Mack Book Pro or Imac ?

[Gabriel_bilos]

Hi guys!
So, I was wondering about start producing my tracks at home. Anyway, a Mac station is always proving itself to be the best choice. What I don´t know is which one to choose. Here in Brazil, the price of apple notebooks are toooo expensive, almost impossible to buy, once here the lowest prices are R$ 6500 on 15 inches screen.
The Imac ones are more accessible, and they also have a good configuration.
For home studios, is it worth an Imac?
I confess I quite like the computer, and would be happy about having it.
Many thanks!

[River]

I know theres always a lot of arguing on the interwebs about this, so at the risk opening a can of worms, seriously look at a PC.

If you need to run logic then a mac is obviously the way to go, and the macbooks have a proven sturdy construction for using on the road and at gigs, which is important and worth a lot of money to someone using them for that purpose.

If its just sitting in the studio though, you could buy something twice as a powerful or the same and get some tasty hardware/software if you went PC.

Also 15" is very small for music, I feel cramped if i'm on a single 23" 1900x1200 screen now, scrolling around all the time to see your tracks and having everything covered by VST UIs is a pain. I'd get something bigger and high res, even if you go mac, try and get a bigger monitor to hook up to it.

Been using dual-boot windows 7 here for months now and its never missed a beat, I'd recommend a good win7 PC and a big monitor, or if you have to go mac a big-screen Imac.

Obviously it depends on the spec as well, if I was buying anything now I'd want a quick I7 intel CPU, or at least one of the top few I5's. Especially if it was a mac that you cant upgrade in the future.

[antburns]

Hi

I use a macbook pro 13'' with logic which i run along side a 23'' samsung monitor which i find works great , the only reason i use a laptop is cause i travel quite a lot. If i didn't I'd have a imac or even a mac mini. but i would agree only buy a mac if you use logic , yeah mac's look great and have a great os but i could have twice the power from a pc and still buy your daw as well for the price of a mac! :D

[TheSqueezer]

I bet this is a thread that will have a lot of discussion..the old PC vs. Mac fight.

In my opinion for a home studio you should get a Mac. If you are starting to produce the iMac is an excelent option. You have everything on a simple and beautifull screen. Few months ago i boutgh the new iMac and i do not regret at all. The new 21.5 inch 16:9 high resolution makes this a wonderfull machine and even with the lower specs this computer wont let you down.

But what River said is true, with the money you pay for an iMac you can buy a way more powerfull PC, same with laptop.
Im an Apple lover, so my advice for you is to buy iMac...way better than PC, even with lower specs than a powerfull PC. I could stay here telling you a lot of reasons to go Mac, but instead i will leave you a funny youtube video to watch :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5z0Ia5jDt4

[Gabriel_bilos]

I agree with you, River. It requires a lot of inspiration and patience to choose the best alternative, once the factors concerned seems to be in a not ended road. But, for PCs, which software I can use? I´ve always listened that Logic Pro is the God in music production. I don´t know but, Cubase is very famous as Ableton. What can we try to get as closer as we can to a final verdict, if is it possible?

[River]

I use ableton live on a PC, its very capable and extremely good for dance music because it works so well with loops.

http://www.ableton.com/live

You can quite easily go from an idea to a club ready track in live, I think Chris Lakes' 'changes' was done in live.

Sonar always looked interesting as well, but live you can pick up and use very quickly whereas sonar looks like it'd take a while to learn, and I've never really needed to since Live does everything fine.

http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/Sonar8-5-Producer-8-5-Studio.aspx?Prod=SR8.5

Overall I'd go with Live, its very quick and easy to use and very powerful, well suited to this type of music.

[The Fox]

I did have a 20" iMac which I've recently sold to fund my lovely 17" MacBook Pro. The reasoning behind this was because I do a lot of commuting so it enabled me to do it on the train. So you need to weigh up how often you wont to be doing it and where.

However, as previously said iMacs are amazing and you wouldnt regret buying one. What I would suggest is getting as much RAM as possible. I had to boost mine from 2GB to 4GB because I bought Trillian. Which amazingly requires at least 4GB RAM which is crazy! But I think the plugins going forward will end up being that exhausting across the board. But as with everything its subject money :-(

[Gabriel_bilos]

I use ableton live on a PC, its very capable and extremely good for dance music because it works so well with loops.

http://www.ableton.com/live

You can quite easily go from an idea to a club ready track in live, I think Chris Lakes' 'changes' was done in live.

Sonar always looked interesting as well, but live you can pick up and use very quickly whereas sonar looks like it'd take a while to learn, and I've never really needed to since Live does everything fine.

http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/Sonar8-5-Producer-8-5-Studio.aspx?Prod=SR8.5

Overall I'd go with Live, its very quick and easy to use and very powerful, well suited to this type of music.

I´ve downloaded Ableton 8. The official website offers 30 free trial days. Let´s see how it is!
Thx to all of you guys, with special thanks to River. Pretty helpfull!

[R-win]

Most usefull thing I think is a big screen. I got a Imac 24" with a hdtv as second screen and when I sometimes go back to ableton on a laptop I really miss all the room to watch more things at the same time.