help, what next New Mac or PC for using Reaktor?

Okay, I can (kindof) solve the G4 vs P4 speed debate here.
I own a 2.4GHz P4 with 533Mhz Front Side Buss and DDR 333 RAM
I also own a G4 Powerbook 12 inch which has an 867Mhz G4 with a 133Mhz FSB and DDR 266 RAM

On a home cooked ensemble I have made (which incidently doesn't deserve to be released) my P4 has a CPU load of 12% Max whereas my Powerbook has a CPU load of 30%.
NB - The Powerbook 12 has no L3 cache (which Powermacs do) which would add about 15% to the performance.

And to stick my two pennies in - I would never buy a Mac desktop as they are underpowered for the money. I can *just* live with windows, but I built the PC myself so I'm a bit of a techy nerd
Then again I would *never* *ever* buy a PC laptop as they are hot, cheap plasticky things that look like they'll break if you walk briskly with them. And yes, I've owned one. And yes it was awful.

Don't know if that helps at all....

 

If you've been using Mac for as long as I have, (nearly 14 years, I was 5 years old when my dad brought home the first LC) speed isn't really an argument. Then, as I've said a million times, I don't requre as much as many of you lot probably do, but I've just got a new 900MHz iBook (a G3!) with a bit of extra RAM. It took me half an hour to set things up, ten minutes to install an register software, I run iTunes (me and my tinnitus can't stand silence for more than three seconds), MSN Messenger, Explorer and build my overtly simple Reaktor ensembles at the same time with no problems... and it looks smug as hell. I'm happy with it and I feel at home - any PC user wanna laugh at that, go on. I'm not a computer geek, I'm a modular sampler nut and a guitarist. So there.

OSX kicks arse. It looks beautiful and everything integrates really well. When Apple do their iMusic/MicroLogicX with AU support-app, I'll be a very happy bunny.

-Noisetonepaws

 

Kevink,
Une bonne boisson fraiche qui mele le vin et les oranges doit bien decoiffer - de quoi aerer les neurons a moitie morphes avec les macros
de REAKTOR! Dans la dedale des cables, leve
un verre, et voila, les macs saluent les pcs avant de lever leurs compteurs a Pigalle!
aip

 

"And to stick my two pennies in - I would never buy a Mac desktop as they are underpowered for the money. I can *just* live with windows, but I built the PC myself so I'm a bit of a techy nerd
Then again I would *never* *ever* buy a PC laptop as they are hot, cheap plasticky things that look like they'll break if you walk briskly with them. And yes, I've owned one. And yes it was awful."

this i totally agree with. i need a laptop because i do a lot of
live gigs.

if i had the money i would have a desktop pc and wait for the new
powerbooks that johnnowak was talking about. however i have not got the money so i need a faster laptop (my g3 500Mhz is
far too slow for R4). so i am going to wait a bit for developments in the mac world.

btw, i have started to do a bit of music technology teaching using
a dell pc. i really like XP but anything before, i really hate.

and spoombung, you don't half talk a load of rubbish sometimes
but you are right about "Mac users are one of the most self-deluded groups in the known universe?" but the rest of your post......all i will say is, wait a few weeks or better still next
january. hopefully you will be eating your words. Hah!!

sowari

 

Sowari, thou art a fool

"and spoombung, you don't half talk a load of rubbish sometimes"

Aside for thy uncanny , nay, SUPERNATURAL ability to guess what others have in their itune collections, methinks many a poor soul would fancy there is a far greater degree of flatulance issuing from thyself, dear sir. Evidenced in thy sounds, thy utterings no less.

Aye... I do remember thee from the Ticklish gig. The poor ginger-haired fool, beated and chapped with tanned antiquity, tripping atop barstools and clamouring for a lantern before heading headlong in to the depths of our beloved theatre seats, alas….

 

which desktop PC for this Mac user to buy?

After trying to run Reaktor 4 on my Mac G4 and loving the way it sounds but frustrated for reasons already posted here--can anyone give me the name and description of a PC that is a good stable machine for sale this September? Please describe CPU and speed, Brand, etc...I have read the benchmark but I don't see brands described there. I am a Mac guy who needs hand holding. I will try and chase this PC with Reaktor standalone to Logic 6 on my Mac if I can figure out how to do that.
Matthew

 

Dells are the most reliable ready-built machines (in my experience).

In terms of Mac or PC, I owned an LC630, a PowerPC 7200, a blue Mac G3, and an iMac. OS 9 is, and will be for awhile, the best OS on the planet.

But...OS9 was left behind and a pretty but useless OS was unveiled.

OSX is an amazing system, but a UI disaster. Doing simple things like moving around in the file system is terribly awkward, and speed is hampered even more by the fact that Apple chose to use Control as their 'second mouse button'.

I use XP now, but it's fairly unstable. At least I can get things done.

What I'm waiting for is a Linux version of Reaktor, then I'm going to switch over!

cheers

 

The finder in OS X can be setup to work exactly as it does in OS 9. Originally I hated how X worked by default, but now I vastly prefer it to 9. Still.. the option to make it work like 9 remains (its right in preferences).

OS X is UNIX based, hence to say it is pretty but useless shows a fair amount of ignorance of the OS (sorry). It's a very stable OS with solid built-in audio support. There's nothing useless about it.

A decent two button mouse is 40 dollars, tops. Certainly not a reason to abandon your current platform.

I'm not saying a Mac is better than a PC here (my opinions aside). What I am saying is that what mallahat is saying isn't very factual or relevant, and you should not use it in your buying decision.

 

will you use also a sequencer ? my problem is i use logic gold since years and i`m a pc-user. now i must switch to mac ( cubase etc. not for me), i`m really frustrated.+ for a pc: i can build my own machine and have more power. i dont like it when i must waiting for apple releases. excuse my denglish !!!
bye ivan

 

Sucks that Apple stole Logic from ya. Hopefully you'll grow to enjoy your new, more expensive platform.

 

For what it's worth I use PC's & also bought an iBook cos I got sick of windows falling over. Saying that I refuse to upgrade to windows XP (too expensive) & I've heard that's more reliable. I've had trouble with XP on friends machines though. My more professional machine of choice is still the iBook OSX is sweet & rock solid compared to win 98. Very ocassionally apps crash out but never take the OS down. It IS very underpowered compared to the win98 AMD 2400+ I recently built (for less cash than the iBook)- I compared reaktor running on both until I decided which one to register my copy on & the AMD ran ensembles at 20-30% cpu that overload my 700MGHz iBook. I much prefer OSX though so went for reliabilty, portability & the iBook.

 

...Almost a year using a PowerBook 867mhz (Osx)+Logic for gig and project= ZERO CRASH !!! Hum, maybe a "few" with Reaktor ;-)

Ps: Using it ONLY for music.

 

I sort of know what you mean. I was a long time Logic/Mac
user (and a Notator/Atari user before that), but other
considerations forced me to start using PCs. So I too
was really annoyed when Apple stopped support of Logic
under Windows. If you don't like Cubase, you might
want to look at Sonar. It is inferior to Logic for
MIDI editing, but it manages mixed audio/MIDI pretty
well, and Reaktor works very well as a Sonar plug-in.
They (Cakewalk) are just at the point of releasing a
new major version, Sonar 3, but I think the only
downloadable demo is still version 2.2.