Ok here's the deal. I've been a PC user all my life. I know they're not sexy and crash lots. That's what has brought me to this forum. I want to change, but I need to be convinced.

I'm a singer/ songwriter in the need of a fairly decent set up to be able to write/ record and down the line do live performances with. To date I have been using other studios but it is about time I got to grips with the production myself. Some mates use Logic Platinum, some use Cubase. However I go it will be in the portable direction -laptop/ notebook. I want to go to the cheaper end- if it will do a good enough job ie buy up stuff that is a couple of years old. I will be doing mixture of midi and audio, with up to 10 inputs although for the time being it will mainly be one instrument at a time. So:

Mac or PC
Cubase or Logic or Protools. Which versions for value for money.
Any probs going laptop route?
I've got an old (4 years ago) Maxi Studio Isis interface (I think that's what it is)- is that still suitable for what I need.
What other software would I need if I went for one of the above, or should that be all I need.
What should I expect to have to pay- I'm hoping to do the whole thing for within 2k. Can go more or less, but it will all be a loan to add to my ever increasing debts!!!!

I've wandered round sites, read others posts. I'm a little tired, and confused and I'm needing a bit of tender loving care. If you can help, please do!

Lots of love Alex,

I just read about Dntel doing his album "Life is Full of Possibilites" with a Powerbook G3. It made me realize just how capable portables are.

One thing Apple does best is portables. I do a lot of music work on a PC desktop. But I would'nt trust a PC Laptop for all it's cheesy injection molding.

Mac OSX is just a wonderful OS. and if your just changing platforms now, you might as well go OSX all the way.

I don't use MIDI much at all. So Pro-Tools and Ableton Live will do 90% of what I want to do as a Songwriter. Logic would be the way to go for MIDI. It's plenty capable at audio recording too.

I run my wares on an iBook and the desktop get a lot less use!

your options are almost limitless to a point... it really depends on 1) quality 2) $$$ wanted to spend and 3) are you willing to venture into new territory

I grew up on the first Apples.... had a IIe and then never got into computers until I had an 486 100mhz PC running Win 3.1. I had it about a year before getting to play on the performa macs and that was all I needed to switch. The OS made the difference for me. I absolutely hate the Windows OS even though each version gets more and more like the Apple OS. Plus I like knowing that it doesn't take a computer science major to install thrid party devices on Apple computers. Even to this day... I have PC friends that brag about their cheap componets they get but then they spend countless hours trying to get the stuff to work correctly on their PC. I had same problem on the 486.

For any PC user looking to switch to Mac, you've come to the right place. For recording Music there's nothing better and it boils all the way down to the micro-chip. PC's use a CISC chip. (complex instruction set computing. INTEL chip) CISC chips have "built-in" commands per byte (if you will) which is supposed to quicken it's processing. There's a small problem with that when it comes to programming, and the number of worthless third-party software producers for PC's is endless. Hence; crashes, freezes, 3 hours troubleshooting for a plug and play device with one driver, everything worked fine on Tuesday, but not on Wednesday...Not to mention the amount of power needed to cool those bad boyz with fans whirring like buzz-saws to keep solder from oozing out onto your songlist. Ever wonder why your PC using enthusiast friends always have the panel off of their CPU's? In laymen's terms INTEL chips do not crunch math like RISC chips and their performance in heavy-processing is very inconsistent. ( RISC stands for reduced instruction set computing; Motorola, and now IBM for Apple. That's right, IBM ). For reading email and laming it out over Microsoft Office (which Gates himself admits works better under OSX than any other platform) any computer will do just fine. It's an old misnomer that Macs aren't competant in the business world when they've been integrating with Wintel machines for eons now. The reason 90% of us have PC's and not Macs? Cost. What business man (or most anyone else for that matter) in his right mind would say; "I know a PC can handle Office fine and I can build spreadsheets and read email, but I'd much rather spend another grand to have a Mac around." ? It won't happen. It's the old YUGO vs BMW debackle. They both get you to work, but...
When it comes to heavy graphics design, music production, drafting, etc...where math/processing is paramount, you will see Macs on every desktop. Now let's talk about OS's. Windows, DOS. eesh. still DOS or am I missing something here? OSX is UNIX based, won't crash unless user-error is to blame. Even then a simple closing and reopening of that app is all you should need. Granted, there is less software available for the Mac OS platform, but rest assured it will have gone through much greater scrutiny and attention to detail just like the computer it's running on did and you will not have the; "oh my god it doesn't work" problem. Haven't restarted my computer in I don't know how long and I'm using a 500mhz Tibook! (excellent laptop I must say).
What I'd recommend for you is this; iBook (because your goal of 2K is more attainable by not getting a Tibook), Digital Performer 4, a mic, a mixer, a midi keyboard, and REASON. You are ready to record radio-ready music out of the comfort of your own home with little effort at all. Now, this'll probably cost you closer to 3k, but then it's done. How much have I invested in my home studio? Don't ask.
My G5 w/ 20" Cinema display ships in August. The debate over who is manufacturing the fastest personal computer is finally over.

Oh my… a mac addicts meeting!

I won't follow the happy scenery that far. I 'm just thinking that even when the hardware is lagging (or was, as the G5 will be in the same league as similar priced PCs) the facts that:

- Apple is the only hardware purveyor is good because every part work with the others, no incompatibilites
- the number of peripherals and software is inferior but you miss mostly only the crappy stuff, and the possibilities of low quality software, incompatible stuff goes down. We don't hear the horror stories upon the soundcard that dosn't like the firewire card that doesn't like the graphic card. We may not have all. But it works. And what do you need? the megazillion thingium with surper 16dimension accelerations and dolby digital? Or a computer that works? And works well for the stuff YOU do, not what you are supposed to do in ads.
- OSX is getting stronger and better, we are still waiting on some software but it'll come. it's bases are open sources, the soft like the hardware is base on common grounds with other platform, we are more compatible than ever. And the UNIX/LINUX community will enrich us with loads of interesting stuff with Panther coming with X11. You are not even forced to use the commend line, which is a tour-de-force for a UNIX (even if it helps sometimes
- Sure, Apple can be rather baffling sometimes, but not a lot of computer related companies can still making their customers dream. Apple do. It may be sometimes a time/space continuum effect that only mac followers can understand, but a company has the customers it desserves. And apple is a love affair.
- now we have still here on the site doubts on the G5 audio demo as the PC was clearly not behaving like it should have but we still need to know all on this "test". But the NASA (not exactly goofy people) just confirmed the veritests on the G5. It's a great chip.

We only need all bi G5s and looooooooooads of plugins in OSX to be happy (Steve, think of me please

Now, a detail, I'm still on a G3 400 myself, I do my graphic designer job with it, no fuss, try this with a 4 years old PC, I'm not sure you'd be that happy. Note it's a bit lagging for virtual synths/samplers, but as I'm using real ones…

[moderator mode] Please, no Mac/PC war, we have already forbidden in the french forums already, and it's of no use this thing [/moderator mode]

I concede to the chief moderator. I'm a mac addict. As a forum subordinate, I'd like to be so bold as to suggest a format name change to musiComputing. I'm being a smart aleck. The above topic entitled "Mac or PC? Convert Me!" got the best of me. I have plenty of friends and family that use PC's and I'm just lashing out in retaliation from all those looks of disgust I get from them when they notice what computer I use and my brothers friend who said; "But does Apple offer services like DNS servers and hardware?!" . Though I must say, the super 16megazillion thingium sounds pretty cool, it requires water cooling-the G5 does not. And when I'm "jonesin" to use the Windows platform- I'll use Virtual PC for all those .exe files and I'll go to an arcade when I want to play games. What baffles me is Apple's ad scheme seems geared entirely to a small group of women and men who can't find the power button on a CPU. I wish they'd market their computers as "smarter". Okay, okay, I'm done. I promise
The main thing is the music anyway. I don't care what gear you have, can you play? Do you love it? As far as playing live, if I need 3 keyboards playing simitaneously-I'd rather staff all 3 keyboards with keyboard players and save the computer for lighting, sound check, or opening music for the audience while they wait for the show. There's nothing I love more than creating layers of music with a group of "like-minded" individuals and realising that you've created something much bigger than yourselves. Much better distraction than a dart-league at least. We should talk quickly about the music makers. I hope I didn't confuse the gentleman wanting to know more about Macs and PC's. There were a couple of questions you had that were left unanswered and I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the products. Protools is used frequently (and can also be "plugged-in") to DP4. Using Protools in any capacity would probably offer you a lot of online support via forums like these. The interface you're talking about I have no clue. I would definitely visit their website to verify you can use that gear. May need some drivers, but hey-what else is new. You can pick up a small MOTU 2port midi interface for darn-near nothing. I think laptops are just fine. I'm just now thinking about DP2 on my first gen, 233Mhz, Tangerine iMac. *sigh* For music-making I'd recommend at least 500mhz processing. The more here the merrier.

Hi Alex
I can't give you a technical reply cos being a mere orchestral musician I don't know what most of the words mean. However I have been using Cubase since version 1 a looooong time ago and I regularly use both macs and PCs at work for this task.

To cut a long story short, if I (or any of my students) ever got stuck, it was always because of the way the PCs worked. These Pentium 2s and 3s did the job OK in the end but life just seemed easier with the macs, which, incidentally were quite a lot older.
Needless to say, the macs were always the most popular and actually never crashed.
I personally couldn't care less what the things look like (well yes, the new iMac is really cool!) but the macs definitely feel more user-friendly (if that isn't too old an expression!)

If your main aim is to create backing tracks for yourself you could probably get by with Cubasis VST (which is fine so long as you don't have OSX) and can be bought for around £45 UK money. Update to something newer/bigger later if you get good at it.
Good luck