honest ?....just need opinons

[Na-tron]

Ok, here's the deal. Currently the studio at which I am doing work is run PTLE on a Wintel machine. Not my favorite, because at heart I am Mac man thru and thru...but ya gotta go with the flow....right? Anyway, after fighting with this **(!&&*^*^# machine for the past year or so the idea has come up to switch over to a Mac G4, maybe a 1gig dual...or soemhting like that. Now I have worked on a MAc TDM and luved it...and I have worked on this PTLE (win) version. and I was wondering...at risk of starting a platform war...,what differences can I expect in performance...I know the OS is easier to use...and should I even look at switching now or wait till after the Jags come and Digi jumps on the OSX wagon. Like I said I just want honest opinons..before we plop down 3Gs for a new system.

thanx,

Nate

[Gabriel Roth]

later this year, we can expect to see Pro Tools 6, which will be OSX compatible and will support dual processors. buying a new PT system right now would be a big mistake.

[Bastiaan]

But to answer your question:

I am a pc-guy, but i think this:

If you want stability and (slightly) more features, and more plugins to choose from go for the mac.
If you want a lot of CPU-power for less money as a mac, but can spend some time on setting up your system right, go for pc.

That is the situation now. I think there will be changes once ptle gets osx support....

[Na-tron]

So PTLE on the mac, has more plugin right?..I know I would be able to actually import CDS directly..I do radio spots...which would be a great help. BUT you would say the overall power less? Does this mean a lower track/plugin/aux count.....by how much? Is it noticable?

Sorry for all the questions

-nate

[Bastiaan]

ptle on the mac has more plugins to choose to buy. ptle on pc has the power to run more plugins.
Importing cd-audio directly into a session is a mac-only feature, but on the pc-side there are many free programs that will do that job too.

Yes, it would probably mean a lower track/plugin/aux count, but i am not really sure wether you will notice it. If you like to run several reverbs, limiters and other cpu-intensive tasks, then yes, you will feel it.

By how much? I have not really an idea. The test i described will give some idea of the dsp-power of a system. It is not realy a normal situation to suit up a session like that.

Also remember that most plugins also have an audiosuite variant. So you can "print effects to tape" so to say.

wether you go mac or pc....get tha fastest. And take a very very good look around this place, and the windows-thread to be sure you buy a system that will work with ptle. For the mac that isnt that difficult, but for the pc....the digi001 is very picky about what components you use. Wosrt case scenario: ptle wont work with what you bought....

[Na-tron]

well at the moment we are upgrading our PC to a P3-1.8G...and our ram count to baout 800m. I was just working on a session where I had to prent all my processing except for the auxes (duh)..and that drives me crazy....if I have to go back and make a change it is sooooo time consuming. I hope this upgrade helps, I wish we could go to an AMD, but that was outta range as is a Mac...and I will wait on that till the OSX version of PTLE comes out (hint, hint)

-nate

[Bastiaan]

People have been reporting strange problems when the memory is over 512 MB using win98.