind.
To conclude, I like Mac for audio because it works, and I like PC for productivity because its easier to use. I use my PC and mac extensively and cannot say I will ditch either platform as I find some PC specific apps (cough word cough) are just a poop on the mac, and some programs like Solidworks and MAtlab just work better on PC. But as Audio is my hobby, and looking like a hipster is a side-effect I can live with, I will continue using my Mac for all music related activities.
The End.
PS: sorry If I wasted your time while you read this.
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