On 06.04.2006 David W. Fenton wrote:
My thought is that if I went with a dual-boot Mac, I'd use OS X for Finale and audio.
Why would you use the Mac for Audio? Win XP has much better Audio software than the Mac imo. It is currently my biggest problem with the Mac and one good reason to dream of a new intel Mac, so I can boot Windows and run Samplitude or Sequoia (once I can afford it). But this raises a question for me:
Are there as many free tools for this as there are for Windows? I'd hate to give up Exact Audio Copy (for burning CDs), or LAMEBatch (for batch conversion of WAV to MP3), or MIDI2Wav for recording WAV files from MIDI files, or Audacity (general wave-based audio editing).
Audacity I believe is available for OS X. If you just need simple copying of Audio CDs, with quite a bit extra, iTunes will happily do the job, but it isn't for pro-use. iTunes will also convert from Wav to MP3, not sure it does batch conversion. iTunes can also convert Midi to Wav, but I am not sure the quality will please you - it uses the built in Quicktime synthesizer, which is, well, not great. Are
there free counterparts, or applets included with OS X that allow you to do this? I don't really like iTunes, to be honest, and wouldn't want to use it for the first two tasks.
Well, then you might have to search a little. Not sure what else there is, but perhaps iTunes on the Mac is better than on the PC?
And does the Mac have hardware-based synthesizer cards, or is it basically a choice of outboard synthesizers or software synthesis?
To my knowledge the latter. But aren't hardware synths becoming a thing of the past anyway?
I'm not at all thrilled about the performance-hungry profile of VPO --
What is VPO?
I like to do other things while letting slow processes run in the background, but if the system is already heavily taxed, the result would be flawed output files. Basically I don't want to have to walk away from the computer while these things are running.
I don't know why people still think the Mac is better for Audio. Imo it isn't, simply by the lack of decent software. Certainly for professional classical music mastering the PC has a lot more to offer. Sequencers are ok, but the choice on Win is just as good if not better.
This might change when SonicStudio brings out their new mastering soft, but this would still leave the Mac with one option, while there are at least three on the PC (Sequoia, Pyramix, Sadie).
So then it comes down to Finale. Would you really ever switch to OSX for Finale?
I really can't see the big advantage of having a dual boot machine for anyone who is happily running Windows today. I love the Mac and OS X, but in the last two years I have been very close to going over to Windows several times. For me the dual boot is a god sent, but perhaps not in the way that Apple intended it. For me it may very well end up being the smoothest way to slowly start converting to Windows. And I sort of fear that I won't be the only one.
Johannes Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
