Listen Here: Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It

If ever there was something we have a love-hate relationship with, it’s software. One minute it’s the saviour of our audio productions, the next it’s the digital pariah come to destroy everything we hold dear. Like the rest of our audio equipment, we just want our software to work, seamlessly and without complaint. When it does that, it’s incredible. But when it doesn’t…

There’s one word that trumps all others when it comes to audio, and that’s ‘reliability.’ We want the things we use every day to work predictably and flawlessly, every time. Sure, we also want everything to sound incredible, and if something sounds like crap here at The Mill, I’m the first person to put it in the studio’s proprietary slingshot and launch it down the paddock into the dam… or just sell it on Marketplace.

But the same rule applies when something is unreliable. If a piece of gear gives me grief during a recording, mixing or mastering session, especially when there are clients present, it’s straight to the slingshot we go.

Soft To The Core

And of all the key components that form the basis of our recording, mixing and mastering studios, possibly the most critically important and potentially fraught element is the computer and its attendant software. The same is true of most PA setups, which typically have a computer running the show… often cunningly disguised as a mixing console.

When something goes awry in the digital domain in any of these audio environments, it usually has a catastrophic impact on the gig. If a mic gets noisy or a stand falls apart the world doesn’t end. The show goes on and we swap it out in no time flat. But a computer crashing repeatedly or a console going down? That is always the epitome of a bad day at the office.

It’s for this reason that I’ve generally been someone who prefers to ‘freeze’ my studio’s computer (OS and audio software) the moment I’m happy with the setup. I want reliability first and foremost, so the moment I feel happy with how my DAW is behaving (which for me is Pro Tools), I’ll generally stick with it for a while (too long, many would say) until circumstances force my hand. I’m not a computer expert, not by a long shot. So, if my studio computer is working reliably, I don’t want me, or anyone else for that matter, changing it!

The downside of this approach has always been that because computer software and hardware tend to date like white bread, things grow old fast, and compatibility issues with the outside world inevitably creep in.

Out With The Old

A perfect example of this has been my studio’s main computer, which coincidentally was only replaced last week. Up until then I’d been running an old Mac, an old version of Pro Tools, Izotope’s RX Advanced, the occasional session via Ableton, Logic or Reaper and a small mountain of software plug-ins. It’s no exaggeration to say that I’ve almost literally run this computer into the ground! The only significant upgrades the machine has enjoyed were new SSD hard drives, which kept the machine viable for another couple of years.

Apart from that, essentially the machine has been frozen in time since the Jurassic period, primarily due to my obsession with reliability, but then later, because things had grown so old that new software was no longer even compatible with my OS. So even if I had wanted to upgrade certain key software elements, I couldn’t. Well, not easily at least. Too much time had elapsed.

Software and hardware incompatibility is like fast-paced continental drift; you don’t see it occurring, but it’s relentless and unstoppable, further exacerbated by the fact that software generally grows more unreliable along the way. Eventually that once-rock-solid machine that you took so much pride in and protected like your progeny from external, corrupting influences, becomes an idiosyncratic has-been. I guess, eventually, we all do.

So recently the dam finally broke. The pressure to upgrade my system to accommodate the increasingly long list of things I’d resisted buying for months – Pro Tools 2021, the new RX 9, and a host of new plug-ins – was finally too much for me to bear. Not to mention that my DAW, several browsers, 1000 plug-ins, and even Dropbox were telling me that I couldn’t upgrade anything until I’d updated my OS!

To put it mildly, the change had been long overdue.

The Divorce

So, there I was (about 12 months ago now), confronted with the reality of buying another new Mac from a company that frankly I’ve grown to viscerally loathe over the last decade or so. Apple cares not one jot about me or my business it seems, or yours for that matter, as its specs, prices and attitude to standards of connectivity self-evidently prove.

At the same time as this, I was made acutely aware of the potential benefits of transferring my allegiance to the other mob; PC. The arguments for this change, from colleagues for whom I had the utmost respect, were compelling to say the least. Speed, storage, and cost were all vastly superior when compared to the latest Mac.

So, in a perverse exercise designed to help me ‘break up’ with Apple once and for all, I went to that company’s site and spec’d out a new studio machine. I chose the various components from its Mac Pro feature list to suit my future requirements without going too overboard on hard drive sizes or RAM upgrades, but nor did I try to cut corners off the machine’s fundamental capacity. The price: $63,500! Just ridiculous.

So after some very patient handholding from a couple of friends, for whom a PC fits like an old pair of boots, and upon whose help I was utterly reliant, I took the plunge.

I am now the proud owner of a stonkingly fast AMD Ryzen 9-based PC running Windows 10, Pro Tools 2021.7 Ultimate (which is just fantastic), and a host of new plug-ins.

The third-party plug-ins list is sure to grow, but the key brands I’ve already installed are familiar to me (since I use them every day): the Ultimate Pro Tools Suite, FabFilter, Soundtoys, NUGEN Audio, Lexicon, McDSP and a host of others too long to list here. Many others that I’ve previously owned on the Mac will probably be lost, I suspect, in the migration across to PC, unless I make a concerted effort to chase down the upgrades. Whether I get to them all remains to be seen. In some ways I’m more concerned with chasing new stuff; Valhalla, Clearmountain’s Domain, and Universal Audio (which I used to own), than reinstating a mountain of old stuff, many products among which I barely knew I even had, let alone used.

Migration Path

A word on the changeover from Mac to PC is probably worthwhile here before I sign off.

This was something I debated endlessly over the last 12 months, wringing my hands over it nightly, thinking the exercise would be tedious at best, or a total nightmare at worst. Instead, the whole exercise has been a bit like the Millennium Bug (if anyone remembers that) – a complete non-issue. The changeover has been a piece of cake. With help from mates, of course.

Working on the PC instead of the Mac involves only a few very basic rudimentary changes to your workflow and key commands, which anyone can understand in about five minutes. After that it’s pretty much an identical process. I had envisaged endless roadblocks and a maze of confusion from the Windows platform; lost folders, missing files, that sort of thing, none of which has been borne out. It’s been a complete non-event. I only wish I’d realised that four years ago!

So, if you’re a Mac guy limping along with an old Mac Pro, trying to squeeze every last drop out of your decade-old machine, do yourself a favour and ditch it once and for all. The very idea that you need to maintain such an old clunker should be evidence enough of how unsupportive Apple are of the work you do. Worrying about the prospect of going over to the Dark Side is a pointless exercise; don’t let it trouble you. The new PCs are like greased lightning. They’re about 10 times better value for money in the first place, then endlessly upgradable so you never have to feel like a dinosaur again. All around you are support mechanisms and options galore, and after you cross over, if you’re like me, you’ll wonder what the hell you were doing staying loyal to a company like Apple.

While the switch might seem brave, or even foolhardy beforehand, in truth it’s an economically rational, technically superior choice that you won’t regret.

Good luck!

Andy Stewart owns and operates The Mill studio in Victoria, a world-class production, mixing and mastering facility. He’s happy to respond to any pleas for pro audio help… contact him at: andy@themillstudio.com.au or visit: www.themillstudio.com.au