[PhearthecowZ]

Alright, this isn't my question, but a friend of mines.

"I have a question about digital audio...Who came up with the idea that Macs were better at audio than PCs? Im in a recording arts program and every student gets handed a Mac. Also, every class is Mac based, there are no Windows based machines on the entire campus, so there is no escape. Can someone give me just a few good reasons why Macs are better for recording and editing audio?"


Someone responded to his question with:
"Because you don't have to deal with sound card and driver ******ry. That's why. Same reason why they are so popular with audiophiles, they can just plug their stuff in and have it sound amazing without going out to buy a $600 sound card and then mod it."

Is this true? Does anyone have the technical stats on the Mac? Thoughts?

Oh, and don't let this degrade into some sort of flame war, please.

 

[Schalldampfer]

Most motherboard-socketed audio cards are worse than those found in Mac. But then you have more options for upgrades. So I guess it depends on the usage.

 

[Wodgy]

"better" is the wrong sort of word to use. But there are differences.

Certainly it is easier to get bit-perfect, clean sound out of Macs. Macs pass a clean bitstream to the sound card out of the box. There is no worrying about kMixer, no worrying about ASIO, no need to make sure you're getting a sound card with a clock that can handle 44.1kHz cleanly, etc. There is no need for any of that. It's just a clean bitstream, out of the box.

On top of that, it is true, especially in XP, that the majority of consumers are not getting bit-perfect sound out of their XP machines. The majority of Head-Fiers probably are, but we're more sophisticated than most people. There is simply much more mucking about needed on Windows. (Vista I'll let others comment on, as I'm not a Vista expert.)

Now, there is more audio software available for Windows. So that's a plus. However, if you have a sound card that requires kernel streaming to get bit-perfect output, then you're locked down to Foobar and a handful of other apps, which partially nullifies the advantage. On Macs, you'd better like iTunes, because the alternative players are not as sophisticated.