Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Mac vs PC?

Hosa makes those apapters

How would those right angle adapters help with the problem of tripping on the cord, pulling the equipment on the ground and causing expensive damage? Only longer cords, properly routed around the room to avoid tripping hazards in the first place can help, IMO.

An old one, but still true :
Linux for development,
Mac for productivity,
Windows for Solitaire...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=internet+acronyms&atb=v188-3&ia=web

My goto search when I stumble upon some of these acronyms.

IME IME stands for "In my experience".

MAC for production?
Windows for solitaire?

https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en...an-Instruments-with-macOS-10-15-Catalina

Thanks ... Gotta look into the Duck...

Your link doesn't work. Windows server ?

i copied the link from this thread of the piano world forum:

Is Garritan CFX for $139 a good deal?

There is mentioned:

It seems OS Catalina still is not supported by Garritan;

According to the Garritan website (sorry for no link) it might only be a problem when installing the samples. If you already have Garritan CFX installed, it shouldn't be a problem. I've had no problems with Catalina/Garritan CFX combo.

God Bless,
David

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is the major source of noise and distortion in an audio amp. Amp designers go to great lengths to minimize it. Computer manufacturers try to neet EMI standards for external interference, but the inside of a computer case is a fairly nousy environment for EMI.

Thus, having an external soundcard, whether an outboard DAC, or audio interface (DAC & ADC) has the advantage of moving all of the analog audio out of the potentially noisy computer case. It is not mandatory to do so, but let's just say that acquiring an expensive audio system to which to route the analog output of an internal soundcard is probably a waste of money.

A Thunderbolt 2 interface for a desktop Windows box is about $125. Thunderbolt audio interfaces start at $600. If you spend $900 extra for a higher level Dell laptop with faster hardware plus Thunderbolt and a Thunderbolt interface, then you are in the same cost range as a Mac laptop so it comes down to whether having a good quality (not entry level) audio interface, or having a Mac is more useful.

My usage of BSD Unix goes back to 1983. I did not even consider Windows to be a real operating system until 20 years later. I'm not sure why VST vendors are not supporting thrir products on open-source platforms, but maybe they are concerned that if they build out the infrastructure then open-source VSTs will kill their business.

I don’t think that there will be more open-source VSTs (or LADSPA v2 alias LV2 plugins) if one virtual instruments developper sell one. I think that the market is too tiny to justify a development. People who would like to pay for a virtual version Instrument are more likely to use Windows or Mac, and many Linux user care less about paid software. One other point us that iLok and eLicensor don’t support Linux.

While it is true what you say about iLok and eLicensor, there are a plethora of paid licensed software on Linux which people buy. In the context of what we care here it's just PianoTeq, but on a broader field there is IDL, Matlab, Totalview, ARM Forge, Intel Compiler and others.

I, for one, started learning about PianoTeq first among all the VI, just because it ran on my only OS of the time (Linux). I now have a work laptop with one of the other two OS discussed here (won't say which one ) , but frankly I don't like it, and I think at the next hw update I will ask to go back to only Linux.

You can get PC's (mainly tower) - by "PC" I mean Intel driven machine running Windows or Linux, that are especially built for audio, from some of the more cottage-industry type companies, who will build it to spec.

I always understand that nowadays for the same money, PC for power, Mac for stability.

I also understand (and correct me if I'm wrong) that the difference in the internals of PC's and Macs nowadays isn't nearly as different as it used to be, Macs being powered by very similar chipsets. Don't hold me to that though.

I think it really boils down to choice of OS nowadays.

This doesn’t contradict what I have said. Even RedHat should be paid. But among Linux users a part would prefer to use free software than paying a software. Then the user base which interest a virtual instrument editor is less important than the Linux user base.

While your point is well taken, I think the consequence may be over-stated. The sound quality of audio out from built in sound circuitry is really not inherently noticeably noisy probably in any but the most pristine environments, as most people would probably attest to from years of (for example) listening to music out of the headphone jacks of their smartphones and laptops. If you're playing a piano VST out of one of these jacks into the typical home or stage keyboard playback system, whatever slightly higher noise floor there may be is probably irrelevant. (I suppose PCs may vary more than Macs because of all the different manufacturers, though latency is such an issue on PCs that it probably doesn't matter, you probably won't bother using those outputs for a VST anyway.)

Now, audio IN is another issue, and yes, I have experienced excess noise from onboard audio inputs (on a Mac), and would then use an interface.

I love my surface too and thought to try it with ravenscroft but was very laggy. I agree the form factor would make it a fun option! Having a touchscreen that fits on the music stand would be handy (ha). I researched it a bit and found Surface lag seemed related to cpu throttling. For a possible solution, you can check the article here. I believe it has to do with trying to be battery sparing at too high a cost for this application, but there are work-arounds.

Newer laptops, both mac & windows, seem to be unifying around the thunderbolt interface, and it *seems* like that interface inherently deals in dma vs dpc mode of window's usb interfaces (please, someone more knowledgable than me please correct me if I'm wrong). There's an interesting artice from Presonus here with latency on the interface of 1ms! I have a new PC laptop on the way with several thunderbolt 3 ports and a 2016 mbp also with tb3 ports, so it will be fun to compare.

DMA for PCI exist since Windows XP; it means 'direct memory access', and it allows hardware devices to update memory directly by omitting CPU - this speedups many I/O operations.
DMA is asynchronous - the sender does not wait for DMA operation to complete.
But when hardware related DMA I/O operation is completed (data is copied), most I/O hardware devices trigger IRC which queues all necessary DPC to let interested parties know about this update - there is no other way to deal with it in Windows. So poorly written DPC will still cause low latency and droputs.
The DPC model needs to be changed to avoid locks caused by slow DPC routines IMHO.

Great info - so, if I understand properly, this is a driver / software / os issue, not a hardware issue? I have a laptop on order with options for the processor and was debating between an i7-9850h processor or xeon e-2276m for a little extra, but would the be any benefit for this application of one processor over the other?

The days of poor latency are fading into history.
Years ago I had terrible latency using the internal audio on my 2005-era Dell laptop. That's why I bought an external interface.
I assumed I'd always need one. And anyway I needed the MIDI ports, too, because USB/MIDI was a bit wonky in Windows XP.

Recently I discovered that the WASAPI (Whuzzzzup!) interface works just fine.
Even with this Dell desktop's internal Realtek-based audio, the latency is good.
Not as good as with the Presonus with ASIO. But quite acceptable, and far better than what I got in my my XP-based no-WASAPI days.

Had I started into this today instead of in 2009 I'd likely not buy the external interface at all.