The biggest reason why it sucks to be a Mac guy...

[rlcramer]

OK - I honestly don't mean to start a flame war here, because I am a die-hard Mac guy and have been for many years. I'm also a PC guy at my day job, so I probably spend more time behind a windows machine than a Mac. And to be honest I've never really come across anything on the PC side to make me the slightest bit jealous. Until today...

A few days ago I decided to install XP on my Mac Pro and start messing around with Reaper and some of the free amp sims that are PC-VST only. I cannot tell you how eye opening it was for me to do this. The FREE VST amp sims that are available ALL OVER THE PLACE are totally mind blowing. From TSE, to Dirthead, from ABG to the Lepou stuff... I can't stop downloading them, and I have never gotten such amazing guitar tones since I started recording!

I'm kicking myself for not doing this sooner. The quality of my mixes has increased tenfold, and that's with leaving most of the controls on all of the amp sims at noon!

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not switching from my beloved Logic environment any time soon, but I have started recording into my Mac, rebooting to windows, processing my guitar DI's in Reaper and floating them back in to Logic, simply because of all these incredible plugins.

I apologize for stating something that is probably pretty obvious to most of you. But if there are any Mac guys out there who have never ventured into the PC world, I urge you to install XP on a bootcamp partition, fork over the $60 for reaper, and start playing around. You will not be disappointed.

Bobby

 

[Metaltastic]

I apologize for stating something that is probably pretty obvious to most of you.

Apology accepted

 

[Rex Rocker]

Yeah dude... I really wish we had some of the kickass amp sims available to us.

In the meantime, I'm making due with POD Farm which is, at least, a definite improvement over my POD XT.

 

[Sloan]

DUDE. GET SOME WINDOWS 7.

 

[::XeS::]

The point is: why should I have to buy a 3000€ Mac, to use free amp simulators, reaper and Win XP?
When I bought my mac I decided to do a step up, so I bought a Mac, Protools, etc... and I don't need all those free amp sims because I have podfarm (free) for scratch tracks, and some real amps for the good tracks.
If I didn't want to do this step up, I did stay with my pc with Sonar, all the free plugs of the world, spending 600€.
Anyway, I know you can use the mac and OsX for all the rest so...if it works for you..it's good.

 

[16S]

if it wasn't for my audio requirements i would probably consider a Mac but very time a free plugin comes out and all the Mac guys here say "please make a mac version" makes me think -never gonna happen! ..and i doubt this situation will ever change.

 

[gabriel g.]

Thats not a mac problem.
It is a tracking problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[updog]

Yeah, I agree 100%. The free ones are just good. I can live without them, but when I'm going to possibly purchase an USB audio interface for live use, I'll probably start fiddling with the PC-side of things a bit.

 

[gabriel g.]

Damn, the biggest reason why it sucks to be a mac guy is because fucking Mac's suck Windows kicks its fucking ass into hell! A Mac is just a nicer looking Linux Ubuntu, fuck Ubuntu and Mac! XP and Vista are the two words that make me shit myself because they are so much better! and you get all the free amp sims and plugs in Windows, what do you poor Mac guys get? Dick because its too much work to program shit for a Mac.

feeling better?

 

[stuh84]

I think the title should say "Why it sucks to be a Mac guy if you use amp sims".

I don't use any amp sims on guitar (I use the Sansamp PSA-1 on bass but thats about it), so being Mac only is fine for me

 

[muckypup1]

feeling better?

I edited the post

 

[updog]

Damn, the biggest reason why it sucks to be a mac guy is because fucking Mac's suck Windows kicks its fucking ass into hell! A Mac is just a nicer looking Linux Ubuntu, fuck Ubuntu and Mac! XP and Vista are the two words that make me shit myself because they are so much better! and you get all the free amp sims and plugs in Windows, what do you poor Mac guys get? dick because its too much work to program shit for a Mac.

EDIT - sorry about my rant, I've not had a good start to my day

None taken... Sorry man, but that's just a typical 16-year-old's opinion - you're still stuck to the PC gaming thing, you haven't actually tried any Macs much, and you haven't read up on them at all, am I right?

 

[rlcramer]

Actually - I am kinda curious to know why the plugin developers only code for the PC. Is it a cost thing? Limited market? I mean the plugs they are making are free, so theoretically it can't have anything to do with money, right? I think I remember reading that Onqel was going to try to make a Mac version of TSE at one point, but for some reason I think recently he said that he scrapped that idea (if I remember correctly). I'd be curious to know why. I know that the overall market share of the Mac community is much smaller than windows, but I'd imagine in the world of music and audio production that the difference is much smaller. And again, being that they are writing free software, does the size of the market really matter so much?

Bobby

 

[gabriel g.]

All PROFESSIONAL software is available for mac. Or only avaiable for mac!!!

Think of Waves, UAD, Cubase, protools, Avid.....

And think of final cut (the most used film editing software, avid is the second)
and of logic!!!

But this discussion is NON SCENSE!!!!

 

[El_Gato]

Use both so you don't have to worry anymore. If you're using mac and you're worried about not being able to use all those free plugs, you can purchase a good laptop for the money of a regular plugin.

 

[rlcramer]

I don't really understand why this discussion would be nonsense. It's a fact that there are TONS of free amp sims that are only available for the PC that sound GREAT. Have you tried them? To my ears, they sound better than anything available on the Mac. If people think Pod farm is better, than that's cool. But to me, it's not even close (for heavy rhythm sounds at least).

Personally, yes - I like Mac's the best, and I use MANY other OS's on a daily basis (Solaris, RedHat, Ubuntu, vSphere, AIX, iPhone, etc), and they ALL have their uses, but what I was talking about was amp sims. Not video editing, not photo editing, not CAD, not financial modeling, etc.

Sorry - I'm just trying to keep this thread from derailing into a flamefest. The whole Mac vs PC thing is pretty tiresome these days. If we could all agree that they are different and just move on, I think it would benefit all of us. I'm really just trying to see why the plugin developers choose not to develop for the Mac, and to maybe convince some of the more open-minded Mac guys that there are certain things that they might want to try by giving a go at installing Windows. To me it made a world of difference in my mixes, and I never would have tried it if it weren't for many of the clips that I hear on this board. Like 16S says above - I got sick of waiting for Mac versions of these plugs (hell - I even donated to some of the devs for just this purpose) but for whatever reason, I realized that "it's never gonna happen."

Sorry, I wasn't trying to give anyone heartburn...just trying to start a rational discussion.

Bobby

 

[ze kink]

When I was switching to Mac, I thought that I would really miss having good, free ampsims. I was even thinking about installing bootcamp just for running them.

After more than a year of being on a Mac now, TBH I haven't really missed them at all. I even installed bootcamp but couldn't bother to get Reaper to work correctly, I just use it for gaming every now and then (last time was probably last summer). Thing is, I decided to "step up" in a way, and reamp with real amps instead of relying on ampsims, and only use the sims for scratch tracks. It has worked really well for me personally, my miced tones have gotten a lot better and it takes me far less time to acchieve the sound I want using a real amp and real mics.

 

[updog]

Use both so you don't have to worry anymore. If you're using mac and you're worried about not being able to use all those free plugs, you can purchase a good laptop for the money of a regular plugin.

I have 2 PC laptops around, neither of them works for music production. Why? I don't know. They fucking suck, that's why.

Other one is a HP that cost around 1000, and another one is an Acer that cost around 600. HP doesn't even have a FW port, but doesn't work with USB-interfaces. Acer doesn't work with either USB- or FW-interfaces. How do?

of course, they work slightly with the integrated sound card, but it's pissing me off. I guess I could take some DIs to one of these PCs, and try the free amps. Last time I did that though, I didn't get any notable improvements to my sound. It was just a quick test.

 

[updog]

I'm really just trying to see why the plugin developers choose not to develop for the Mac

There's a simple answer tbh; it's the same as to the question "why aren't there many Mac viruses?". There would be a lot of takers, but Macs usually cost money. Mine luckily didn't cost much more than an equivalent PC at the time.

Still, I think there are more great free plugins for Mac than effective viruses. In fact, I have around 30 free plugins I use every now and then, but I've never had a single virus, or even suspected I might have caught one. I've ran a total of 4 scans with two different programs though.

 

[::XeS::]

The reason was explained in my post: If I buy a 3000€ Mac Pro, sincerelly, I can't see the reason to use free amp sims, because probably I would use real amps (what I do).
I have Sansamp (included in Pro Tools), I have PodFarm (downloaded for free) for scratch tracks and that's all I need.
The reason why developers only do plugins for pc? Probably because they use pc/win and it's easier and convenient to do, instead of buy a Mac to test the plugin.
@muckypup1: if you buy a Mac only because it's cute looking, it's your fault not a mac fault. I used windows for 15 years without problems but I switched 1 year ago and I would never come back. The real problem for most of the guys is that on mac you can't pirate all the plugins of the world like on windows and for some guys this is a reason why it sucks. In fact when some of you guys post screenshots of what you use on your mixes, it's unbelievable how a 17 years old guy in a bedroom can afford all the Waves plugins, Convolution reverbs, Melodyne, etc etc etc... (I'm not refearing on you mucky)
I used to do this kind of stuff as well on my pc, I have lot of plugs but when I switched on Mac/PT I understood that I didn't use the 90% of those plugins. Now I use stock PT plugins and 3-4 external plugins. But sincerelly I can't say Mac sucks because I can't download all the free plugins in the world...I have 2 real amps so where is the problem?