Wu,
I run:
PIV 2.5ghz, Cubase SX, Delta 1010 audio card.
G4 800mhz, Cubase VST, Yamaha DSP Factory audio card.
The rest of you:
Macs and PCs are just glorified calculators.
They both have:
1. CPU's.
2. motherboards
3. RAM
4. hard drives
5. video cards
6. sound cards
7. operating systems
8. input devices
What makes a computer special is the software you run on it. If you do video and audio, you can use either computer to get the job done.
If you like programs like Sonar, Cool Edit Pro, Premiere, Vegas Video, etc., then you'd better stay away from a Macintosh.
If you like programs like Logic, Final Cut Pro, Peak, Deck, Digital Performer, etc., then you'd better stay away from a PC.
It's that simple. No need to get into the frigging speed debates, because while one computer takes over in processing power one day, its competitors take over a few months later anyways.
At the moment the G5 looks to be a very nice machine, but it has a completely new bussing arcitechture that a lot of soundcards won't support (like the Digi001), a new operating system that not all softwares support fully, and a price tag. If I were buying one, I would wait until at least the next Mac World to get the second version, which will hopefully have all the bugs worked out.
If you guys are doing a lot of real-time video rendering, such a computer would be awesome. But based on some of the music I hear from some of you guys (and I repeat, some), you barely use more than 5 tracks in your compositions, which can be done easily on a PII 300mhz or older Power PC.
It is perfectly probable that one can do Acid-style looping on a Mac, but you would have to find software to do it for you.
Holmzini:
The only benefit to Cool Edit over some of the other programs in its class is that it has both a waveform editor AND a multitrack editor in the same program. Running both Deck and Peak (or Spark) would give similar results on a Mac, although it is nice to have everything run from the same program instead of switching between them. Like you said, Peak has some killer features (like VST support) which Cool Edit doesn't...you're doing alright; don't worry about what you don't have and focus on what you DO have.
Take care,
Nick
