A quick note about keeping the inside of a computer dust free (because although this video was cool I don’t really care much about the Mac vs PC debate). If the inside of the case is dust free after all that time it’s because the system was designed with intake fans that pull in slightly more air than the outgoing fans push out. This leaves the inside of the case with a slight positive pressure which tends to, over time, push out any dust lying around. That’s a nice touch by Carillon. 👍
This! I don't know if it's because intake fans "push out dust" but for sure having more intake or only intake fans instead of exhaust fans somehow keeps dust from building up inside your case.
This is not how things work. Pressure or not, dust will accumulate either way. That's what dust does. It WILL precipitate, there WILL be corners where turbulences work like cyclone separators. Pressure doesn't matter here. It's the flow of air that does. As long as there is air, laden with dust, flowing through places, pushed or "sucked", dust WILL find places and corners to precipitate and stick to surfaces.
Nope you’re wrong. I have a graduate degree in physics and I’ve studied fluid dynamics in detail. Pressure absolutely matters in this case (haha no pun intended).
@@lynchseanmAnd I have a diploma in dismissing impressive-sounding titles for their non-value in an internet argument. Pressure could possibly only ever matter if dust was compressible, but even then it doesn't matter as far as accumulation is concerned. If it's in the air, it will get in, and if that air is moving, and moving through the jagged internals of a PC, stagnation and turbulence will happen where particles may separate and deposit, and deposit particularly well when those particles are electrostatically charged and/or when they are organic (like pollen or shed skin cells) and thus sticky. And it will not matter whether a fan forces air into the case, with it escaping through ports but also gaps, or whether a fan draws air out, with it being aspirated through ports and gaps. Deposition will always happen at the right places, physics degree graduate or otherwise. At best, pressure _happens_ where flow slows down, but it's a _side effect,_ it's not a _cause_ of deposition.
The files management, the retro compatibility of ancient software and the fact you can update every single piece of hardware.. it's something I could never live without. And when your PC is totally outdated you can place your OS hard drive (with all your softwares) in a new machine and everything works fine. It's just insane.
@@thomsonhomsonI use Windows since 1995 and I never experienced all these bugs. You just need to search for "Windows xx optimization" on Google to keep your system working like a rock. The only truly buggy OS from Windows was Vista and I never installed it because nobody forced me to update my OS to run my softwares.
for me it's the price. I can get myself a pc that can edit video, run all the plugins I'll ever need without latency play any games I want AND get a much more user friendly experience for less than the price of a mac book that struggles with all of this.
@@thomsonhomson Yes, without regular maintenance, things will always break. If I draw an analogue to cleaning your house, maintaining Windows PC is like cleaning it yourself or hiring someone to do it yourself. Cleaning Mac, however, is you have designated company to do the cleaning and you have very little control over what they clean and fix and what not. And when problems arise, even small ones, there's nothing you can do yourself. Sure it is easy, but you pay for that easiness with both money(optional on PC, non-optional on Mac) and control(as much as you like on PC, none at Mac). This is never a question about which one is objectively better. It is always a subjective assessment, weighing pros and cons against your own personal needs and situation. For every pro PCs have, they also have a con. And the exact same goes for Mac whether or not you want to admit it. No objectively perfect system exist.
Sorry, I'm still not convinced that Dan isn't powering his studio with some kind of hyper advanced alien technology, but this was a nice attempt at throwing us off the trail. 😁
Love Quicksand, Dan. I used to be one of those who erroneously thought Apple “took care” of Mac users. The wool fell away when I got into 4K video editing and learned the best cost and performance options were to build my own pc. I’ll never look back. Thanks, as always!
I remember seeing Carillon ads in Future Music magazine. I never actually pulled the trigger, but it did inspire me to build one version of my pc into a rack mounted case. As my storage needs increased and I was using my pc for more and more tasks, not just audio, I outgrew that box - I’m happy to hear they are still on the go and making real engineers happy Best of luck with it Dan!
This video is very important for every person that is pursuing to be a musician / sound engineer. It really shows you the choices you have with different OSes and lets you take an informed decision based on your preference, and not by some peer pressure bs. Thank you Dan! People need this clarity. And as for the people that are reading this comment, if you're on the look out for a new computer, here is my general advice. If you've grown up with a specific OS, STICK TO IT. You know that OS better than the other. Its easier to make your way around it, especially if you get to troubleshooting and tinkering(assuming you do that). Please don't get influenced by your peers and mentors. The same goes for your DAW choice. Its what's important to "you" that matters. After all you are gonna use it, not they.
Spot on @athuuu. I was using Win 95 running Logic when it was eMagic. The Win95 machine was a dog. Something would "break" in the OS and many times I had to re-image the OS drive to get back up. A friend had a Mac running the the older OS9 using Logic on a Mac computer that was spec-wise anemic compared to my PC. However, it ran Logic far better and was stable as a rock. My Win95 machine running Logic would crash often. So I switched to a Mac G5 tower running OSX and spent more time making music rather than swearing up and down at a crappy Win95 machine. Then Apple acquired eMagic and I never looked back. I'm still using Logic to this day and thought about changing but I can fly through a production on Logic and don't relish the time that would be required learn a new system and application. What works for you is what's best for you. Cheers.👍
I used PCs for audio forever, even though I'm a developer by trade. For me, having all of those *nix tools really do make my life easier, which I discovered when my company bought me a fancy Mac. I've gotten really used to having a similar platform for audio work and proper work. But you can do great work on any platform.
since I understand computers roughly how Dan understands audio, here's few brief comments on the topic: 1) advantage of CoreAudio is, it has built-in audio device aggregation capability, MIDI device access to multiple apps, MIDI over ethernet native capability (Windows users can use rtpMIDI and loopMIDI for similar result, but can only dream about being able to use multiple audio and MIDI interfaces across multiple apps simultaneously without hiccups) 2) serious disadvantage of Apple Silicon Macs is push towards DriverKit drivers, which are inferior to standard kernel extensions in a way audio interface driver has no longer direct kernel access and priority over any other processes running on a MacOS, RME recently did a video on the topic, it's basically a dead-end for professional audio work on Mac (and meets expectations of Macs slowly devolving to iPads) 3) for audio work, consistent sustained performance is what matters, and also minimum bloat (including useless features and connectivity on computer's motherboard), spec shown in the video (i7-13700KF, 32GB ram, RTX 3050, two SSDs) is more than enough for 99% audio users - that said I'd arguably suggest i7-13700K without "F" which has integrated graphics that could be used for video encoding/decoding acceleration or as a backup in case of dedicated graphics card failure 4) rack PC cases are somewhat rare, but it's not true rackmounted computer is not user-friendly, in fact you can get a rack shelf with rails (computer racks are usually deeper than pro-audio racks, so depends on studio desk/rack) and comfortably slide computer for easy maintenance (just be sure there's enough counterweight and attached cables long enough or detach them)
They are clocked to the same source in macOS. You can manage how the devices are aggregated in Audio MIDI settings which is built into macOS. It’s essentially like having a built in MOTU unit.
i can seamlessly run reaper (using asio to my sound card) and other apps (firefox with youtube) using standard windows sound subsystem, and hear both their sounds together. i think this might be a feature of the driver of my interface (umc204hd) so kudos to behringer if that's the case. the only thing that requires exclusive access on windows is a webcam now.
@@cURLybOi your DAW accesses your interface via ASIO, while windows accesses it via DirectWave or WDM. ASIO has exclusivity but WDM doesn't, and you can use both at the same time. your interface's drivers (like all interface drivers) understand this and see WDM, ASIO, KS, and DirectWave as different "streams" that can all come at the same time.
i usually have to go over Dan's videos twice. The information given is gold, but I do get distracted by the music/soundtrack arrangements, and I say that as a compliment. The acoustic guitar ending is brilliantly arranged.
I think it's really cool that music production professionals are even talking about Linux at all. There has been a gigantic effort recently to make the user-facing software more polished and easy to use, and that is only going to get more intense as it keeps picking up steam. It would be so cool if mainstream Linux distros stop being perceived as operating systems exclusively meant for comp-sci nerds, and instead are instead seen as regular competitors to Windows and MacOS.
It seems like the Steam OS is a step in the right direction. Didn't use it yet, don't have a steam deck. And honestly, i don't mind switching to Linux, if it means we get a cheaper and super stable machines for music work.
with all the recent ad bloat, im considering the switch for about 2 years now. but i still need adobe apps to work on a regular basis and dualboot will just fragment my work and have me constantly switch OS. also gaming. but valve is pushing that on devs too, so i really hope we will get there
I am an audio professional [voiceover[ and I run 100% Linux. There are three serious options: Ubuntu Studio, AV Linux and Fedora Jam [used to be called redhat ccrma]. I run Ubuntu Studio 22.04 LTS. I use a Rode NT1 and a focusrite 2i2 3rd gen audio interface. Pros and why I do this: Linux is a quiet environment with no AV or phone homes or ad nonsense. I get all the juice from my computer specs all the time. Main con: hardware drivers still present a problem in Linux. For instance I cannot find a webcam that runs in Linux. I use a quiet computer built to make minimal noise. The fans and case are designed to make no noise. Uses a SSD [obvious]. I left Windows for good in 2019. I did look at Mac as an option. But I don't like it. It puts all my eggs in on e basket; if something goes wrong I can't swap out a part. I also don't live near a Mac store so to fix anything Mac would take time that I don't have. The ratio of price to specs is also crazy; for what a Mac costs you can build a Linux computer that is far better. I will be running Linux at least until the end of this decade. I use Reaper and Harrison Mixbus as my DAW software.
You just can't fight against the MOUNTAINS of VST and sample libraries and samplers and other VSTi that windows has. Also, if there's no official drivers from your interface manufacturer it's a miss. You can get by if you're using like 4-io basic USB device, but when you try to offer it RME UFX-II or something else that's really geared to professionals use, you're shafted because no driver support: it's a brick. And that's the main issue with Linux in many MANY use cases. And the backlog of thousands of pieces of software and hardware will not be easily translated nor never (because there's no money in it) One game dev told the YT few weeks back, that they spent huge amount of time to get their game working on mac and after all the work it counted for 0.02% of their sales... so they dropped the mac version and will never ever develop for mac again. What would happen if NI translated let's say Kontakt for Linux... how much would they earn from that? Would it be financially viable?
I second that as a user of both Apple's M1 16gb ram MBP & i7 12700K 32gb ram. I do most of my production on Windows, an only use MBP when I travel and feel creative
Congrats on your new machine Dan!! Let’s hope you get the same mileage or more outta this one as you did the previous. I personally use a Mac but I have zero qualms with anyone using whatever suits them best…my last Mac lasted me 12 years until I couldn’t update the OS anymore this year. Which sucked because the machine itself was still going strong. Anyways I’m looking forward to some great new content and to you sharing whatever you feel like sharing with us all on the new machine. Farewell to your old PC…I’m glad it was good to you.
I am an “old-timer” having worked and developed in computer-based media since the OpCode, Sound Designer and related sequencer days before digital audio in any modern sense. Anyway, I mostly use NVidia H100 based Linux PC’s for AI Deep Learning and related development, Mac for many things including DAW work (mostly in Reaper) and PC’s for Pyramix (for DSD), Reaper and various other digital media things. In any case, I agree that OSX buries and isolates things in such a way that if you do {and I have) have deeper audio chain issues, they can be a real pain to address. I have used Mac’s since my first Lisa and 128K, but I have moved to Merging fanless rack PC’s for much of my mission critical studio work (and a dedicated M3 Mac running nothing but critical audio software). I am glad to learn about Carillon as a good option to Merging (now Merging/Neuman). Thanks!
As an old timer do you agree that for the first time in living memory, both Windows and Apple are hardware companies. Windows by mandating hardware requirements is a hardware company. They might not realize that. But they are. I cannot see what prerogative Windows has to tell ME what hardware I should run with MY computer and MY time and money. Have run 100% Linux for serious audio since 2019. [Ubuntu Studio] . I will be running Linux for audio for at least the rest of the decade. I have no time or energy for the games, pranks and brain flatulence of a post-capitalist American tech duopoly.
As a computer-guy - I think your take is pretty much spot on. There is no "best" OS - it always depends on use-cases. For development, testing and running server-side business applications, Linux has definite advantages I wouldn't to live without. For private, general use - there are drawbacks. And for business-cases using desktop applications, it's never really been competitive. I personally strongly prefer not to be locked into a single-vendor ecosystem and to have backward-compatibility, which is why I use Windows with integrated WSL for doing Linux-stuff. But there are many use-cases where Macs are perfectly fine, and in general, they usually offer better usability to less tech-savvy users. To me, that would still not be worth locking yourself into their ecosystem and paying the "premium brand" cost for similar performance... but I naturally respect when others prefer having the level of cross-device integration that is possible with a single-vendor ecosystem.
I’ll never return to PC and Windows when it comes to music production. I switched to mac a couple of years ago and I don’t think one day goes by without me thinking about how glad I am that I switched. I don’t miss ASIO, annoying fans, crackling audio, poor performance, high latency. They are all pure inspiration killers.
Lots of people using PCs have no issues. All you did was make trade offs, and it sounds like it worked out for you. Many people don't want to pay a lot more for the same or less computing power (actual power consumption is something Apple is amazing at now), endless dongles and cable swapping and hubs, inability to add more RAM or even drive space as needs change, regular OS updates that break older software, etc. There's no green grass for the OSes, just different lawn mowers.
@@cfs You're talking about apple like 10 years ago. It's not expensive anymore. I bought an m1 mac mini for $500 bucks and it will run anything I want to run for the next ten years. It has all the i/o I could possibly ever need and with the efficiency of the chips, you don't need to add anything. If you're a serious music producer, then you aren't doing OS updates anyway. I get what you're saying, and I'd be agreeing with you until apple silicone came out. You just can't beat the integration and ease of use that apple products provide. I wanna create, I don't wanna fiddle with settings, drivers, and instability all the time. I'm saying this after pushing through using cubase, and studio one on pc for 10 years. After getting a Mac I'll NEVER go back.
@@dudemcgee256 I don't have to "deal with drivers" (if you install software on the Mac to use a product it's the same step), I don't have instability, I don't fiddle with settings. I just create. On Windows. I also use an MBP every day. It's just as unstable for me - which is to say, both are pretty reliable and easy, but both have issues sometimes. Yes the integration is there on Mac, and that smooths some things out, but also introduces others. Anyway, not meant to be a Mac V PC battle - let's just say there's ample info on "both sides" as to which is "better". Main thing is to realize the answer is personal not for everyone, and then use the one best for you to make stuff. Cheers.
The dust free thing just depends on if you are running a positive or negative pressure fan set up (or neutral tbf). Positive means that no dust can get inside any gaps, and the only way for air to get in is through the filtered intake. Negative literally sucks dust into your system, so is usually avoided (it's also argued it has worse thermal performance due to less air being inside at any one given time to cool the components.
I'll argue the heating part of that. Having negative pressure, lower pressure inside the case relative to the pressure outside the case, cools the air giving it a greater capacity to absorb the heat that it will carry away. Heat is just molecular movement. Spray a can of compressed air and as the air inside the can expands, it gets cold, thus the can condenses the moisture in the air and develops frost on it. If the air entering the case of a computer expands, it cools as the molecules move away from each other giving them more space and lowering the level of energy. As the air interacts with the components, it gets excited and picks up energy, becoming more dense again, then carrying that heat energy out of the case. Why heat the air as you force it into the case? The dust issue is simply a matter of how clean the air entering the case is. Yes, if the case has positive pressure and the intake fans are filtered, the positive air will keep dust from entering various leaks or vent in the case.
@@midi510 We are not taling about multiple bar of pressure differential here. You only need there to be a fraction of posative pressure to keep out dust. At these miniscule differences of pressure any thermodynamic effects on the air due to pressure alone will be completely negligible. Where as the sliding scale of air flow to temperature transfer efficiency is in a range that does effect a PC's cooling.
@@DaftFader You brought up the the thermal aspect. It just doesn't make any sense that having more air molecules inside the case has anything to with cooling. Yes, I agree, it's a flow issue and even a slight positive pressure will keep the dust out, providing the intake is filtered.
@@midi510 I'm talking about heat transfer due to increased airflow as a result of maximizing the amount of possible airflow by having a slight posative pressure, you're talking about air temperature change across a pressure drop. I'm saying the pressue increase is enough for the added air to noticeably increase cooling via heat transfer, but not enough to drastically effect pressure related air molecule exitement and any drop in energy will be minor at the pressure differentials we are talking about, you were the one who brought that bit up. You have to drop the pressure by 2 bar to drop 1 deg C. The effect is negligible in the type of system we are discussing as we will not even start aproaching these changes in pressure. If we take slightly posative pressure as max airflow, any reduction in pressure is just less air moving through the case as all you're essentually doing, given a fixed exit fan on max, is reducing the input fan speed. If we completely turn off the input fan and leave the output on full, if you're lucky and have amazing fans and an airtight case you'll get close to 2 bar (and I'm being way overly generous in that, that's nearly a 30psi drop: a high performance turbocharger on full capasity as an output fan), you will get 1deg c lower (air) temp because of pressure drop across the stationary input fans, but gain 10-30 deg c (of component temp) because of lack of airflow (although if we did have a turbo as the output, we might actually get enough airfow lol, but I'm only going to bolster your argument so far). The two differant scales of change in temp we are discussing are uncomparable (and refering to the temps of two diferant things) and clearly pressure drop air temp changes do not make up for a lack of airflow (aka less air molecules moving through the case for heat to transfer to) and can't counteract overheating componants in a computor case with normal high performance PC fans . Make sense now?
your videos are endlessy entertaining. that said, i've used Mac for more than 20 years, i'm the computer version of "i just want to drive to the shops", and never had any problem. i don't understand anything you're talking about in the part where you go on about installing drivers and stuff, i just want to turn it on and start to create (i am a video editor and a musician since the end of last century), and i want to only think about the creative stuff. so i guess mac is designed for people like me, i say this with no pride or shame, just facts.
Tbf if people are willing to pay a price premium to not do driver setup for the interface -let them, it's their money. Also I know people who literally just love the gui of their fav os and that's fully valid.
I switched to a MacBook Air M1 2 years ago and run Logic Audio after years using a PC running Cubase. Switching to the MacBook was the best thing I ever did. It works for me and that’s what’s really important.
Apple Silicon is especially a big boost for a laptop - your Air is faster (for audio things, not GPU) than any Intel laptop they ever made and faster than most desktops. And there is no fan, totally silent and great battery life. Of course there is no internal upgradability, but then laptops are often increasingly this way anyway.
@@darwiniandude All true. I don't need to upgrade to be honest. I have a 512 GB hard drive and 8gb ram. I also have an external 1tb hard drive. It's by far the best set up I've had for recording.
In “keyboard” in system settings/preferences you can swap the modifiers around if you want. Like you can swap command and control so undo cut copy paste are all control z, control x, control c etc rather than command. But you can also re-map any shortcuts there, or make new shortcuts for any menu item in any programs. Safari has a ‘merge windows’ function - no shortcut. I created one, control command M. So if your daw of choice has a menu item with no shortcut, you can assign one, which is cool. @@dabadoo7631
very happy with m1 macbook air, today marks my first year with it. I would probably chosen a windows laptop if such combination of cpu power, battery life and dead silent operation existed in pc world, but it doesn't. It's my main studio machine and it allows working for hours in case of a power outage or blackout.
I’m one who straddles both sides of the fence fairly equally. Day-to-day I run a Windows 10 PC that started its life in Windows 7 back in 2012, and only got upgraded to 10 last December when I was sick of certain software crashing the thing. 10 has proved itself a most fantastic operating system (after days of tweaks applied to it at any rate) and that’s where I do two-track recording/editing in Sound Forge Pro 16. For music-making however, my M1 Max Laptop is my preferred system, where I live in Logic. I’m happy to work on both platforms for various reasons. I like the quickness of editing in Sound Forge, but I like Logic’s flex-time, Komplete Kontrol integration (which I rely on very heavily indeed) and the fact that I also gig, so having a laptop with the exact same sounds at home as on-the-road is simply no question. My windows machine is just an old I5 3570K with 16 GB RAM but it doesn’t have to be much more than that. Yes, even the boring onboard graphics, but it serves the purpose it was built for at the time, and 11 years later, still runs. I will use whatever system I need for the job at the time I need it. I have absolutely no love for Windows 11 though, so when I’m forced to get a new PC, maybe I can *upgrade* it to 10, and hold it there indefinitely.
A 13700KF with lots of cache on a single die, Windows 11 to accompany the CPU architecture, 32 Gigs of RAM to fit them soundbanks, SSDs to do it quickly, and probably the best GPU option, not too expensive but with plenty of horsepower to run a DAW, or to record or encode a few videos. That's a good prebuild, very well suited for the job.
I have a 12700K, no graphics card. I heared that graphics cards add more fan noise and hurts the noise floor for the analog audio outputs. I selected the components myself plus the PC case and then people built the entire tower for me. I have some advantages over Dan Worral's PC: i7-12700K has better perfomance per watt than the 13700KF, easier to cool, i have a higher end motherboard with more storage upgrade options. If i own a graphics card, would be for gaming reasons, for music production is totally useless.
Hey Dan, I'm a big fan of all your videos and love to keep binging them because of your precision in geeking out about sound and explaining what's going on! I know I'm not a good representative of the majority of your audience, but I do have some suggestions I'd personally like to see on your channel, and maybe others would too, and I'd be honored if you made a video on any of these suggestions. Anyway, here are some of the topics I'd like you to cover more in future videos: - Diving into more creative effects like various kinds of waveshapers and nonlinear filters, extreme filtering like flangers and phasers, vocoders and other spectral processors, and etc. I'd especially like to see you talk about your favorite creative effects and/or your favorite uses for specific creative effects - Talking about various types of synthesizer plugins and various techniques you use to dial in certain sounds, and maybe talking about your favorite synthesis methods to work with, like subtractive, additive, wavetable, fm, granular, etc - Breaking down free plugins like the kilohearts essential snapins or the melda free plugin collection or other miscellanous ones like plugins from ChowDSP, and talking about how well designed and good sounding they are compared to significantly more expensive plugins of the same category - More philosophical talks about the creative process and maybe some approaches to overcoming writer's block and/or developing a song further when you're not quite sure where to take it To be fair, I absolutely love your videos that geek about plugin design in the context of mixing a track, and I also love the various videos you make discussing various techniques for approaching a mix. However, given that there's so much more to music than just mixing and polishing material you've already written, I'd love to see more videos from you discussing various other aspects of music, especially since I look up to you so much for your no bullcrap, straight to the point, practical and direct approach to thinking about audio and discussing audio to other people. Whatever content you decide to create in the future, I wish you all the best working with your brand new computer! I can't wait for whatever you're cooking up next!
Rack mount hardware can be harder to cool, and thus louder. Lots of it is aimed at servers where noise isn't a concern. But it's good to hear your pc is fine :).
@@RC-1290 Yeah, I've got a similar huge Noctua and the CPU is basically silently cooled, even under load. Couple that with SSDs and a similarly silent PSU, and most audio users won't hear a thing.
Not looking for trouble, but for accuracy: the Mac operating system dropped "OS X" in 2016 for "macOS". Also OS X referred to system 10, and currently the Mac architecture is system 14.
Sticking to what works for you is essential. I used Linux as a student many years ago, at home, and then for work. No problems for my use cases, except testing some things in MS Word (as users have it) and I found a workaround for that.
Gotta love Dan's pragmatism. Pick whatever tools get out of your way so you can get stuff done :) I'm a full time software developer and have used Linux as my main desktop PC for around a decade, but have done very little music production on it because the audio stack is a total mess. I've talked to a few folks who've gotten low-latency audio working with pipewire, but in my experience it's always busted in some way on my machines. I do most of my audio production on a Mac, but have also run afoul of Apple's deprecation of "old" but perfectly functional hardware (RIP my 2012 iMac 😢). These days I use a 2013 Mac Pro trashcan I found on ebay for a couple hundred bucks which runs macOS 12. I figure it should be supported for at least another 5 years or so. It's not like computers are getting that much faster anymore, so old hardware can be sufficient for a long time.
I've been using self built PCs as DAWs since starting in 1998. Windows 2000 + Cubase proved to be an extremely stable setup and i was very reluctant to move to XP. Had to eventually, but a new system with Windows 7 eventually replaced it and kept going for a long time. Macs have never been a consideration for me because i see no additional benefit. Keeping it simple, installing as little software as possible, Windows can be extremely reliable for audio work. But looking at the direction MS has been going in with 11 and 12 ... I may finally try getting Ableton to work on Ubuntu...
One thing the newer Apple silicon macs are great for is the fact that they make ZERO noise. I love my M2 mini for that reason and also how powerful it is. However, if Logic was on Windows, I would 100% be using my PC for everything.
I love PCs for video stuff (graphics cards are just so much more powerful on PC these days) and macs for audio. The main reason for Mac for audio for me is that you can link up multiple interfaces with it and have them all work at the same time. Not something I’d use all the time, but there have been a few times it was useful. Also low latency core audio comes in handy for things like streaming (though tbh it’s better on a pc overall). On a PC the built in MME and similar drivers are just so high latency and not every application allows for ASIO drivers. Same goes for certain interfaces. Granted if you have RME it’s the top of the line for PC and all, but some interfaces are also more buggy on PC, so you may be more limited. If you are having a pro studio most of the time the PC is stable enough, but i find that the Mac is slightly better in certain situations. My last two computers (one Mac one pc at the same time) lasted over 10 years each. I also recommend most people get a PC desktop over a Mac desktop. Just more customizable and more power potential long term. Mac laptops are just top notch though. All that being said i know a few people who installed Mac OS onto a PC (hackintosh it is called) and it was like the best of both worlds. Also i am surprised you went with a 3050 graphics card when you do video editing. A 4060 or something more modern would have sped up your video editing workflow/render time a LOT. But I assume whatever you had before was much slower so it’s a huge improvement. Anyway enjoy the new pC!
My previous self-built PC lasted me 2012 to 2021. I’ll get around to reviving it one of these days. In 2021 I bought my first ever PC assembled by someone else, Scan Computers. I’m very happy with it 3XS Doctor Mix Edition - my spec. Quantum 2632 interface. On paper I could have maybe saved £200 going DIY IF I could have sourced all the components myself, that is. Stocks of parts were dwindling back then thanks to C19. It started off with 5.5TB of disks and 32GB RAM. Now it has 10TB and 64GB.
The early 2000's THIS (Carillon)was the thing to have for in the box DAW-production. Boy, I wanted and needed 1 sooo bad. Then MultiThread came out and duo core became less expensive, fun times.
I'm with you. I've been recording/mixing on PC since 1993. My first PC truly dedicated to audio was a 486DX 33 with 8 MB running Windows 3.11 and Cubase. And me never being too scared to upgrade, I would do so when needed. I was already used to the Windows OS and I could very quickly troubleshoot any issues if they were to arise, which wasn't very often and by Windows 98 and Cubase VST, I was able to confidently record bands/solo artists and charge for my services. It's been my only job ever since. I could have easily gone with a Mac since Cubase used to only be for the Mac but, when Steinberg started to offer it for Windows, I decided to take the chance simply due to already being a PC user and having a great understanding of the hardware since I've built a few by that time. I also had a problem with the cost of Apple products in general as well as not being able to build a Mac or even really upgrade them so, I built a PC that was at least twice as powerful and half the cost. It was no longer necessary to have a Mac to make music like it was in the 80's. And the available software for PC became 100 fold. I'm still strictly a PC user and always will be. Cheers! 🥂
I've been in IT from 1983 when I worked for one of the first micro PC companies in the UK (CP/M). I've seen every version of DOS, Windows, and OS/2. Also many version of Unix, Linux and lots of big iron systems. The old issue with Windows was the backward compatibility which has now very much been reduced. Now retired I still prefer a PC with Windows.
I'm doing something similar, even though I'm on a Mac. I'm using the Mac Pro Rack 2019 (Intel). I leave it off the internet, and I will not be updating the OS or Pro Tools, because everything works great. I might even leave it like this forever.
I worked in IT and always had PC’s usually built by me. However when my kids started to use a computer, I got totally sick of constantly having to fix the PC. It was then that I bought a Mac for the kids, and no more PC support at home. Macs are closed proprietary systems, have less apps available for them and generally less tweaking and customisation is available. I switched to a Mac for studio use and haven’t looked back. The computer just works, is a tool for the job. There is a premium to be paid for macs and the inability to upgrade hardware (ssd, memory) is a disadvantage. In the end use what you’re comfortable with, turn off automatic software updates, and make music.
"However when my kids started to use a computer, I got totally sick of constantly having to fix the PC. It was then that I bought a Mac for the kids, and no more PC support at home. " well there's your problem, it's your kids using it because they dont have any knowledge at all. you can pretty much do the same thing with windows like locking the admins and kernel so kids cannot install a super malicious software anyway. I switched from windows to mac once and have looked back to windows and now im back because I do 3DCG stuff while doing music. and barely I got any problem, and I havent got any bluescreen since windows 7, it's so stable now a days that there's really no way you can break it unless you're installing a software from the wildwild west of internet land...
@@yasunakaikumi. This was the kids pc. XP at the time. I don’t want to have to do PC admin on my music pc. I don’t want to do any admin really. I want it just to work and use it as a tool for making music. I am sure a quality built PC, configured and optimised for audio would be a great machine too. So it all boils down to what you’re familiar with and your budget.
I haven't heard the Carillon name since the 90s when I religiously bought Sound on Sound. delighted to know that a pro-audio PC builder still has a role today.
I was a faithful Windows user for 20 years. But my Windows kept crashing when working with video files inside Ableton Live without a grid (free mode). Switched to Mac and it never happened (even in crappy macs). Now I use a Mac Studio M1 Max, with a MOTU UltraLite Mk5 and it’s heavenly. The CPU seems to be on holiday no matter what I throw at it. I also appreciate Mac has native folders to place VSTs and presets. I also had a Windows laptop but it crashed on me while DJing, switched to a little MacBook and it never happened again. I know Carillon is a good Windows systems builder. But my Windows experience is for gaming and for that I got myself a powerful HP Omen.
If i could harvest the energy of people trying to convince each other that what they use is the best i could achieve intergalactic travel. Well i guess one can dream
As a kid of the 1970s, I can only say that Dan's videos have a calming effect on me, in much the same way that listening to Arthur Lowe narrate The Mister Men did back in the day. Nowt better than speccing a piece of gear and having the proper 'nerds/geeks' that you can trust to do the job properly. Thanks for posting another informative vid Dan. 🤘🤘
Dan, A rack mount PC doesn't have to be a chore to access for upgrades. They make slide-out rack rails. My rack PCs are fitted with these and just slide out and the case top tilts up and stays in position. Of course, the slide-out can be secured for moving the rack with two thumb screws (my under-table racks are on wheels). Pair this with removable drive carriers for SSDs and there's no need to even slide out the PC to add or change drives. I make my drives hot-swappable so I don't even need to power down the system (assuming it's not the OS drive which is an NVMe drive on the motherboard). There are even PC power supplies that can slide out the back of the case with removal of two thumb screws. All this is pretty standard in the server world and there's *tons* of second-hand server gear always being sold surplus.
Its so frustrating that macos has terrible application support because its stability is something i adore, its been so much more consistent than windows ever has for me but i can run barely anything on it or customize my rig down the line and its so frustrating, they have a great operating system thats so close to being perfect to me but they never go the extra mile to make that a reality. One thing i will give them though is their computers last long minus the application support issues, ive recorded back in college using a 2009 mac pro and minus it chugging a slight bit in performance (which is a given) it was completely fine for multitracking most of the time which was all i really needed to use it for. As much as i dislike windows in many areas its probably sticking around on any desktop i have, though for traveling i dont plan on ever using a windows laptop again as a side note, ive seen a rack mount mac mini recently which was quite strange
6:22 I'm in this Rabbit Hole since months now, i've abandoned Logic and went into cubase along a Steinberg interfase, now i feel sry about all the people mixing using DAWS based on CoreAudio (Audible Jitter) while only few people are aware of this, they even win Grammys for god sake, the sound industry is obliterating the PCM capabilities in exchange of a Fancy Bloated Audio Marketing. Now is when ASIO and HDX make sense to me, even UAD Interfases are porting this CoreAudio PassThrough Parafernalia in LUNA. Macs don't look so PRO anymore. If you don't care is your loss but everyone should now this is an Issue. . CoreAudio SRC Hog Mode, Exclusive Mode, Integer Mode, Direct Mode, Jitter, BitPerfect, Passthrough, ASIO over CoreAudio. . Thanks for your video.
Big fan of your content Dan…….but. I ordered a top spec rack mount PC from Carillon and it arrived with significant damage to the case due to poor packaging. We are talking major shift in the case geometry across the horizontal axis, such that it would no longer rack mount. It would be impossible to quantify the shock the components had experienced and the effect this would have on reliability. This was a 4K PC so not cheap. I had to employ a solicitor to get any promise of being refunded even after returning the PC. Mr Carillon dragged out refunding me for over a month. I could not endorse him as being an ethical vendor. I spent 6K on a Mac Studio M2 Ultra. Apple ARE overpriced but they are a legitimate business that deals with customer complaints/dissatisfaction properly. Believe you me, sitting and worrying for weeks that you may have lost 4K to a rogue company is extremely stressful. I have photographs and legal documentation if Carrillon want to try it on and sue me for defamation. Consumers ought to know what they are getting in to.
i'm on year 5 with my machine and a couple hundred replacement parts later and i have something that gives me at least another 4 or 5 years of service. my mac mini is 11 years old but still runs what it runs. cant get online hardly anymore.
This is a great video and I don't mind the collaboration with Carillion, but I agree that it should had been disclosed at the start of the video instead of 8 minutes in.
I got myself a rack pc when I upgraded earlier this year. Frankly, it feels more powerful knowing that it looks more "professional" and serious "audio bro" to no one that'll ever see it
rack cases with rails suck a lot less for maintenance than without. you just kinda stick something in the gap to hold it out and work on it like folding clothes into an open drawer.
And thats why i use a hackintosh. For audio the mac os is just way more easy to deal with. I still have a pc in the studio, and it “works” but just not as easy to deal with than the mac. Ive tried positing the idea for a linux branch for only audio use but not enough people want to get into unfamiliar territory. End of the day whatever youre comfortable with dealing with is what you go with.
As a music software developer I have to use multiple OS (PC/Mac sometimes Linux) and even keep systems with different versions of OS, but for music making I generally stick to Windows due to the flexibility of upgrading and long time support for hardware. The one major thing I found preferable on Mac vs Windows is not having to sit through forced updates that require multiple reboots - sometimes if I have not used my production PC for while, this happens right at the point of wanting to record an idea. Also the Mac audio drivers/OS let you build composite audio devices easily - that could be a nice thing with audio over USB and multiple audio interfaces - reducing cabling and noise if you work exclusively 'in the box' for mixing. Scoring for Video on Mac has always been a much smoother experience too in my experience. Anyway, congrats on keeping the old system going so long and on the new machine.
I find sidecar feature on Mac to be way useful with no equivalent on Windows. You can drag a window from a desktop or laptop machine into iPad and interact via touch interface. Helps avoid carpal tunnel while working with mouse all day.
@@PaparazzbI To clear up any misunderstandings - my main machine is still running Windows but I use the Mac for some specific tasks. Regarding laptops with a touchscreen - I did have a Microsoft Surface in the past, but after about 18 months it failed so unexpectedly and spectacularly that I decided not to go that route again.
PC guy here. Pretty high IT knowledge. I still prefer PC's as they are just better value for money. I've worked on Macs for 10+ years (studios) and my PC (my studio work) - W10 is a workhorse, no problems at all. OSX is just more convinient, looks nice and "it works". On PC it used to be more complex - but since W10 - it works too. Drivers thing is a not a problem. I don't mind, or even care - I have z e r o issues since W10. W7 was OK too, yet it had issues. So if Logic or PT - then Mac. If Studio One (like me) - whatever you know better. I choose PC.
My dream is to be able to switch to linux, for a variety of reasons. Maybe sometime in the not too distant future, more manufacturers would start offering and supporting native linux versions of their plugins and/or drivers. Alas, one can dream...
I've been traveling with my 2013 trashcan Mac Pro in my small backpack for several years now. Was a lifesaver for me and can now travel with my 2023 Mac Studio beast in my wifes handbag.
Also, if you are the type that really likes to tinker, it's possible to get an off the shelf machine and optimize it for audio. It takes a really long time to get it exactly right, but after doing this for the past 20 years, I can get it done in an afternoon. That is, provided, you know a little about which devices cause latency issues (for instance Realtek NICs). If you don't want to get your hands dirty, then Carillon is a great alternative, and well worth the money.
I switched to Mac from Windows just because the new MacBook Pro M2 Pro allows me to be extremely mobile, plugin anywhere and at any time. But if my job didn't require me to travel a lot, I'd probably go for windows again. Just because of the sheer versatility PC can give you.
I’ll be Windows forever, Cubase forever, and RME forever! I’ve used Cubase for 15 years and nothing else as my DAW. I’ve used RME for 15 years, I have their AIO Pro now, absolutely rock solid, drivers updated regularly, and very high quality audio from it! The best part is using the Samsung M.2 drives for audio sequencing now, absolutely stunning convenience, and ultra efficient! We’ll see how Windows goes for the next few decades! 🎶🎶🎶
I’m still using my 2nd Carillon laptop from 8 or so years ago. (Before that I had an AC1 for almost as long) I’m thinking about buying the next one soon, but only because I know that although it hasn’t yet, my current one will one day start to have issues and I’d like the transition to be as seamless as possible. As for the Mac PC thing… I never really saw the need to bow to the cool kids’ peer pressure to get a Mac when my PC worked as well as it did for the price…. And it does still work very well!
People who think: "PC's are unstable!" bollocks... been using computer on windows 7 that was on heavy use and on 24/7... it was rock solid and crashed basically never. And now been running windows 10 for few years and this is solid as can be. on 24/7 as well... I've no complaints at all. There are many things that can cause one's PC to be unstable, but they're mostly hardware issues or user errors or bad drivers, which can all be circumvented quite easily. RME fireface 800, Nvidia 3060 with studio drivers, AMD 3600 (to be updated soon) and Asus Pro-art x570 motherboard and 32gigs of kingston 3600 c16 ram... been stable as a rock. No complaints.
@@Skrenja are you honestly implying that MACs NEVER EVER EVER crash or have any bugs? :D If I've had 5-10 crashes in the last 10+ years on a PC... is that not good enough? That I can trust my setup to be on and usable 24/7/365 without worrying apps or the computer itself crashing, unless it's a hardware issue where some physical part is broken? All issues I've had were about bad driver update for GPU, which was solved by rolling back within 10 minutes, broken SATA-cable, which was diagnosed within 15 minutes and swapped within 10 minutes. broken hard disk which was obviously backed up so I could just throw it away and keep on chugging, one memory module that needed to be re-seated since there was too much dust in the connector when I installed it (and this was MY mistake, one shoudl always blow the connectors with compressed air before installing anything). That was diagnosed in few minutes by looking at the event viewer etc. One windows update which was rolled back and I was again stable for years... And between these events there's been YEARS before anything else happened... So I ask you, how stable is stable enough and are you claiming that apple computers have better track record and never crash or break on you or have any flaky issues what so ever? I wonder if you've ever watched Louis Rossmann channel and how god damn many apple computers is constantly coming over to his bench to be repaired for basic issues that apple should have fixed by better engineering... There's no such thing as "perfect" and I think i'm as close to perfect as realistically possible.
Story time, in 2010 I purchased a 192 interface and the Pro Tools HD 2 system, still have it cards and all, and subsequently built a pc for around $3000, I7 processor at the time, high end motherboard 24 gig ram, raptor hard drive. Pro Tools HD 2 system had nothing but fallout problems to the point I wasn’t having that around clients, went and purchased a Mac Book laptop with 2 Profire 2626 interfaces linked via fiber optic cables and it worked way better, and was running Dual core processor. Then I didn’t want the monster PC to go unused so I went to CUBASE and had an excellent experience, still running the pro fire 2626’s so I can say it doesn’t mess with your audio too much, but have options because the next windows or mac update could be disastrous, updated to a M1 Mac mini and it’s freaking great, the one thing I have read about windows vs mac with recording, is windows always had way more background applications running which I always attested to less CPU ability to allocate that DSP to other programs but I don’t really know
you know that the machine really was a workhorse when it gets its own memorial. i have an i7 2600 i got in 2010 and its still going right now with no complaints. dan warrall is totally right about software needing to have longevity. that is a platform's #1 rule: dont be a moving target.
You brought up a good point. You said "with OSx you don't need to install drivers". That's right YOU don't have to install drivers, but Apple still does! In fact you can't install or update drivers unless they are vetted by Apple. I politely disagree that Windows is also a closed OS. Yes, neither OSx or Windows has published source code. But Windows does have a free open API which anyone is free to develop with. Not OSx. At a minimum you have to at least register with Apple as a developer and they can kick you out of the club anytime. Now for the past two years I was forced to learn and use a MAC for general office tasks. The company was MAC based for IT systems. And I grew quite comfortable with the MAC. It is highly stable and high performance. And if anyone just wants a computer for general word processing, spread sheets, internet, photo library management, I would recommend a MAC. But as a hardware and software engineer going back to the late 1970s S100 and Apple 2 systems, I still do my serious work on a Windows and Linux PCs.
FlexASIO running in Kernel Streaming mode should be able to pretty much make any audio device perform as it would with proper ASIO drivers, giving the DAW direct access to the unit bypassing Windows. I use it to use different ASIO devices together (separate ADC and DAC working together to function like an audio interface to better performance than anything that's available on the market).
Always reassuring to see a large Noctua fan behind a good air cooler. The best combo for low maintenance, longevity and minimal noise. Great choice.
A quick note about keeping the inside of a computer dust free (because although this video was cool I don’t really care much about the Mac vs PC debate). If the inside of the case is dust free after all that time it’s because the system was designed with intake fans that pull in slightly more air than the outgoing fans push out. This leaves the inside of the case with a slight positive pressure which tends to, over time, push out any dust lying around. That’s a nice touch by Carillon. 👍
Interesting. Sounds like the opposite would be true in the scenario you outline here.
This! I don't know if it's because intake fans "push out dust" but for sure having more intake or only intake fans instead of exhaust fans somehow keeps dust from building up inside your case.
This is not how things work. Pressure or not, dust will accumulate either way. That's what dust does. It WILL precipitate, there WILL be corners where turbulences work like cyclone separators. Pressure doesn't matter here. It's the flow of air that does. As long as there is air, laden with dust, flowing through places, pushed or "sucked", dust WILL find places and corners to precipitate and stick to surfaces.
Nope you’re wrong. I have a graduate degree in physics and I’ve studied fluid dynamics in detail. Pressure absolutely matters in this case (haha no pun intended).
@@lynchseanmAnd I have a diploma in dismissing impressive-sounding titles for their non-value in an internet argument. Pressure could possibly only ever matter if dust was compressible, but even then it doesn't matter as far as accumulation is concerned. If it's in the air, it will get in, and if that air is moving, and moving through the jagged internals of a PC, stagnation and turbulence will happen where particles may separate and deposit, and deposit particularly well when those particles are electrostatically charged and/or when they are organic (like pollen or shed skin cells) and thus sticky. And it will not matter whether a fan forces air into the case, with it escaping through ports but also gaps, or whether a fan draws air out, with it being aspirated through ports and gaps. Deposition will always happen at the right places, physics degree graduate or otherwise. At best, pressure _happens_ where flow slows down, but it's a _side effect,_ it's not a _cause_ of deposition.
The files management, the retro compatibility of ancient software and the fact you can update every single piece of hardware.. it's something I could never live without. And when your PC is totally outdated you can place your OS hard drive (with all your softwares) in a new machine and everything works fine. It's just insane.
@@thomsonhomsonI use Windows since 1995 and I never experienced all these bugs. You just need to search for "Windows xx optimization" on Google to keep your system working like a rock. The only truly buggy OS from Windows was Vista and I never installed it because nobody forced me to update my OS to run my softwares.
Well, not with some audio software. You'll have to re-activate a lot of stuff, because the devs are just like that.
for me it's the price. I can get myself a pc that can edit video, run all the plugins I'll ever need without latency play any games I want AND get a much more user friendly experience for less than the price of a mac book that struggles with all of this.
@@thomsonhomson Yes, without regular maintenance, things will always break. If I draw an analogue to cleaning your house, maintaining Windows PC is like cleaning it yourself or hiring someone to do it yourself. Cleaning Mac, however, is you have designated company to do the cleaning and you have very little control over what they clean and fix and what not. And when problems arise, even small ones, there's nothing you can do yourself. Sure it is easy, but you pay for that easiness with both money(optional on PC, non-optional on Mac) and control(as much as you like on PC, none at Mac).
This is never a question about which one is objectively better. It is always a subjective assessment, weighing pros and cons against your own personal needs and situation. For every pro PCs have, they also have a con. And the exact same goes for Mac whether or not you want to admit it. No objectively perfect system exist.
ROFL@@kantina4765
Sorry, I'm still not convinced that Dan isn't powering his studio with some kind of hyper advanced alien technology, but this was a nice attempt at throwing us off the trail. 😁
are definatly worth it, Macs where aways in the big rooms in New York, especially Arista Records BMG and Sony
He understands how windows works unlike most mac users.
can i just point out how epic Dan's voice sounds on a home theater system?
Darth Attenborough
yuge
I listen and watch him on my IMAX screen. Absolutely massive.
I'm now on my 3rd Carillon pc. In my experience their customer support is excellent and the PC's are fast and reliable. Recommended!
im 40 seconds in, and I just have to say that I love how you're able to set the perfect mood with your music
Every time. I feel the same way about his videos in general.
And that voice..
@@V0ID_beats I want to hear him say "one does not simply walk into Mordor".
Love Quicksand, Dan. I used to be one of those who erroneously thought Apple “took care” of Mac users. The wool fell away when I got into 4K video editing and learned the best cost and performance options were to build my own pc. I’ll never look back. Thanks, as always!
Thanks
Dan Worrall is so good at music production he can make compelling technical videos about operating systems.
Hey Dan! Hope you’re doing well. I just wanted to tell you that "Quicksand" track is amazing!! Keep it up…
Thank you :)
I really like Troll Bridge, ha
Congratulations on the new system! Hope you'll have lots of productive and inspirational hours/days/years with it.
I remember seeing Carillon ads in Future Music magazine.
I never actually pulled the trigger, but it did inspire me to build one version of my pc into a rack mounted case.
As my storage needs increased and I was using my pc for more and more tasks, not just audio, I outgrew that box - I’m happy to hear they are still on the go and making real engineers happy
Best of luck with it Dan!
This video is very important for every person that is pursuing to be a musician / sound engineer. It really shows you the choices you have with different OSes and lets you take an informed decision based on your preference, and not by some peer pressure bs. Thank you Dan! People need this clarity.
And as for the people that are reading this comment, if you're on the look out for a new computer, here is my general advice. If you've grown up with a specific OS, STICK TO IT. You know that OS better than the other. Its easier to make your way around it, especially if you get to troubleshooting and tinkering(assuming you do that). Please don't get influenced by your peers and mentors.
The same goes for your DAW choice. Its what's important to "you" that matters.
After all you are gonna use it, not they.
Spot on @athuuu. I was using Win 95 running Logic when it was eMagic. The Win95 machine was a dog. Something would "break" in the OS and many times I had to re-image the OS drive to get back up. A friend had a Mac running the the older OS9 using Logic on a Mac computer that was spec-wise anemic compared to my PC. However, it ran Logic far better and was stable as a rock. My Win95 machine running Logic would crash often. So I switched to a Mac G5 tower running OSX and spent more time making music rather than swearing up and down at a crappy Win95 machine. Then Apple acquired eMagic and I never looked back. I'm still using Logic to this day and thought about changing but I can fly through a production on Logic and don't relish the time that would be required learn a new system and application. What works for you is what's best for you. Cheers.👍
1000%
Exactly.
Dan, you are the man! Thank you for everything you do for music! I’ve learned a ton from your work over the years. Please keep doing your thing! 🤟
I used PCs for audio forever, even though I'm a developer by trade. For me, having all of those *nix tools really do make my life easier, which I discovered when my company bought me a fancy Mac. I've gotten really used to having a similar platform for audio work and proper work. But you can do great work on any platform.
since I understand computers roughly how Dan understands audio, here's few brief comments on the topic:
1) advantage of CoreAudio is, it has built-in audio device aggregation capability, MIDI device access to multiple apps, MIDI over ethernet native capability (Windows users can use rtpMIDI and loopMIDI for similar result, but can only dream about being able to use multiple audio and MIDI interfaces across multiple apps simultaneously without hiccups)
2) serious disadvantage of Apple Silicon Macs is push towards DriverKit drivers, which are inferior to standard kernel extensions in a way audio interface driver has no longer direct kernel access and priority over any other processes running on a MacOS, RME recently did a video on the topic, it's basically a dead-end for professional audio work on Mac (and meets expectations of Macs slowly devolving to iPads)
3) for audio work, consistent sustained performance is what matters, and also minimum bloat (including useless features and connectivity on computer's motherboard), spec shown in the video (i7-13700KF, 32GB ram, RTX 3050, two SSDs) is more than enough for 99% audio users - that said I'd arguably suggest i7-13700K without "F" which has integrated graphics that could be used for video encoding/decoding acceleration or as a backup in case of dedicated graphics card failure
4) rack PC cases are somewhat rare, but it's not true rackmounted computer is not user-friendly, in fact you can get a rack shelf with rails (computer racks are usually deeper than pro-audio racks, so depends on studio desk/rack) and comfortably slide computer for easy maintenance (just be sure there's enough counterweight and attached cables long enough or detach them)
You can achieve 1) though but it requires 3rd party software (ex banana)
I've always wondered how aggregate devices handle clocking. If they're not all clocked to the same reference, what happens?
They are clocked to the same source in macOS. You can manage how the devices are aggregated in Audio MIDI settings which is built into macOS.
It’s essentially like having a built in MOTU unit.
i can seamlessly run reaper (using asio to my sound card) and other apps (firefox with youtube) using standard windows sound subsystem, and hear both their sounds together. i think this might be a feature of the driver of my interface (umc204hd) so kudos to behringer if that's the case. the only thing that requires exclusive access on windows is a webcam now.
@@cURLybOi your DAW accesses your interface via ASIO, while windows accesses it via DirectWave or WDM. ASIO has exclusivity but WDM doesn't, and you can use both at the same time. your interface's drivers (like all interface drivers) understand this and see WDM, ASIO, KS, and DirectWave as different "streams" that can all come at the same time.
Every word!! Exactly the same experience! Thanks!
i usually have to go over Dan's videos twice. The information given is gold, but I do get distracted by the music/soundtrack arrangements, and I say that as a compliment. The acoustic guitar ending is brilliantly arranged.
I think it's really cool that music production professionals are even talking about Linux at all. There has been a gigantic effort recently to make the user-facing software more polished and easy to use, and that is only going to get more intense as it keeps picking up steam. It would be so cool if mainstream Linux distros stop being perceived as operating systems exclusively meant for comp-sci nerds, and instead are instead seen as regular competitors to Windows and MacOS.
It seems like the Steam OS is a step in the right direction. Didn't use it yet, don't have a steam deck. And honestly, i don't mind switching to Linux, if it means we get a cheaper and super stable machines for music work.
with all the recent ad bloat, im considering the switch for about 2 years now. but i still need adobe apps to work on a regular basis and dualboot will just fragment my work and have me constantly switch OS. also gaming. but valve is pushing that on devs too, so i really hope we will get there
I am an audio professional [voiceover[ and I run 100% Linux. There are three serious options: Ubuntu Studio, AV Linux and Fedora Jam [used to be called redhat ccrma]. I run Ubuntu Studio 22.04 LTS. I use a Rode NT1 and a focusrite 2i2 3rd gen audio interface.
Pros and why I do this: Linux is a quiet environment with no AV or phone homes or ad nonsense. I get all the juice from my computer specs all the time.
Main con: hardware drivers still present a problem in Linux. For instance I cannot find a webcam that runs in Linux.
I use a quiet computer built to make minimal noise. The fans and case are designed to make no noise. Uses a SSD [obvious].
I left Windows for good in 2019. I did look at Mac as an option. But I don't like it. It puts all my eggs in on e basket; if something goes wrong I can't swap out a part. I also don't live near a Mac store so to fix anything Mac would take time that I don't have. The ratio of price to specs is also crazy; for what a Mac costs you can build a Linux computer that is far better.
I will be running Linux at least until the end of this decade. I use Reaper and Harrison Mixbus as my DAW software.
You just can't fight against the MOUNTAINS of VST and sample libraries and samplers and other VSTi that windows has. Also, if there's no official drivers from your interface manufacturer it's a miss. You can get by if you're using like 4-io basic USB device, but when you try to offer it RME UFX-II or something else that's really geared to professionals use, you're shafted because no driver support: it's a brick.
And that's the main issue with Linux in many MANY use cases. And the backlog of thousands of pieces of software and hardware will not be easily translated nor never (because there's no money in it)
One game dev told the YT few weeks back, that they spent huge amount of time to get their game working on mac and after all the work it counted for 0.02% of their sales... so they dropped the mac version and will never ever develop for mac again.
What would happen if NI translated let's say Kontakt for Linux... how much would they earn from that? Would it be financially viable?
YAbridge
I second that as a user of both Apple's M1 16gb ram MBP & i7 12700K 32gb ram. I do most of my production on Windows, an only use MBP when I travel and feel creative
Congrats on your new machine Dan!! Let’s hope you get the same mileage or more outta this one as you did the previous. I personally use a Mac but I have zero qualms with anyone using whatever suits them best…my last Mac lasted me 12 years until I couldn’t update the OS anymore this year. Which sucked because the machine itself was still going strong. Anyways I’m looking forward to some great new content and to you sharing whatever you feel like sharing with us all on the new machine. Farewell to your old PC…I’m glad it was good to you.
I am an “old-timer” having worked and developed in computer-based media since the OpCode, Sound Designer and related sequencer days before digital audio in any modern sense.
Anyway, I mostly use NVidia H100 based Linux PC’s for AI Deep Learning and related development, Mac for many things including DAW work (mostly in Reaper) and PC’s for Pyramix (for DSD), Reaper and various other digital media things.
In any case, I agree that OSX buries and isolates things in such a way that if you do {and I have) have deeper audio chain issues, they can be a real pain to address. I have used Mac’s since my first Lisa and 128K, but I have moved to Merging fanless rack PC’s for much of my mission critical studio work (and a dedicated M3 Mac running nothing but critical audio software). I am glad to learn about Carillon as a good option to Merging (now Merging/Neuman). Thanks!
Hey old timer., I worked at Opcode! Glad someone still remembers us.
As an old timer do you agree that for the first time in living memory, both Windows and Apple are hardware companies. Windows by mandating hardware requirements is a hardware company. They might not realize that. But they are. I cannot see what prerogative Windows has to tell ME what hardware I should run with MY computer and MY time and money.
Have run 100% Linux for serious audio since 2019. [Ubuntu Studio] . I will be running Linux for audio for at least the rest of the decade. I have no time or energy for the games, pranks and brain flatulence of a post-capitalist American tech duopoly.
As a computer-guy - I think your take is pretty much spot on. There is no "best" OS - it always depends on use-cases. For development, testing and running server-side business applications, Linux has definite advantages I wouldn't to live without. For private, general use - there are drawbacks. And for business-cases using desktop applications, it's never really been competitive.
I personally strongly prefer not to be locked into a single-vendor ecosystem and to have backward-compatibility, which is why I use Windows with integrated WSL for doing Linux-stuff. But there are many use-cases where Macs are perfectly fine, and in general, they usually offer better usability to less tech-savvy users.
To me, that would still not be worth locking yourself into their ecosystem and paying the "premium brand" cost for similar performance... but I naturally respect when others prefer having the level of cross-device integration that is possible with a single-vendor ecosystem.
I’ll never return to PC and Windows when it comes to music production. I switched to mac a couple of years ago and I don’t think one day goes by without me thinking about how glad I am that I switched. I don’t miss ASIO, annoying fans, crackling audio, poor performance, high latency. They are all pure inspiration killers.
Lots of people using PCs have no issues. All you did was make trade offs, and it sounds like it worked out for you. Many people don't want to pay a lot more for the same or less computing power (actual power consumption is something Apple is amazing at now), endless dongles and cable swapping and hubs, inability to add more RAM or even drive space as needs change, regular OS updates that break older software, etc. There's no green grass for the OSes, just different lawn mowers.
@@cfs You're talking about apple like 10 years ago. It's not expensive anymore. I bought an m1 mac mini for $500 bucks and it will run anything I want to run for the next ten years. It has all the i/o I could possibly ever need and with the efficiency of the chips, you don't need to add anything. If you're a serious music producer, then you aren't doing OS updates anyway. I get what you're saying, and I'd be agreeing with you until apple silicone came out. You just can't beat the integration and ease of use that apple products provide. I wanna create, I don't wanna fiddle with settings, drivers, and instability all the time. I'm saying this after pushing through using cubase, and studio one on pc for 10 years. After getting a Mac I'll NEVER go back.
@@dudemcgee256 I don't have to "deal with drivers" (if you install software on the Mac to use a product it's the same step), I don't have instability, I don't fiddle with settings. I just create. On Windows. I also use an MBP every day. It's just as unstable for me - which is to say, both are pretty reliable and easy, but both have issues sometimes. Yes the integration is there on Mac, and that smooths some things out, but also introduces others. Anyway, not meant to be a Mac V PC battle - let's just say there's ample info on "both sides" as to which is "better". Main thing is to realize the answer is personal not for everyone, and then use the one best for you to make stuff. Cheers.
Not being able to upgrade or repair macs is what got me to switch. IMO the last good mac was the 5.1 cheesegrater.
The dust free thing just depends on if you are running a positive or negative pressure fan set up (or neutral tbf). Positive means that no dust can get inside any gaps, and the only way for air to get in is through the filtered intake. Negative literally sucks dust into your system, so is usually avoided (it's also argued it has worse thermal performance due to less air being inside at any one given time to cool the components.
I'll argue the heating part of that. Having negative pressure, lower pressure inside the case relative to the pressure outside the case, cools the air giving it a greater capacity to absorb the heat that it will carry away. Heat is just molecular movement. Spray a can of compressed air and as the air inside the can expands, it gets cold, thus the can condenses the moisture in the air and develops frost on it. If the air entering the case of a computer expands, it cools as the molecules move away from each other giving them more space and lowering the level of energy. As the air interacts with the components, it gets excited and picks up energy, becoming more dense again, then carrying that heat energy out of the case. Why heat the air as you force it into the case?
The dust issue is simply a matter of how clean the air entering the case is. Yes, if the case has positive pressure and the intake fans are filtered, the positive air will keep dust from entering various leaks or vent in the case.
@@midi510 We are not taling about multiple bar of pressure differential here. You only need there to be a fraction of posative pressure to keep out dust. At these miniscule differences of pressure any thermodynamic effects on the air due to pressure alone will be completely negligible. Where as the sliding scale of air flow to temperature transfer efficiency is in a range that does effect a PC's cooling.
@@DaftFader You brought up the the thermal aspect. It just doesn't make any sense that having more air molecules inside the case has anything to with cooling. Yes, I agree, it's a flow issue and even a slight positive pressure will keep the dust out, providing the intake is filtered.
@@midi510 I'm talking about heat transfer due to increased airflow as a result of maximizing the amount of possible airflow by having a slight posative pressure, you're talking about air temperature change across a pressure drop.
I'm saying the pressue increase is enough for the added air to noticeably increase cooling via heat transfer, but not enough to drastically effect pressure related air molecule exitement and any drop in energy will be minor at the pressure differentials we are talking about, you were the one who brought that bit up. You have to drop the pressure by 2 bar to drop 1 deg C. The effect is negligible in the type of system we are discussing as we will not even start aproaching these changes in pressure.
If we take slightly posative pressure as max airflow, any reduction in pressure is just less air moving through the case as all you're essentually doing, given a fixed exit fan on max, is reducing the input fan speed. If we completely turn off the input fan and leave the output on full, if you're lucky and have amazing fans and an airtight case you'll get close to 2 bar (and I'm being way overly generous in that, that's nearly a 30psi drop: a high performance turbocharger on full capasity as an output fan), you will get 1deg c lower (air) temp because of pressure drop across the stationary input fans, but gain 10-30 deg c (of component temp) because of lack of airflow (although if we did have a turbo as the output, we might actually get enough airfow lol, but I'm only going to bolster your argument so far). The two differant scales of change in temp we are discussing are uncomparable (and refering to the temps of two diferant things) and clearly pressure drop air temp changes do not make up for a lack of airflow (aka less air molecules moving through the case for heat to transfer to) and can't counteract overheating componants in a computor case with normal high performance PC fans . Make sense now?
your videos are endlessy entertaining.
that said, i've used Mac for more than 20 years, i'm the computer version of "i just want to drive to the shops", and never had any problem.
i don't understand anything you're talking about in the part where you go on about installing drivers and stuff, i just want to turn it on and start to create (i am a video editor and a musician since the end of last century), and i want to only think about the creative stuff.
so i guess mac is designed for people like me, i say this with no pride or shame, just facts.
Tbf if people are willing to pay a price premium to not do driver setup for the interface -let them, it's their money. Also I know people who literally just love the gui of their fav os and that's fully valid.
Freaking love listening to basic waveforms. What a lovely backing track to this video
I switched to a MacBook Air M1 2 years ago and run Logic Audio after years using a PC running Cubase. Switching to the MacBook was the best thing I ever did. It works for me and that’s what’s really important.
Apple Silicon is especially a big boost for a laptop - your Air is faster (for audio things, not GPU) than any Intel laptop they ever made and faster than most desktops. And there is no fan, totally silent and great battery life. Of course there is no internal upgradability, but then laptops are often increasingly this way anyway.
@@darwiniandude All true. I don't need to upgrade to be honest. I have a 512 GB hard drive and 8gb ram. I also have an external 1tb hard drive. It's by far the best set up I've had for recording.
did you find keyboard shortcuts difficult? with osx i found they made you press the command button alongside two other keys for shortcuts
In “keyboard” in system settings/preferences you can swap the modifiers around if you want. Like you can swap command and control so undo cut copy paste are all control z, control x, control c etc rather than command. But you can also re-map any shortcuts there, or make new shortcuts for any menu item in any programs. Safari has a ‘merge windows’ function - no shortcut. I created one, control command M. So if your daw of choice has a menu item with no shortcut, you can assign one, which is cool. @@dabadoo7631
@@dabadoo7631 I'm learning shortcuts as I need them tbh.
very happy with m1 macbook air, today marks my first year with it. I would probably chosen a windows laptop if such combination of cpu power, battery life and dead silent operation existed in pc world, but it doesn't. It's my main studio machine and it allows working for hours in case of a power outage or blackout.
Typing this on a 12 year old PC! Absolutely bonkers how capable it still is, although a new one is finally on the horizon.
I made complex electronic music with a high end 11 year old laptop i still have.
So sorry for your loss.
I’m one who straddles both sides of the fence fairly equally.
Day-to-day I run a Windows 10 PC that started its life in Windows 7 back in 2012, and only got upgraded to 10 last December when I was sick of certain software crashing the thing.
10 has proved itself a most fantastic operating system (after days of tweaks applied to it at any rate) and that’s where I do two-track recording/editing in Sound Forge Pro 16.
For music-making however, my M1 Max Laptop is my preferred system, where I live in Logic.
I’m happy to work on both platforms for various reasons.
I like the quickness of editing in Sound Forge, but I like Logic’s flex-time, Komplete Kontrol integration (which I rely on very heavily indeed) and the fact that I also gig, so having a laptop with the exact same sounds at home as on-the-road is simply no question.
My windows machine is just an old I5 3570K with 16 GB RAM but it doesn’t have to be much more than that. Yes, even the boring onboard graphics, but it serves the purpose it was built for at the time, and 11 years later, still runs.
I will use whatever system I need for the job at the time I need it.
I have absolutely no love for Windows 11 though, so when I’m forced to get a new PC, maybe I can *upgrade* it to 10, and hold it there indefinitely.
A 13700KF with lots of cache on a single die, Windows 11 to accompany the CPU architecture, 32 Gigs of RAM to fit them soundbanks, SSDs to do it quickly, and probably the best GPU option, not too expensive but with plenty of horsepower to run a DAW, or to record or encode a few videos.
That's a good prebuild, very well suited for the job.
Oh, didn't catch that in the video, this are the specs of Dan PCs build actually?
I have a 12700K, no graphics card. I heared that graphics cards add more fan noise and hurts the noise floor for the analog audio outputs.
I selected the components myself plus the PC case and then people built the entire tower for me.
I have some advantages over Dan Worral's PC:
i7-12700K has better perfomance per watt than the 13700KF, easier to cool, i have a higher end motherboard with more storage upgrade options.
If i own a graphics card, would be for gaming reasons, for music production is totally useless.
Hey Dan, I'm a big fan of all your videos and love to keep binging them because of your precision in geeking out about sound and explaining what's going on!
I know I'm not a good representative of the majority of your audience, but I do have some suggestions I'd personally like to see on your channel, and maybe others would too, and I'd be honored if you made a video on any of these suggestions. Anyway, here are some of the topics I'd like you to cover more in future videos:
- Diving into more creative effects like various kinds of waveshapers and nonlinear filters, extreme filtering like flangers and phasers, vocoders and other spectral processors, and etc. I'd especially like to see you talk about your favorite creative effects and/or your favorite uses for specific creative effects
- Talking about various types of synthesizer plugins and various techniques you use to dial in certain sounds, and maybe talking about your favorite synthesis methods to work with, like subtractive, additive, wavetable, fm, granular, etc
- Breaking down free plugins like the kilohearts essential snapins or the melda free plugin collection or other miscellanous ones like plugins from ChowDSP, and talking about how well designed and good sounding they are compared to significantly more expensive plugins of the same category
- More philosophical talks about the creative process and maybe some approaches to overcoming writer's block and/or developing a song further when you're not quite sure where to take it
To be fair, I absolutely love your videos that geek about plugin design in the context of mixing a track, and I also love the various videos you make discussing various techniques for approaching a mix. However, given that there's so much more to music than just mixing and polishing material you've already written, I'd love to see more videos from you discussing various other aspects of music, especially since I look up to you so much for your no bullcrap, straight to the point, practical and direct approach to thinking about audio and discussing audio to other people.
Whatever content you decide to create in the future, I wish you all the best working with your brand new computer! I can't wait for whatever you're cooking up next!
Rack mount hardware can be harder to cool, and thus louder. Lots of it is aimed at servers where noise isn't a concern. But it's good to hear your pc is fine :).
Looks like a massive heat sink with a noctua fan. I like it :D.
@@RC-1290 Yeah, I've got a similar huge Noctua and the CPU is basically silently cooled, even under load. Couple that with SSDs and a similarly silent PSU, and most audio users won't hear a thing.
9 hiend noctua fans are running on my pc, they are so quiet.
Can you please give me the exact model for the fans? @@vooveks
@@AndroidGamingApps Noctua NH-D15 with NF-A15 fans.
That's a really nice Reaper set-up you have, Mr Worrall. Thanks for everything you do. Keep up the good work.
Not looking for trouble, but for accuracy: the Mac operating system dropped "OS X" in 2016 for "macOS". Also OS X referred to system 10, and currently the Mac architecture is system 14.
Sticking to what works for you is essential. I used Linux as a student many years ago, at home, and then for work. No problems for my use cases, except testing some things in MS Word (as users have it) and I found a workaround for that.
Great PC, Dan!
I sincerely hope you are doing well! Thank you for the new video.
Gotta love Dan's pragmatism. Pick whatever tools get out of your way so you can get stuff done :)
I'm a full time software developer and have used Linux as my main desktop PC for around a decade, but have done very little music production on it because the audio stack is a total mess. I've talked to a few folks who've gotten low-latency audio working with pipewire, but in my experience it's always busted in some way on my machines. I do most of my audio production on a Mac, but have also run afoul of Apple's deprecation of "old" but perfectly functional hardware (RIP my 2012 iMac 😢). These days I use a 2013 Mac Pro trashcan I found on ebay for a couple hundred bucks which runs macOS 12. I figure it should be supported for at least another 5 years or so. It's not like computers are getting that much faster anymore, so old hardware can be sufficient for a long time.
Spot on. Dan.
I've been using self built PCs as DAWs since starting in 1998. Windows 2000 + Cubase proved to be an extremely stable setup and i was very reluctant to move to XP. Had to eventually, but a new system with Windows 7 eventually replaced it and kept going for a long time. Macs have never been a consideration for me because i see no additional benefit. Keeping it simple, installing as little software as possible, Windows can be extremely reliable for audio work. But looking at the direction MS has been going in with 11 and 12 ... I may finally try getting Ableton to work on Ubuntu...
One thing the newer Apple silicon macs are great for is the fact that they make ZERO noise. I love my M2 mini for that reason and also how powerful it is. However, if Logic was on Windows, I would 100% be using my PC for everything.
I love PCs for video stuff (graphics cards are just so much more powerful on PC these days) and macs for audio. The main reason for Mac for audio for me is that you can link up multiple interfaces with it and have them all work at the same time. Not something I’d use all the time, but there have been a few times it was useful. Also low latency core audio comes in handy for things like streaming (though tbh it’s better on a pc overall). On a PC the built in MME and similar drivers are just so high latency and not every application allows for ASIO drivers. Same goes for certain interfaces. Granted if you have RME it’s the top of the line for PC and all, but some interfaces are also more buggy on PC, so you may be more limited. If you are having a pro studio most of the time the PC is stable enough, but i find that the Mac is slightly better in certain situations. My last two computers (one Mac one pc at the same time) lasted over 10 years each. I also recommend most people get a PC desktop over a Mac desktop. Just more customizable and more power potential long term. Mac laptops are just top notch though.
All that being said i know a few people who installed Mac OS onto a PC (hackintosh it is called) and it was like the best of both worlds.
Also i am surprised you went with a 3050 graphics card when you do video editing. A 4060 or something more modern would have sped up your video editing workflow/render time a LOT. But I assume whatever you had before was much slower so it’s a huge improvement. Anyway enjoy the new pC!
Not fair Dan - RME haz custom drivers that rival most interfaces on the market. Probably runs fine on Windows ME too!
spotting the Noctua cooler in the Carillon gives me immediate faith in their work!
My previous self-built PC lasted me 2012 to 2021.
I’ll get around to reviving it one of these days.
In 2021 I bought my first ever PC assembled by someone else, Scan Computers.
I’m very happy with it 3XS Doctor Mix Edition - my spec.
Quantum 2632 interface.
On paper I could have maybe saved £200 going DIY
IF I could have sourced all the components myself, that is.
Stocks of parts were dwindling back then thanks to C19.
It started off with 5.5TB of disks and 32GB RAM.
Now it has 10TB and 64GB.
The early 2000's THIS (Carillon)was the thing to have for in the box DAW-production. Boy, I wanted and needed 1 sooo bad. Then MultiThread came out and duo core became less expensive, fun times.
I'm with you. I've been recording/mixing on PC since 1993. My first PC truly dedicated to audio was a 486DX 33 with 8 MB running Windows 3.11 and Cubase. And me never being too scared to upgrade, I would do so when needed. I was already used to the Windows OS and I could very quickly troubleshoot any issues if they were to arise, which wasn't very often and by Windows 98 and Cubase VST, I was able to confidently record bands/solo artists and charge for my services. It's been my only job ever since. I could have easily gone with a Mac since Cubase used to only be for the Mac but, when Steinberg started to offer it for Windows, I decided to take the chance simply due to already being a PC user and having a great understanding of the hardware since I've built a few by that time. I also had a problem with the cost of Apple products in general as well as not being able to build a Mac or even really upgrade them so, I built a PC that was at least twice as powerful and half the cost. It was no longer necessary to have a Mac to make music like it was in the 80's. And the available software for PC became 100 fold. I'm still strictly a PC user and always will be. Cheers! 🥂
I've been in IT from 1983 when I worked for one of the first micro PC companies in the UK (CP/M). I've seen every version of DOS, Windows, and OS/2. Also many version of Unix, Linux and lots of big iron systems. The old issue with Windows was the backward compatibility which has now very much been reduced. Now retired I still prefer a PC with Windows.
Cool video, cooler music. Nice work!
Edit: I just purchased this soundtrack on Bandcamp!
windows user with rme and reaper here! love the setup, almost 0 problems
I'm doing something similar, even though I'm on a Mac. I'm using the Mac Pro Rack 2019 (Intel). I leave it off the internet, and I will not be updating the OS or Pro Tools, because everything works great. I might even leave it like this forever.
I worked in IT and always had PC’s usually built by me. However when my kids started to use a computer, I got totally sick of constantly having to fix the PC. It was then that I bought a Mac for the kids, and no more PC support at home.
Macs are closed proprietary systems, have less apps available for them and generally less tweaking and customisation is available. I switched to a Mac for studio use and haven’t looked back. The computer just works, is a tool for the job.
There is a premium to be paid for macs and the inability to upgrade hardware (ssd, memory) is a disadvantage.
In the end use what you’re comfortable with, turn off automatic software updates, and make music.
"However when my kids started to use a computer, I got totally sick of constantly having to fix the PC. It was then that I bought a Mac for the kids, and no more PC support at home.
"
well there's your problem, it's your kids using it because they dont have any knowledge at all. you can pretty much do the same thing with windows like locking the admins and kernel so kids cannot install a super malicious software anyway. I switched from windows to mac once and have looked back to windows and now im back because I do 3DCG stuff while doing music. and barely I got any problem, and I havent got any bluescreen since windows 7, it's so stable now a days that there's really no way you can break it unless you're installing a software from the wildwild west of internet land...
@@yasunakaikumi. This was the kids pc. XP at the time. I don’t want to have to do PC admin on my music pc. I don’t want to do any admin really. I want it just to work and use it as a tool for making music. I am sure a quality built PC, configured and optimised for audio would be a great machine too.
So it all boils down to what you’re familiar with and your budget.
I haven't heard the Carillon name since the 90s when I religiously bought Sound on Sound. delighted to know that a pro-audio PC builder still has a role today.
I was a faithful Windows user for 20 years. But my Windows kept crashing when working with video files inside Ableton Live without a grid (free mode). Switched to Mac and it never happened (even in crappy macs). Now I use a Mac Studio M1 Max, with a MOTU UltraLite Mk5 and it’s heavenly. The CPU seems to be on holiday no matter what I throw at it. I also appreciate Mac has native folders to place VSTs and presets.
I also had a Windows laptop but it crashed on me while DJing, switched to a little MacBook and it never happened again.
I know Carillon is a good Windows systems builder. But my Windows experience is for gaming and for that I got myself a powerful HP Omen.
I had that exact same Carillon PC. Still in my garage probably.
If i could harvest the energy of people trying to convince each other that what they use is the best i could achieve intergalactic travel.
Well i guess one can dream
As a kid of the 1970s, I can only say that Dan's videos have a calming effect on me, in much the same way that listening to Arthur Lowe narrate The Mister Men did back in the day.
Nowt better than speccing a piece of gear and having the proper 'nerds/geeks' that you can trust to do the job properly. Thanks for posting another informative vid Dan. 🤘🤘
Dan,
A rack mount PC doesn't have to be a chore to access for upgrades. They make slide-out rack rails. My rack PCs are fitted with these and just slide out and the case top tilts up and stays in position. Of course, the slide-out can be secured for moving the rack with two thumb screws (my under-table racks are on wheels). Pair this with removable drive carriers for SSDs and there's no need to even slide out the PC to add or change drives. I make my drives hot-swappable so I don't even need to power down the system (assuming it's not the OS drive which is an NVMe drive on the motherboard).
There are even PC power supplies that can slide out the back of the case with removal of two thumb screws. All this is pretty standard in the server world and there's *tons* of second-hand server gear always being sold surplus.
not to mention osx often breaks compatibility with updates... 😬
I had one of those Carillons! Damned good audio PCs back when Macs were all the pros talked about.
Its so frustrating that macos has terrible application support because its stability is something i adore, its been so much more consistent than windows ever has for me but i can run barely anything on it or customize my rig down the line and its so frustrating, they have a great operating system thats so close to being perfect to me but they never go the extra mile to make that a reality. One thing i will give them though is their computers last long minus the application support issues, ive recorded back in college using a 2009 mac pro and minus it chugging a slight bit in performance (which is a given) it was completely fine for multitracking most of the time which was all i really needed to use it for.
As much as i dislike windows in many areas its probably sticking around on any desktop i have, though for traveling i dont plan on ever using a windows laptop again
as a side note, ive seen a rack mount mac mini recently which was quite strange
6:22 I'm in this Rabbit Hole since months now, i've abandoned Logic and went into cubase along a Steinberg interfase, now i feel sry about all the people mixing using DAWS based on CoreAudio (Audible Jitter) while only few people are aware of this, they even win Grammys for god sake, the sound industry is obliterating the PCM capabilities in exchange of a Fancy Bloated Audio Marketing. Now is when ASIO and HDX make sense to me, even UAD Interfases are porting this CoreAudio PassThrough Parafernalia in LUNA. Macs don't look so PRO anymore. If you don't care is your loss but everyone should now this is an Issue.
.
CoreAudio SRC Hog Mode, Exclusive Mode, Integer Mode, Direct Mode, Jitter, BitPerfect, Passthrough, ASIO over CoreAudio.
.
Thanks for your video.
Big fan of your content Dan…….but. I ordered a top spec rack mount PC from Carillon and it arrived with significant damage to the case due to poor packaging. We are talking major shift in the case geometry across the horizontal axis, such that it would no longer rack mount. It would be impossible to quantify the shock the components had experienced and the effect this would have on reliability. This was a 4K PC so not cheap. I had to employ a solicitor to get any promise of being refunded even after returning the PC. Mr Carillon dragged out refunding me for over a month. I could not endorse him as being an ethical vendor. I spent 6K on a Mac Studio M2 Ultra. Apple ARE overpriced but they are a legitimate business that deals with customer complaints/dissatisfaction properly. Believe you me, sitting and worrying for weeks that you may have lost 4K to a rogue company is extremely stressful. I have photographs and legal documentation if Carrillon want to try it on and sue me for defamation. Consumers ought to know what they are getting in to.
i'm on year 5 with my machine and a couple hundred replacement parts later and i have something that gives me at least another 4 or 5 years of service. my mac mini is 11 years old but still runs what it runs. cant get online hardly anymore.
This is a great video and I don't mind the collaboration with Carillion, but I agree that it should had been disclosed at the start of the video instead of 8 minutes in.
I got myself a rack pc when I upgraded earlier this year. Frankly, it feels more powerful knowing that it looks more "professional" and serious "audio bro" to no one that'll ever see it
I'm kind of surprised Dan doesn't build his own PC. Those rack mounts do have the look, though.
rack cases with rails suck a lot less for maintenance than without. you just kinda stick something in the gap to hold it out and work on it like folding clothes into an open drawer.
Great music as always !
I used to work for a company that bought all their PCs from Carillon and I can only say good things about them. Very good machines!!
First-timer here. Your speaking style reminds me of Kurzgesagt, and very fascinating to listen to, even without a picture. 👍
- Eero
And thats why i use a hackintosh. For audio the mac os is just way more easy to deal with. I still have a pc in the studio, and it “works” but just not as easy to deal with than the mac. Ive tried positing the idea for a linux branch for only audio use but not enough people want to get into unfamiliar territory. End of the day whatever youre comfortable with dealing with is what you go with.
As a music software developer I have to use multiple OS (PC/Mac sometimes Linux) and even keep systems with different versions of OS, but for music making I generally stick to Windows due to the flexibility of upgrading and long time support for hardware. The one major thing I found preferable on Mac vs Windows is not having to sit through forced updates that require multiple reboots - sometimes if I have not used my production PC for while, this happens right at the point of wanting to record an idea. Also the Mac audio drivers/OS let you build composite audio devices easily - that could be a nice thing with audio over USB and multiple audio interfaces - reducing cabling and noise if you work exclusively 'in the box' for mixing. Scoring for Video on Mac has always been a much smoother experience too in my experience. Anyway, congrats on keeping the old system going so long and on the new machine.
I find sidecar feature on Mac to be way useful with no equivalent on Windows. You can drag a window from a desktop or laptop machine into iPad and interact via touch interface. Helps avoid carpal tunnel while working with mouse all day.
I use a Rollermouse.
This one: contour-design.co.uk/products/rollermouse-red
Why don't you just get yourself a laptop with a touchscreen. Ah, right, Apple does not offer any...
@@PaparazzbI To clear up any misunderstandings - my main machine is still running Windows but I use the Mac for some specific tasks. Regarding laptops with a touchscreen - I did have a Microsoft Surface in the past, but after about 18 months it failed so unexpectedly and spectacularly that I decided not to go that route again.
PC guy here. Pretty high IT knowledge. I still prefer PC's as they are just better value for money. I've worked on Macs for 10+ years (studios) and my PC (my studio work) - W10 is a workhorse, no problems at all. OSX is just more convinient, looks nice and "it works". On PC it used to be more complex - but since W10 - it works too. Drivers thing is a not a problem. I don't mind, or even care - I have z e r o issues since W10. W7 was OK too, yet it had issues. So if Logic or PT - then Mac. If Studio One (like me) - whatever you know better. I choose PC.
I started on Windows 95 too. Realy? I started on a Amiga 500. But only like a toy.
Now? I'm doing nice on Linux. For now!
Thx for that video!
Yes! A fellow penguin! Linux power!
a second hand macbook air M1 is something every Audio Person should have, it is that good.
i know plenty Audio engineer mac haters that have one now.
My dream is to be able to switch to linux, for a variety of reasons. Maybe sometime in the not too distant future, more manufacturers would start offering and supporting native linux versions of their plugins and/or drivers. Alas, one can dream...
All hail to perma computing. I salute your old work horse. All the best regards from a linux user. ❤
I've been traveling with my 2013 trashcan Mac Pro in my small backpack for several years now. Was a lifesaver for me and can now travel with my 2023 Mac Studio beast in my wifes handbag.
New PC cool! Looking forward to more videos, you're the best.
I had the same Carillion pc! Back to memory lane. Worked really for years and years in combination with Powercore for the plugins. ❤
Also, if you are the type that really likes to tinker, it's possible to get an off the shelf machine and optimize it for audio. It takes a really long time to get it exactly right, but after doing this for the past 20 years, I can get it done in an afternoon. That is, provided, you know a little about which devices cause latency issues (for instance Realtek NICs). If you don't want to get your hands dirty, then Carillon is a great alternative, and well worth the money.
I switched to Mac from Windows just because the new MacBook Pro M2 Pro allows me to be extremely mobile, plugin anywhere and at any time. But if my job didn't require me to travel a lot, I'd probably go for windows again. Just because of the sheer versatility PC can give you.
Why not both? I'm currently building a PC that will dual boot hackintosh and windows.
I had no bluescreen since 2007. I'm still making muslc on W8.1. Works like a charm.
I’ll be Windows forever, Cubase forever, and RME forever! I’ve used Cubase for 15 years and nothing else as my DAW. I’ve used RME for 15 years, I have their AIO Pro now, absolutely rock solid, drivers updated regularly, and very high quality audio from it! The best part is using the Samsung M.2 drives for audio sequencing now, absolutely stunning convenience, and ultra efficient! We’ll see how Windows goes for the next few decades! 🎶🎶🎶
Emagic and protius sound boxes! Those were the days ha ha
I’m still using my 2nd Carillon laptop from 8 or so years ago. (Before that I had an AC1 for almost as long) I’m thinking about buying the next one soon, but only because I know that although it hasn’t yet, my current one will one day start to have issues and I’d like the transition to be as seamless as possible. As for the Mac PC thing… I never really saw the need to bow to the cool
kids’ peer pressure to get a Mac when my PC worked as well as it did for the price…. And it does still work very well!
People who think: "PC's are unstable!" bollocks... been using computer on windows 7 that was on heavy use and on 24/7... it was rock solid and crashed basically never.
And now been running windows 10 for few years and this is solid as can be. on 24/7 as well... I've no complaints at all.
There are many things that can cause one's PC to be unstable, but they're mostly hardware issues or user errors or bad drivers, which can all be circumvented quite easily.
RME fireface 800, Nvidia 3060 with studio drivers, AMD 3600 (to be updated soon) and Asus Pro-art x570 motherboard and 32gigs of kingston 3600 c16 ram... been stable as a rock.
No complaints.
That’s cause you do the same old sht day in day out 😂
@@nofood1"That’s cause you do the same old sht day in day out " Sure. So what are you doing with your computer every day?
"Basically never" isn't never.
@@Skrenja are you honestly implying that MACs NEVER EVER EVER crash or have any bugs? :D
If I've had 5-10 crashes in the last 10+ years on a PC... is that not good enough? That I can trust my setup to be on and usable 24/7/365 without worrying apps or the computer itself crashing, unless it's a hardware issue where some physical part is broken?
All issues I've had were about bad driver update for GPU, which was solved by rolling back within 10 minutes, broken SATA-cable, which was diagnosed within 15 minutes and swapped within 10 minutes. broken hard disk which was obviously backed up so I could just throw it away and keep on chugging, one memory module that needed to be re-seated since there was too much dust in the connector when I installed it (and this was MY mistake, one shoudl always blow the connectors with compressed air before installing anything). That was diagnosed in few minutes by looking at the event viewer etc.
One windows update which was rolled back and I was again stable for years...
And between these events there's been YEARS before anything else happened...
So I ask you, how stable is stable enough and are you claiming that apple computers have better track record and never crash or break on you or have any flaky issues what so ever?
I wonder if you've ever watched Louis Rossmann channel and how god damn many apple computers is constantly coming over to his bench to be repaired for basic issues that apple should have fixed by better engineering...
There's no such thing as "perfect" and I think i'm as close to perfect as realistically possible.
I also have an AC1 that warped it's mobo..
Best of luck with the new omputer, (my old one runs as a virtual machine in my new one)
Give me lots of audio processing speed and power at a low price. Just bought a nice M4 Mini. Simply amazing.
Story time, in 2010 I purchased a 192 interface and the Pro Tools HD 2 system, still have it cards and all, and subsequently built a pc for around $3000, I7 processor at the time, high end motherboard 24 gig ram, raptor hard drive. Pro Tools HD 2 system had nothing but fallout problems to the point I wasn’t having that around clients, went and purchased a Mac Book laptop with 2 Profire 2626 interfaces linked via fiber optic cables and it worked way better, and was running Dual core processor. Then I didn’t want the monster PC to go unused so I went to CUBASE and had an excellent experience, still running the pro fire 2626’s so I can say it doesn’t mess with your audio too much, but have options because the next windows or mac update could be disastrous, updated to a M1 Mac mini and it’s freaking great, the one thing I have read about windows vs mac with recording, is windows always had way more background applications running which I always attested to less CPU ability to allocate that DSP to other programs but I don’t really know
you know that the machine really was a workhorse when it gets its own memorial. i have an i7 2600 i got in 2010 and its still going right now with no complaints.
dan warrall is totally right about software needing to have longevity. that is a platform's #1 rule: dont be a moving target.
You brought up a good point. You said "with OSx you don't need to install drivers". That's right YOU don't have to install drivers, but Apple still does! In fact you can't install or update drivers unless they are vetted by Apple. I politely disagree that Windows is also a closed OS. Yes, neither OSx or Windows has published source code. But Windows does have a free open API which anyone is free to develop with. Not OSx. At a minimum you have to at least register with Apple as a developer and they can kick you out of the club anytime. Now for the past two years I was forced to learn and use a MAC for general office tasks. The company was MAC based for IT systems. And I grew quite comfortable with the MAC. It is highly stable and high performance. And if anyone just wants a computer for general word processing, spread sheets, internet, photo library management, I would recommend a MAC. But as a hardware and software engineer going back to the late 1970s S100 and Apple 2 systems, I still do my serious work on a Windows and Linux PCs.
FlexASIO running in Kernel Streaming mode should be able to pretty much make any audio device perform as it would with proper ASIO drivers, giving the DAW direct access to the unit bypassing Windows. I use it to use different ASIO devices together (separate ADC and DAC working together to function like an audio interface to better performance than anything that's available on the market).