Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

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Michael Canavan
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by Michael Canavan »

PG wrote:
MIDI Life Crisis wrote:We don't need no stinkin' evidence.
Of cause not. Mac's are superior :D (Don't read any further)

The problem seems to be the OS-X M.A.C.H. kernel threading model.

http://www.dawbench.com/win7-v-osx-1.htm

Personally, as a long time Mac user, I would LOVE to get some info that could indicate that Windows is not more CPU efficient than OSX. Info like that seems very hard to find.
Meaningless, sorry, but Cubase has the absolute worst performance of any DAW on OSX at small buffer settings, followed closely by Pro Tools native.. When Logic and DP absolutely crush Cubase in any test of latency at various buffer settings in OSX the only conclusion you can draw is that Steinberg have dropped the ball with ASIO for OSX somehow and haven't bothered fixing it, years and years later.
Plus, the guy is running a Hackintosh to use the "same" computer; so OSX isn't even running on it's native hardware.... This gets propped up as proof of Windows superiority, and it's so transparently worthless....
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

My computers faster than yours! :rofl:
Last edited by MIDI Life Crisis on Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Michael Canavan
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by Michael Canavan »

Here's the test a guy did a couple years ago on OSX showing the differences.
Notice how badly Cubase does, and how well DP 6 does even compared to Logic. :headbang:
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by Michael Canavan »

Of course this is a couple versions ago, but DP scales much better for higher latency settings than Logic or Cubase, another reminder to set a high buffer when in mix down mode.
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

Keep in mind, of course, that "speed" isn't the only consideration by a long shot. It's not a race against the others guys machine. One also has to consider ease of use, reliability, susceptibility to viruses, robustness of hardware, GUI, etc.

FWIW, I NEVER met a PC I actually enjoyed working with. They always feel like playing an out of tune piano to me and scream:

ALL BUSINESS. JUST CRUNCH THE NUMBERS, OK?

If I'm going to spend 14 hours a day with this thing, I was smoother curves than that. Just like making love or enjoying a good meal, speed is not the issue. It's the complete experience to consider and I just don't like the way PCs taste.
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by Prime Mover »

Chad Seiter jumping to conclusions... naaawww! Though he might be right, too.

Great guy, in fact, he's the one who sold me on buying Digital Performer in the first place, back in 2004. Hired me to do some sound effects for a game company he was working with. We lost touch a few years back, haven't heard from him in a while. Good to see he seems to be still moving up.

Lol, funniest thing he ever told me, about 8 years ago, "I love Star Trek soundtracks, but it would be brainlessly simple to write one." Little did he know...

Anyway, I'd trust the guy's word. Though like all of us, he's a man with strong opinions, and ya know what they say about those!
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by dewdman42 »

Interesting read. I am definitely not going to bury my head in the sand over it, but here are a few flaws in the test, which may negate it entirely for its relevancy:
  1. The primary mac being compared was a hackintosh, not a real mac. They spent a lot of time talking about hyperthreading, powerstate problems, etc. I have dabbled with hackintoshes before and I happen to know that this is specifically one area where hackintoshes may or may not be translating BIOS into fake EFI properly or optimally. In fact the vast majority of hackintosh users just get along without proper speed stepping and sleep functions. Some people do a lot of really low level tweaking to the emulated EFI environment to try to get complete functionality and some claim they got it, but its dubious at best. Its the wild west in terms of doing that, every machine is different and everyone is on their own to try to get it right. I have no confidence whatsoever that these guys built their hackintosh in such a way as to fully cover all of those low level hardware issues properly inside OSX.

    So right off the bat this test is flawed because its comparing a Windows machine to a hackintosh, not a real mac pro. Of course this does put a big spotlight on hackintosh performance perhaps being poor, and that is interesting.
  2. Running Bootcamp with windows on a Mac pro would have been a much closer and fairer test in so much that at least Apple is the one developing the BIOS emulation and hopefully is addressing all those low level hardware things, like speedstepping, hypterthreading, etc. in a consistent and correct manner.
  3. They tried to cross reference to his buddy's actual mac, but its not clear to me how that hardware compares to the X58 system.
  4. They used Steinberg for the tests, no other test results are given with other software. Steinberg is obviously biased for ASIO performance and many people have complained about Cubase on the mac for many reasons...
  5. They used 10.5.8 for the primary test results, then later commented that 10.6 improved things, but no test results for that. Why not?
  6. The real mac that was used to cross reference results, having whatever hardware it has...was Multi processor. The other system was single processor. Many people don't realize that multi processor can impact low latency tasks in a big way. The reason is because with single processor, it has exclusive access to all the various memory busses, SATA busses, etc. With MP, those busses have to be shared between two processors, which means one of them is always waiting. At large buffer settings, its no big deal, they can share with each other nicely. At lower latency settings they will start getting agitated waiting for their turn. That is why a MP system is not ideal for low latency scenarios but better for large mixing situations with larger buffers and plenty of room to spread the processing around. This applies to quad vs dual cores too!

    This makes the low latency comparison against the X58 irrelevant other than comparing SP to MP systems generally...not to mention that its not entirely clear to me the rest of the hardware in that real mac and how it compares to the X58 system.
Its an interesting test they did and they obviously put a lot of time into it, but there are so many factors in the environments they used which stacked things up in favor of windows and against OSX, that the test results are largely irrelevant.

The claim is being made that OSX is so abysmally bad that everyone should go running from it today to use windows instead. Yet there are many many very happy OSX audio users running Protools, DP, Logic, Live and other apps without any complaints whatsoever about not enough speed. There are indeed advantages of OSX that some people value and that is why they are on it instead of windows. They can get enough hardware to get their job done so there is no complaint. The only thing is, they probably do pay more money for whatever level of performance they are requiring, but the above test is overblowing that with a flawed test.
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

We need a new section: 'puter envy.
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by HCMarkus »

cbergm7210 wrote:
HCMarkus wrote:Don't forget you can upgrade 2009 (4,1) Mac Pros to be, for all intents and purposes, everything the 2012 can be with a simple EFI hack and CPU/GPU/Memory swap.
That sounds interesting, HC. Coming through High Ridge, MO anytime soon to help me with that? Steak and beer would be on me. :D
Steak and Beer sounds great, but it's a long road from San Diego...

Anyway, you can do it yourself! Check the link I posted for an educational read. I'd be happy to provide remote support if you nedded it, but I found the Single CPU upgrade remarkably straightforward, and I had never before installed a CPU.
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by David Polich »

I think James would agree that this thread has devolved into "comparative DAW 101" which is not the purpose of this section of the forum.

Maybe the thread could be moved to the off-topic section and we all could continue the "my DAW is better than yours" rants there.

That said, I still think the original post asked a question which is tantamount to asking "how long is a piece of string?".
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

My string is longer than yours!
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by dewdman42 »

who is ranting that?
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by Chadley »

Hi everybody, a few clarifications on the video interview I did regarding DP8 on the PC.

First off, MOTU did NOT in any way tell me what to say - those opinions are completely mine. I did not say a single thing that I did not 100% believe. I chose to jump into Windows 8 right away, because I like technology and enjoy fiddling with it and all the torture that comes with that. I did not have many problems with DP8, and it was a pleasure to use the beta writing the Trek score, as well as my most recent stuff, The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses (Season 2: Second Quest)

Yes, I am a gamer, and yes, my machine is overclocked. Both RAM and CPU. I have liquid cooling in it and an AMD 6970 graphics card. I do alternate between that and a GTX 680 depending on what I am playing. My case is a Fractal Design R4, which is AWESOME. My CPU is a 980X, running on an ASRock Extreme6 X58 board. It's a few years old now, but still going strong. It has 6 SATA2 ports, and 6 SATA3 ports. It performs awesome, except it could be even better since the Marvell chipset they used for SATA3 is a bit weak, and was revised soon after my board was manufactured. In retrospect, I would not advise an ASRock board. However I don't have a better choice at this time - I'm waiting for the next generation after Haswell to upgrade to something new. I seriously have never maxed out my polyphony. A big help was that I was forced to use the Lexicon verb on PC, after coming from Mac and using Altiverb. Unfortunately for them, I had no PC choices with Altiverb, and it turns out I like the Lexicon verbs MUCH MUCH more. At this point, I would not buy a Mac due to how out of date the hardware is, and I don't think it would be the best use of my money.

I am also not interested in the new mini Mac Pro.

I do wholly believe that my PC can out-perform any (current) Mac. This is not Mac-bashing, and this was not something anybody told me to do. I know you all know what I'm talking about when I use the dreaded word "snappy" - which to me, Windows 8 feels MUCH more snappy than OSX. I do like OSX - in fact I will not ever own a laptop that doesn't have OSX. Unless, they refresh the Microsoft Surface, in which case I would consider it. However, I would just like more customization from my operating system on my desktop. Windows 8 has done me right. I've had absolutely no problems. Again, they did not tell me to say that. I'm just a crazy fool who will install anything right away.

My thanks to Jim and Jonathan at MOTU for doing an awesome interview. I can't stress enough that they did NOT ever coach me in what to say. These guys are the real deal; they treated me with much kindness, and trusted what I had to say about their PC platform. If I didn't mean it, I wouldn't say it. I wouldn't have even done the interview if I didn't firmly believe what I was saying was true. I have been using DP/Mac since 2003. It was a pleasure to switch back to PC, my native platform of choice.

Oh, finally - YES - that is a Mac keyboard! I LOVE LOVE LOVE that keyboard. I am very picky. I came from a USB version of the IBM Model M mechanical keyboard. I used to live in a condo with my wife so I switched to the Mac keyboard because it was much quieter. However, my wife and I recently got a new home, so I'm going to get a new mechanical keyboard sometime soon, since I miss them. Now I'm far enough away in my office that I can't bother her. I am considering the Das Keyboard, but I've still got a lot of research to do.

I've also re-mapped my keys in Windows so the WINDOWS key is actually the CTRL key. Now all my shortcuts in applications work nearly exactly like their Mac counterpoints (Cmd+S, Cmd+Q, Cmd+W, etc). At this point I've become accustomed to the Mac shortcuts and I much prefer them over Windows choices, which sometimes hurt my hands. The Mac keyboard is great.

Thank you guys for watching the video, regardless of your opinion. It was fun to do. I was quite nervous.

Glad to be part of a community that loves a product so much. At this point, I would never leave DP... I have never found anything to be as easy (or as fun) to use.

Best,

Chad
Last edited by Chadley on Wed Sep 04, 2013 7:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by bayswater »

Thanks for a great contribution to this thread.

Part of the question posed was not so much the general "which is faster", but for similar hardware, would Windows run DP's code (or perhaps any code) more efficiently than OS X. I don't know if a good test of that question is even possible. Any thoughts on that?
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Re: Is DP8 faster on a PC than on a Mac?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

Again, efficiency isn't always measured by benchmarks or technical performance or specs. For this user (meaning me) the GUI and overall experience is important.

I get that the PC is the preferred machine for some. Some of my best friends prefer PCs.

I have always found them a bit cumbersome and awkward to use and lacking the finesse and elegance of a Mac. Again, not to bash them, I just don't enjoy working on them or in the Windows OS. If I enjoy the experience more I'm going to be more productive and a few milliseconds here or there aren't going to matter, and if the operator is working better and understands the machine then that machine is, in fact, going to be both faster and better. I think that's true of Macs, PCs, printers, cars, pianos, and pretty much everything that humans use as tools.

So yes, PCs are faster and better. And so are Macs. It all depends on who you ask.
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