so this is what happened after almost 20 years of being a PC user. Protools on PC. I switched to Mac. You've probably seen the previous video not even a month ago of me building my new super speced out PC and having all kinds of problems since the beginning but that wasn't even the main problem. I had bigger problems believe it or not and that wasn't the main reason as to why I decided to switch to Mac. Anyway in this video I'm going to tell you everything. The Good the Bad and the Ugly of switching from Windows to Mac for audio and which one is better. Let's go. Hello everyone welcome back to meest TV. Hope you guys are having a great day. Before we start check the info box down below for free plugin special discount and offers and visit the new website mixw tv.com for all the mix and mastering courses start to finish on many different genres in there you can also book mix and mastering with me private lessons and mix consultations if you want to access the exclusive videos.

here on YouTube. Click the join bottom become a mix plus TV member get all the perks and don't miss Bell Kelli's new single and official videos SC felony available on all streaming platform. And the videos here on YouTube. If you have questions about that mix let me know in the comments down below. Finally, if the videos are helping you, you want to support the Channel, please consider using the super thanks or grab some merch. Let's get to the video. All right, Mach studio is officially the new main machine here here at the studio. Everything is run through this computer. And let me give you my specs. This is a M2 Ultra. I upgraded the internal memory to 4 terb and the ram to 128 GB. Should last for a little bit. First of all, special thanks to two of my dearest friends Keith Ross and trb Wright, which helped me tremendously in doing the transition. Let me start by saying that even if I upgraded the internal hard drive from 1 tbte which is standard to 4

tbte. I still needed a lot more storage, a lot more hard drives because of course I have all the Protools projects for my clients and samples, and then I have to keep some project here like archive so I need a ton of hard drive and a ton of hard drive space. So let's start with what accessory I bought for the computer and what kind of setup I'm running here. The first one is a Maas aluminum RGB keyboard. I really, really love like this keyboard low profile just how I like me is meant to be exactly the same as the Apple keyboard. I really like the look of this. I like the RGB totally worth it for me this was kei's suggestion regarding the mouse that was the first good news. My Logitech track ball works perfectly on Mac. I'm not a fan of the Mac mouse and definitely I need to use my track bow otherwise I get really bad forearm pain and that was a really good news. Also I have the right click and nothing changed that way that was really a big help in me transitioning from Windows to

Mac, my physical ergonomics didn't really change at all. Both of them were plug-and-play, no problem whatsoever because I had just bought a bunch of brand-spanking-new parts for the PC. I had four hard drives, two sticks, and two SD for a total of about 10 terabytes, which obviously I wanted to keep and I wanted to try to use here. And this was super easy. I had a CalDigit Thunderbolt USB dock to which I could connect these drives after buying enclosures. I'll put the model here. These are for the sticks, these are for the 2.5 in. They are super fast, they were super cheap. Once I put those drives in the enclosures, I connected it to the CalDigit hub recognized immediately as soon as I turned on the computer. That was really good news. So these four drives are super fast. I can run ProTools project from there, samples, anything I need. I usually keep one drive for each function, actually two for ProTools project, recent older, and then samples, and then other things. Then I'm running two extra

hard drive just for storage and redundancy for pictures documents, and then I copy everything to the other hard drive just in case one fails. These are uh 16 tbte each, again connected via USB. I bought a pretty big USB hub, self-powered. I think it's 16 ports. It's this one. I'll put the link down below, and everything worked perfectly. And this is the first thing that I really liked about Mac versus PC. So I have a ton of USB devices, USB controllers, and USB everything. I have all the TC effect controller, I have the clarity, I have the fader, I have the console one, I have the West audio gear. All these are connected USB. And one thing, one of the problems that I was having with the new PC was how difficult it was to have all these USB recognized by the computer. First of all, I had to change ports a billion times to make uh the PC trying to recognize the devices, even sometimes going back to the first one that I tried. And that was really annoying when I got

almost everything to work the TC Clarity. There wasn't working the computer was not seeing it. I tried all the ports that I had and it was not working to the point that I thought it was broken. I hook it up to my laptop saw it immediately. That was another annoyance that kind of pushed me to the Limit it and I found out that on PC that device needed to be connected on a 2.0 Port which in the new computer they are not present in the motherboard at all and it wasn't working through the Hub. The only way I could make it work is to plug it on the USB of the tower the one that comes with the case and that was like why it makes no sense especially when on Mac I can plug it anywhere I can just use one big Hub and everything works and everything worked right away. Now let's talk about the problems with the PC yes as you know the Thunderbolt compatibility was somewhat an issue right because thunderboard 4 is not compatible with thunderboard 2 and one.

and that's nothing you can do about it. Yeah, some people had success running old Thunderbolt PCI cards in their computer. I don't want to rely on something like that on a work around. You need to make sure that you don't update the firmware. Some other people just, you know, some other where they don't have the header, so it didn't work. It was a hit or miss. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to base my entire Studio, which is my livelihood, on something like that. It's too finicky for me. Okay, but that wasn't even the main problem because with Motu, I could connect USB just be as good as ever. The two main problems were number one, these new Intel CPUs, and I had the 14900 K, and before that, I tried the 13900 K. They run extremely hot and they overheat, and most important, they are unstable. I didn't want to believe it because it happened in the past that I build my computers and people say, Oh, this system is not stable. But if you

optimize it, and you don't overclock it, and you run it as supposed to. I never had issues because this is the thing. I ran windows and Protools for almost 20 years with zero problem, zero problem. Never had anything more than a hiccup here and there, okay, so I was perfect, perfectly fine. But this last generation is an absolute mess, at least it was for me. The computer was not overclock. I tried both the default settings, not the one that comes with the motherboard which run the processor a lot harder, but the Intel one. And then we also tried the one with the motherboard, and we tried another bunch of things. Long story short, I couldn't open a five tracks project, a stem Mastery with no plugins, and that mother was blue screening of death on me. And that was absolutely unacceptable for me. I am not going to run, especially a brand new computer in the studio that is not stable. That's my number one priority. The other thing is fan noise. I've always build quiet PCS, so super quiet fans, quiet cases, everything.

with noise in mind, and so I did. This time I had the Fractal Taran case. I changed all the fans to super quiet, and the noise went down. And despite that, it was an absolute mess. Like I said, the processors run so hot, and even putting all the fans at the bare minimum, it requires so much ventilation and so much cooling that the computer itself was way too noisy. And I thought I could stomach it. I thought I could just power through it and get used to it, and it simply got worse and worse by the day. And this is another big reason as to why I went Mac. When I heard the Mac, which you can't because it's completely silent, my mind was kind of blown a little because that alone for me would have probably been enough to do the switch. That's how annoying the noise was. And yes, you could have gone liquid cooling, but at that point, like I'm not in the business of building computers, right? I used to like build computers because it's fun to pick up parts. It takes

a day to do it, and everything works fine. Besides that, that's not my job. My job is mixing. I can't waste my time in troubleshooting and finding workarounds for something like this. It's not the time anymore for me. So noise and stability were the two biggest issues. Pair that with a thunderbolt fiasco, that was an easy choice at that point. Now let's talk about the Mac. I had it for about 8 days, and I already ran a couple of projects in it. I reinstalled everything, and thank Trev for that Magic app that he gave me. That is a godsend for installing things on Mac. He'll probably make it public at some point. Right now, it's like kind of an inside thing. It's absolutely amazing. But anyway, I installed everything in about a couple of days. I was at 90%, and everything worked fine. I connected the Mac Studio to my system, to my network, seeing immediately no glitches, no nothing. Once I installed the drivers, everything worked flawlessly, and that was such a relief.

and also, I noticed one thing immediately when I installed everything, and I went to open Protools and open big projects. This machine is really fast. The loading time, even with a hardcore spec-out computer, it just seems to use the power more efficiently. The loading time of all the plugins that I have when you turn on Protools or even over big project, it's a lot. It's a lot of stuff. The Mac Studio is by far faster and smoother. Now the big question: navigating the operating system, Windows versus MAC, especially because I've been on Windows for so long. Well, I kind of cheated a little bit because not only I have Mac at my other Studio at the bunker recorded Studio here in LA, but I also work with Mac at DZEL Studio. And so, I wasn't completely running blind. I had a little bit of experience but nowhere near how fast or efficient or confident as I was on Windows. This was my biggest fear: how long it's going to take me to find even the basic things.

right, because I don't know how to navigate the operating system. I wasn't too worried because at the end of the day, this is the studio computer. I don't do nothing other than using Protools, and Protools is exactly the same on Windows and Mac. Uh, the difference in shortcut. It literally took me two hours to wrap my head around it because it's literally like two or three keys that are swapped. Everything else is the same. Now, the operating system, it's kind of a whole different ball game, but we are at day nine and I am fluent. So if you are worried, if you are on Windows and you're thinking about switching to Mac and you barely even touched Mac or you haven't touched Mac at all, it's not as bad as you think it is. To me, it was pretty smooth. I got to be honest. And yes, of course, there's some things you're going to have to either call your friend or Google. It's simple like, how do I do this? But it takes 5 seconds. And I want to say that.

it's probably harder to learn Windows if you're coming from Mac, then the other way around. The one thing you need to keep in mind when you go from Windows to Mac is don't try to use the Mac operating system like you do with Windows. It's different. There are a lot of similarities. You still copy, you still paste. For example, you can't cut a file on Mac. You have to copy, and then you have to delete the other. It's kind of a safety thing, right? And it's funny because at the end of the day, all these things make sense. While at first, the first day, I was kind of annoyed because change is never, you know, not always pleasant, but then it starts making sense, actually. There's a reason because Mac users were always so vocal about how good the Mac operating system is versus Windows, which, you know, in part, they are right, in part, they are not because there are some very annoying things on Mac operating system, I got to be honest, but there are some

annoying things on Windows as well, but this is to say it makes sense, and it's kind of a very fluid type of operating system. I personally didn't have any issue finding things or wrapping my head around or researching how to do something, and it's very easy, easy to learn. It was for me, and it has a couple of uh productivity tricks, let's put it this way, that really makes everything easier. Day number one, or probably first hour, I learned the command space shortcut, and you can search anything there. You don't need to, to like window to go on this, this folder with that folder or the other folder. And the latest versions of Windows, now I understand they try to do that, they try to go in that direction, but on Mac is much better integrated. On Windows, I never use the search function. On Mac, I use it all the time, and it's like super easy. So little things like this, when you learn the basics and how to navigate from there on out, is, believe me, very, very simple. Now, I did not do a stress.

test on Protools. And like I said, my machine is pretty freaking powerful, so I don't think I'm going to hit. I wasn't hitting maximum CPU or maximum usage with the old PC, let alone with this one. I don't think I'll ever go probably over 50% or 60% of you even in 200 tracks project. But for what I've seen, everything, including Protools, it's a lot snappier. It's a lot more reactive. I don't know if the software, of course, is the same, but the actual speed in loading, loading time is a big one, uh, closing and reopening project. All of it seems a lot faster, even compared to the spec out PC that I got to work for, you know, 3 days before I wanted to set it on fire. So we're talking about the one with the 14900 K. It's really a different kind of flow as in Mac feels smooth while the PC, even if it's fast, 'cause it was fast, it's kind of clunky. It's kind of

like, does things in blocks, right? As opposed to flow. So that's the feeling the Thunderbolt dock didn't need driver, didn't need nothing just hook it up the mech Studio already has like four Thunderbolt ports USBC USB normal USB and you can expand as much as you want, and that's amazing. The size of the thing, this thing is so small and it's so powerful and it's so darn quiet, that is absolutely great. Now let's talk about the bad and of course I know that the big deal with Mac is when they update the OS. I haven't been there yet so I can't give you that kind of feedback but I know a lot of people had problems when upgrading and updating the OS, plugins that are still not working on the new one and so on. We get, I will report the first time that I have to do that but so far so good everything, all my plugins, all my machines, everything worked flawlessly and I had one issue which if you look at the screen there.

am kind of still dealing with it. What it is doing right now is copying files, and this was a bit of a nightmare. I am very happy that I am beyond paranoid when it comes to files, whether it's my personal stuff, storage, or even more uh projects for clients. Because what happened is, of course, all my drives were formatted for Windows, including the SSD, including the sticks. So I knew already beforehand that I had to format them for Mac. So what I had to do is I had to buy a bunch of docks, connect those drives to my Windows laptop, and then transfer the files to a different drive. Mount the drives, SD, and sticks on the Mac, and then format them for Mac, and then retransfer the files. Now here's the thing, you probably guys know that exFAT is a format that allows a hard drive to be seen and used on both Mac and PC. Apparently with Sonoma, which is the latest uh Mac OS, these exFAT drives have problems, and I can attest because that's what

happened to me. I would grab my external drive, plug them into the computer, and they were seen. I started transferring files, and two things happened. One after probably 20 hours or so, the external xat drive stopped working. The computer was not seeing it, or better, it was seeing it, but it was seeing it now as a no name, and I couldn't even open the dis utility unless I unplug that drive. So that was a problem because of course I had still had files in there that needed to be copied. And so at first, I thought the hard drive could have a problem like physical problem. So I put it aside for a second, grabbed another one, a CGA USB drive, which was x fact, did the same thing. It worked until I turned the Mac off. I turned the Mac back on, and the hard drive did the same. So I researched, and apparently there is a problem with Sona and X fat uh drives. They don't see it, they see it until you turn the computer off, and if you don't unmount it.

when you turn the computer back on, it doesn't see it anymore. So fortunately, I had all redundancy for my files and my projects. So it was a long project of basically reformatting the drives and then move them around. And this operation of transferring files and reformatting hard drives was the longest and the most painful operation in this whole big switch from Windows to Mac. If I didn't have this problem, the whole thing would have probably taken only 3 days. Thank to trav's app and uh, and that would be it. This is day a. I'm still transferring files because of course the big drives are like 16 tbte each and I have two of them. They're almost like not full but halfway and then the redundancy. So it's taking a long time just to transfer files and just to um reformat the hard drives for Mac. So be aware, as far as I know so far at the time of this video, don't use x fat drives on your Mac externally or internally even less because even if it

sees it at first. Then it won't see it after a while or if you turn the computer off, apparently without unmounting it first. And then you have to remount it. Now let's talk about the elephant in the room: price, because that is, we can say, the biggest argument between Mac users, Mac supporters, and Windows and PC supporters. A lot of people, me included, always said Macs are overpriced. For the same amount of money or less, you can build a much more powerful computer. Right? And I feel that at some point in the past, that was true. Today, no way in hell. First of all, because Intel, in my opinion, completely messed up. Like, they just, just messed up at this point in time. It's an absolute mess. The second thing, though, is it's true that this Mac wasn't cheap. Right? With my specs, it was, and taxes and shipping, it was almost 6K. So it was like, I think 5,700 or 800, something like that. Okay, so we agree that that's not chump change money. Okay. Although this is my

livelihood. This is my job, and this is my main computer. I don't bet an I if I have to spend, you know, amount of money because that's my livelihood. Get a good product, a premium product, a superior product, not one bit the super spec. PC turned out to be around like probably $3,000, 3,000 and something, okay, so almost half of the price when we pay five plus k for this. What are we paying for, right? This is what I asked myself before doing this video. I'm paying for an extremely powerful machine that utilizes the power efficiently. Take for example my car, right? My car is like super, like stupid powerful, right, but I have no traction until 60, 70 miles an hour, right? I can't even think of flooring it or going past half throttle, which means if I were to race from a dig with a car that has half my horsepower, like 400 or 500 horsepower, I'll probably lose because of that. The Mac is a car that is extremely

powerful, but has all the fraction as well, right, and can utilize it, and also I'm paying for an extremely quiet machine. We also pay for first of all a pre-built unit, which you can buy a a PC that is pre-built, but most people, they use PC, either build it themselves, or they want to change something, they want to change parts, and that was also the argument forever between PC users and Mac. Mac this M2 Ultra is the same all around the world, that means that there's a much easier testing, that's a much easier compatibility schedule, right, even though the OS is a problem, blah blah blah, the PCS, you got to nail the right combination, which I repeat, I was maybe lucky, but I did for the past 20 years, my PCS never had any issues, until now though, this one was a freaking mess, and also in this PC build, the craziest stuff happened, like a cic top-of-the-line power supply was dead on our arrival, unheard of, but it happened, so that made me lose another week, because the last thing I thought was a

problem would be the power supply. When I finished the build, I tried to turn it on, and the CPU flashed. So we changed the CPU; it wasn't that. We changed the motherboard; it wasn't that. We changed the RAM; it wasn't that. It turned out it was the power supply. So you don't have these issues. It arrives, you press power, turns on, and at this point, especially my career. I don't, you know, if it's a two days fun thing, I can do it. If it's more than that, and it's it start becoming a problem. I can't. I don't have time. I'm losing money. If I do that, it's not. It's not an option at all with Mac, you also pay for seamless integration with other devices, which I don't have an iPhone. I don't care, but I can see the value in it, right? 'Cause my friend Keat and Tra, like they told me a couple of things that were interesting, like you can copy and use the clipboard on your computer and your phone at the same time.

like it's cool, right? You can control things, you can access files. It sounds like a cool thing. Now, for example, I can connect my Android phone wirelessly and transfer files and do the same thing. So, the kind of impression that I had, it was wrong, right? That it was always going to be a pain in the ass to connect and make communicate any other devices that wasn't Apple. And probably in some cases, that's the case because Apple wants you to use their stuff. That's known. But so far so good. Also, you pay a premium because, let's face it, there's no competition. There's not an equivalent to Mac computers, right? So, this kind of closed architecture that is tested and proven with this kind of performance because I said it before, on paper, you could make a PC that has more cores and more this and more that. I did it. It just doesn't translate that power that is on paper. It does not translate 'cause it's not utilized or it gets too hot or it's just a problem after problem.

it didn't used to be like this for Intel 'cause like I said I didn't have problems before. But at this time, performance is off the charts with the Mac, so you somehow pay also for the exclusivity. But if I was Apple, I would do it too. You would do it too if you have a product that is so good that you don't have basically no competition. You will bump the price a little bit. Is it ethical? No, it's kind of shitty even because this was shipped from China. I bought it on the Apple Store, and it's literally shipped from China. So it is what it is, but the product works and delivers, and that's all I care. Even if I had to pay a th000 more, I would have at that point because all I care in my studio is not to worry about problems because I got a mix, I got a master. That's the only thing I have to worry about. The technicality of it cannot interfere, all right? Otherwise, I lose time, I lose money, and

it just is not a smooth process anymore. With that said, there are things that are slightly overpriced. For example, for me to go from 1 TB to 4 TB of internal memory on the hard drive, it was an extra $1,000. You know that 3 terab do not cost $11,000, do not cost $500, probably do not cost $100 either. But again, this is kind of a position of power and leverage that the brand has. So, if you want 4 TB, you are going to overpay. Do you need it? Did I need it? Yeah, yeah, I needed it. So, it is what it is. I was like, Dang, that is a lot for 3 terabytes when I can buy hard drives of 16 terab, even fast ones, for like $200-$300. But that's part of the brand. And like I said, the operating system, I'm actually liking it the more I use it. I don't miss Windows. The shortcuts on Protools are like so close that it took me literally

probably 30 minutes spending on a project, and I, my shortcut were the same. I had the same fluidity, the same speed, and one thing that I noticed, though, and I'm curious if there are more things like that. For Mac users, this is going to be normal, but coming from a PC, that was a big of a surprise because what happened at some point is that I opened a project. It was one of bell mixes, and I noticed when it was loading that it stopped on a snare track, on a actually on a snare Reverb, right. And so, he got stuck there for a minute. And mind you, this was after I installed a bunch of freaking things, so I probably clogged it or something, but it stopped. So, I had to force quit it, and I force quit protols, and I reopen it. And when I reopen it, it told me that the program stopped because of this plugin. It was the TC 8210 Reverb, and I was like, Windows doesn't do that. It doesn't tell me. It happened to me a million times.

and I'm pretty sure you too. You open a project and some plugin gets stuck there. Protools won't move. You had to force it. You for force close it. And either you reopen it, bypassing all the plugins, and then you open one by one and see which one it is. Or it's going to be a problem. And I, you try and try until it opens, right? It does tell window doesn't tell you which plugin is the problem. That is a big. That is it might might sound stupid, but it's a big deal because when this happened us Windows user, we had to figure it out. This one tells you. It tells you like it was this plugin. So all I did was uninstall it, reinstall it, and it opened fine. Done. No problem. So I wonder how many other little things like this there are. And um, yeah. Mot to inter interface is Thunderbolt connected seen immediately hubs drives everything all absolutely perfect, which is another, uh, thing that with, uh, Windows USB was always a little, you know, ficky. It was always a a problem, and it was never very

stable. It would lose connection. And I'm not talking about interfaces. I'm talking about sometimes the mouse stopped working or the whatever USB thing you had connected. And you had to like go and clean the old old USB devices attached to it. Refresh the ports and everything. And maybe happened on on Apple too. And this is a brand new computer. But so far let's say when I build a new PC there's always some problem uh with the USB ports and and something even in my best builds. This one was like an absolutely smooth project. So at the end of the day the money that I that this computer Coast for me repay them after the day number three because of how smooth everything is and uh how seamless everything connected and how much power and a quiet system this is. So for me was totally worth it. And I want to say at this point in time I would not go with a high-spec PC. Maybe if you need just a powerful computer or maybe a powerful laptop creative devices the one that I have it's perfect it's amazing I can't

run my entire studio in it or five interfaces is plus the mastering rig and switch things on a laptop that's Unthinkable right for a studio like mine. I need a desktop but right now you might think you save a little bit of money but you're not. You're going to regret it and you wish you did. You know follow my advice and like I did wish I followed my friend's advice before uh without you know going through the spec PC this time around. I should have avoided that because all the rumors were true the this gen of processors is an absolute mess. Intel push thing so far that the the the cooling is a problem that everything is a problem and everything is clunky and at this point. I don't think it's worth anymore. Maybe we'll see in 3 5 years and you know I'll update this the first time that I have to update the OS which I hope is not going to come anytime soon and everything but um yeah. I think this is it. If you have any questions leave them in the comments.

down below, I'll try to answer them all. If you like the video, please don't forget to leave a like. Please go watch and share the new video B Kell's felony. I mean, of course, playing guitar. And, let me know if you want to know something about that mix. Go to the website mixbest tv.com to book mix and mastering with me. Get all the mix and mastering courses, private lesson mix consultations. Click the join button. Become a mixb TV member to access all the exclusive videos. Thank you for watching. Subscribe if you haven't already. Stay safe. See you next time VI with my poison on your lips. Never again will I let someone in aching within my soul. Tragedy and my b island.

MAC vs PC 2024: Why I Switched to Apple!

David Gnozzi Platinum Mix Mastering Engineer, Producer
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