Mac setup for musicians...

This post has been somewhat inspired by a recent post at Mac AppStorm, they called this post "The Ultimate Mac Setup For Musicians". Whilst the post was a good read, and outlines various different pieces of software, one reader pointed out in the comments section that this was essentially all the post was, a list of software. So in continuation of that post, here is a post detailing what you will need to get you started making music on your Mac.

Now, everyone knows that all new macs come with iLife, which includes garageband. Now you can use garage band to make music, but if thats what you're into then this post really isn't for you! Some of you may remember back to last year, when i detailed a comparison between two DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) Protools Vs Cubase. I direct you to this article to decide which of these fits your preference best. Essentially ProTools is best for audio recording, and Cubase is best for MIDI. There will be the hardcore logic fans out there who argue that logic is a contender, but in my personal opinion, logic is simply a 'professional' version of garage band (That's not to say you cant do advanced audio editing with it, I just wouldn't !! ).

Anyway, so you've decided on your weapon of choice (and by weapon, i mean DAW!). The first piece of hardware you will need is an interface (fancy term for sound card). Obviously, if you have decided to choose ProTools, you will either have purchased a Digidesign soundcard (Mbox / 003 Rack / etc as the software comes with the hardware!) or you will have to have gone down the ProTools M-Powered route, which means you require a compatible M-Audio interface. It is worth mentioning here, that Digidesign hardware is very unreliable on both Mac and PC when you try to use the interface for anything other than ProTools, for example iTunes or iLife programs on a Mac tend to cause kernal panics at shutdown.

Regardless, If you have gone down the Cubase or (*ahem* Logic) route, you will need a standard interface. There are literally hundreds of possible choices here, Personally I would recommend anything by Edirol, E-MU, or if your a guitarist then I would particularly recommend anything by Line 6. I would advise going for an external USB or Firewire sound card, as they are portable, and often powered off the USB socket themselves (saves lugging around that hefty power adaptor!). Personally my interface of choice is an Mbox 2 Mini (when running ProTools) and an Edirol UA-25EX (When running cubase and everything else). The Edirol interface is now branded as Cakewalk, and has excellent Mac support!

Now you have to make the most difficult choice of all, You have your DAW, you have your interface. You just need some monitors (for those not in the know, speakers are referred to as monitors in the music industry, as you are 'monitoring' your sound!). Now, you can spend anything from £50, to £50,000 (Maybe a slight exaggeration for home musicians) on monitors, and as with interfaces, there are hundreds available. A few of the choices you have to make are, whether you want active or passive monitors. Active monitors have built in amplifiers, whereas you will need a separate amplifier to power passive monitors. You will need to decide how much power you want, this is measured in Watts and essentially translates into how loud the speakers will be. Remember, studio monitors are all about the quality of the sound, and NOT the loudness. So make sure you take into account the frequency response, Most studio monitors will come with a frequency response from 20Hz - 20Khz, as this is the range of frequencies our ear can pick up. However, it is important to look at the frequency response graph of a speaker, as it is important to have a flat frequency response (this is also true of microphones) as you will be hearing a truer sound, the flatter the line. Below is an example of a good frequency response graph, and a bad frequency response graph.

Below is an example of a flat (Good) frequency response

Whereas Below, is an example of a non-flat (Bad) frequency response

So, Armed with this insider knowledge, My personal recommendations would be to check out cheaper offerings from Alesis, but if you're looking to spend a bit more, then Genelec Monitors are a firm favourite in the industry. Personally, I run Alesis M1 Active MK2 monitors, which can be brought for a fairly reasonable price today. The new version of these monitors is the Alesis M1 Active 520's. A good friend of mine has these monitors, and is more than happy with them!

Right, now you have everything you need to get a good quality sound from your Mac. You need to get sound into your Mac! You can do this in two ways, either record the audio information using a Microphone or a DI-Box, or using MIDI. MIDI stands for (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) and esentially all you need to know, is that you can purchase a MIDI keyboard (USB / Firewire / or MIDI ports) plug it into your mac (or interface) and play musical information into the DAW. This can then be picked up by a VSTI (Virtual Studio Technology Instrument) and turned into audio information. For the purposes of this post, i will talk only about MIDI keyboards. Microphone choice is such a vast topic, I will cover this in a future post.

MIDI keyboards come in all shapes and sizes! (Well okay, they don't, they all look like keyboards, but anyway...) You have a number of different choices and options, you can get different sizes. e.g. if you're not a grade 8, classically trained pianist, a 25 key, semi-weighted solution will probably suffice. But midi keyboards are available up to 8 octaves, with fully-weighed keys for the more traditional pianist! I could talk for days about MIDI and the benifits, etc, however right now, i'm going to give you a few suggestions of keyboards. The M-Audio Axiom range is a relatively comprehensive solution, available in 25, or 49 key versions. If you're looking for something a little simpler then the Oxygen range, also by M-Audio should suit you well.

Now, this post just brushes the surface of music creation on a Mac. But the intention was to cover some of the hardware you will require to start producing music at home. I am considering making this a series of posts, covering everything from Microhpones, to Synthesisers, to Outboard Gear, and Virtual Instruments. Well, If you're still reading, then I applaud you, and thank you! If you have any specific questions please don't hesitate to ask in the comments!

Snow Leopard...

Well, I have just upgraded my Mac from Leopard and personally I am loving it! Instead of writing 'another' lengthy review of how i found the installation and the end result, I thought I'd link to a great user review I read earlier today!

http://top.burningfiles.com/apple-snow-leopard-upgrade

This review literally sums up all the points I have to make! Thanks to @Burnspot for taking the time to post this. Whether you have just brought Snow Leopard and want to know what the new features are, or you are wondering if it's worth the effort / money to upgrade, this review will help you!

As a side note I intend to post some of my own thoughts after a few weeks of usage!

Mac vs PC for Music Technology...

This is going to be an Mac vs PC comparison with a difference. I will focus on the differences between the two system within a music technology environment. Both have certain advantages and disadvantages and regardless of my opinion, which OS you choose is inevitably your decision. I own a MacBook pro running Leopard 10.5.6 as well as a home built desktop machine running Vista SP2. The specifications of these two machines are pretty much the same, so this is really about the operating system.


A digital audio workstation (DAW) requires multiple channels of audio both in and out of the machine. It also requires a lot of processing power and RAM to add effects to channels and tracks. Most professional recording studios today use Macs, they have become the de-facto standard alongside the popular DAW software ProTools. To find out why, we need to start at the very basics of the operating system. The two screenshots below show a Vista desktop and a Leopard desktop.

Vista Desktop

Leopard Desktop

We can see the two systems have the same basic features, Both have a file system with folders set up for all kinds of different multimedia. Both can run a multitude of DAW software, and both can record and process audio. The one fundamental difference is that Apple have always built their machines to work with multimedia, from the hardware to the software. Every single step has been optimised for digital media manipulation. The way the unix operating system is run in leopard means that if one application crashes, the whole system doesn't crash. For a studio engineer this potentially saves a lot of time, and you know what they say; time is money!

Users will argue that windows accepts more hardware, that if you buy an external sound card it is more likely to work on Windows than on a Mac. Whilst this may have been the case many years ago, it certainly is not now. Apples slogan "it just works" really does mean that today most external sound cards will work on a Mac even easier than they will on a PC, many do not even require additional drivers due to apples core audio drivers.

Windows has the advantage of having a larger user base, this means that there are potentially more VST plugins for DAW software running on a windows machine, but is this necessarily a good thing? The VST's that are available for Mac are generally more polished and of a better quality than some available for the PC, perhaps because it is assumed that Macs are for professionals. This is not to say that all the software for Windows is of a lower quality than its Mac counterparts. Take Cubase and ProTools for example, both these pieces of software boast Mac and PC compatibility. This suggests that there is a significant market still for DAW software running on windows.

Macs have always been marketed as easy to use computers; the mouse only has one button because of Apples design philosophy that everything a user could ever possibly want to do, should only be a mouse click away. The menu for each program on a Mac appears in the same bar across the top of the screen, this follows the fundamental design principles that controls should be consistent in their placement. The applications that you use everyday are contained within a system wide dock, viewable from any application (No need to navigate the start menu like in Windows). All these things may seem like minor tweaks, but there are enough 'minor tweaks' in Leopard to make it seem much more intuitive than a windows system.

Then there is the issue of cost, the Mac/PC price difference is something that has been debated for years, and is not something I'm going to discuss. However, it is possible to buy a PC with fairly decent specifications cheaper than an equivalent Mac. But, in the time I have owned my mac, i have had to reinstall windows twice on my desktop machine. I have not had a single problem on my mac.

So my conclusion is this, it is perfectly possible to record, and produce music on a windows machine using pretty much the same basic software. However if you want a solid system that will not crash, will consistently boot quickly, and will generally run circles around a windows machine, get a Mac!

3 Months, 16 Days, and a few Hours...

The length of time i've had my Mac...

Now those of you who knew me about 3 or 4 years ago will know that for me to actually go out and by something made by 'Apple' of all people, is nothing short of a miracle. However, since i made the leap about 4 years ago and brought my first Apple product (a little iPod nano), my opinions have changed somewhat.

I have since brought a Macbook Pro and more recently an iPod Touch. I can honestly say that these are the two single greatest purchases in the arsenal that comprise my gadgets! Below is a screenshot of the mac interface, and how i have it set up...

It is perfect! There is no simpler way of describing it. The interface flows, the buttons do exactly what you expect them too, and everything is where you would expect it to be! I should explain, I have been a windows user since windows 3.1 at the age of 'very young' so 3 months, 16 days and a few hours ago I was completely new to the Mac interface. Now i feel like i've never used anything else!

As part of my course I am required to do C++ programming in Microsoft Visual Studio. This, being a Microsoft program, requires windows to run. Even on a Mac this isn't a problem anymore. I just run windows right inside leopard, and it runs just fine! Feels horrible and clunky to use though!

Now I'm not saying that Mac's are perfect. I'm saying that the software is very close to being perfect, but the hardware can be an issue. Now i have one of the older style MacBook Pro's (not the Unibody) and I can tell you that it runs exceedingly hot, upwards of 80 degrees centigrade when playing games! Other issues include the wireless card sometimes deciding that it doesn't exist and the slot loading disk drive occasionally rubbing against the case, making a small clicking noise. These are, of course, minor things that have done little to counteract the joy of owning such an easy to use, well designed laptop!

As for the iPod Touch, more on that next week...

Sam

Laptop has arrived!

Yes indeed, my brand new laptop arrived in a lovely TNT van this morning at 9:45, infact i am writing this post from the laptop.

Okay so who guessed what i brought?

Well maybe this picture might give you a clue!

Yes, i brought a mac! check back here in the next few days or so for my thoughts and experiences with the mac!