nerdi-post para geeks que quieren hacer música utilizando una computadora

Pocas veces utilizo éste blog para escribir de cuestiones técnicas que tienen que ver con el mundo de las computadoras, los programas, las tarjetas de audio, los sintes, las cajas de ritmos, los samplers y en general, los aparatos electrónicos para hacer música; aunque el 80% de mis lecturas y el 50% de mis conversaciones giren alrededor de dichas cuestiones.
Uno de los debates de siempre, es el de si es mejor utilizar Mac o PC para trabajar música. En el foro de discusión de Cubase SX (un programa para editar música) del cual soy miembro, apareció un post que ahonda sobre éste tema siempre actual para los que estan interesados en grabar, editar, producir o post-producir su música en computadora (osea el 90% de los músicos del mundo, desde música "culta" hasta heavy metal, pasando, por supuesto, por la que llaman: electrónica).

En el mundo de la música, qué es mejor Mac o PC?

Apple's 'World's Fastest Personal Computer' Bested By Alienware High-Performance PCs in Mac World Testing



>What is the Point of this post. Is it supposed to be
>surprising that months later another processor would be
>faster than the Apple G5? The Athlon FX51 is a great proc. however
>it is running at 2.2Ghz and the G5 is at 2.0Ghz at the
>moment, so it doesn't surprise me at all that its proving to
>be faster. Besides these tests are of little value to DAW
>users. What do Microsoft Word, Quake III and Adobe Premiere
>tests have to do with running Cubase SX? That Alienware Aurora
>System starts at $3,029.00 and you guys complain about Apple
>being overpriced. Also the test apps used probably don't
>benefit from Dual Processors, which would handicap the G5,
>thankfully DAW apps like Cubase SX can use Dual procs, so I doubt
>that anyone with a G5 would be disappointed. Bravo for AMD
>tho. They need for the AMD 64 procs to be successful and I
>think they will be, although it has yet to be proven. Apple
>has a success already in the G5, so I doubt that they are
>concerned about losing a benchmark test.

You don't have to have the Athlon FX-51 to hit that performance. If you look at
the Macworld article you'll see that most of the benchmarks where the
Aurora wins the Area-51 is right behind it which is based on a 3.2Ghz
Pentium 4 (which are really cheap these days). So even a single Pentium 4
will beat the Dual 2Ghz G5s in particular tests. The reasons those
applications were chosen for "real world" tests is because the algorithms
they employ to do simple arithmetic operations says of a search and find in
Word are characteristic of many different types of generalized
operations. The MP3 encoding mark should have probably the closest
significance to audio... but again... not an audio benchmark.

Aquí está el análisis comparativo

The Athlon64s & Opterons are really expensive right now... that price is
going to come down a lot in the next few months.

However, if I wanted to make my own Aurora comparable to the one used in
the Macworld tests:

Precios tomados de newegg.com

$799.00 - AMD Athlon 64 FX51 2.2Ghz 1MB Cache w/ HSF
$189.00 - Leadtek K8NW ATX Motherboard for Socket 940 AMD Opteron
or Athlon 64 FX Processor, NVIDIA nForce3 Pro 150 Chipset
$120.00 - Crucial 512MB 64x72 PC-3200 DDR RAM, Model CT6472Z40B
$120.00 - Crucial 512MB 64x72 PC-3200 DDR RAM, Model CT6472Z40B
$ 86.00 - Seagate 80GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive Cuda 7200 ST380013AS
$ 86.00 - Seagate 80GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive Cuda 7200 ST380013AS
$102.99 - NEC ND-1300A/BLACK/GEN Black color bezel 4x DVD
Recordable DVD +/- RW Drive
$305.00 - SAPPHIRE OEM RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB DVI/TV 8X AGP Video Card
$ 7.75 - Teac 1.44MB 3.5 Inch Floppy Drive # FD235HFC291
$ 89.00 - Antec SOHO File Server Tower ATX Case with 400W Power Supply-------------------------------------------
$1904.74 - Total


Now if I configured the faster Apple G5 machine in the Macworld test:

Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
- 1GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 2x512
- 160GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
- ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
- SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
- Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English
- Mac OS X - U.S. English
Subtotal $3,520.00


So even if you paid the price for the Alienware system it would be cheaper
and faster than the Dual G5. Or you could build your own for $1100 less
than the Alienware system and $1600 less than the Dual G5.
Hell for that
money I could upgrade to a Dual Athlon64 system for another $900.... now
we're talking.

The point is that both Macs and PCs are great for audio... and it comes
down to personal preference and budget as to what people choose. Meanwhile
you have all the Mac zelots going around touting the G5 is the fastest
thing on the market. Lets not forget to mention how the Independent
Television Commission found the Apple G5 advertisements claiming ""the world's
fastest, most powerful personal computer" to be misleading and banned it
from being broadcast.

'Fastest Computer' TV Advert Banned
Aquí está la info. del anuncio mencionado

Sorry for the pseudo-rant but there's just been a load of misinformation
around a few of the audio lists I'm on the past few weeks so that's why I
posted this article, etc

Este mensaje fue tomado del foro oficial de discusión de Cubase SX. El autor firma con el seudónimo de Implicit. Me tomé la libertad de hacerle algunas correciones técnicas al texto.