Buying a used Mac Pro

Axe_meister

When I had an Avid Mbox 2 I used to run it on a hackintosh. however I much preferred reaper and went back to windows as a lot of software I used was either windows only or just ran better on windows

darcym

joeyowen said:

So I know nothing about Macs, but this summer I'll be stepping into the dark side and getting a Mac Pro.

No part of me wants to pay 2.5k on a new model, so where is a good place to buy used?  It will be used for Pro Tools almost exclusively so it doesn't have to be a trash can model.  I want to keep my Monitor, so iMac is out of the question due to space.

Maybe Mac Mini if I can run Pro Tools 12.  I know shit all

ps, I'm keeping my rusty old PC if I can, if you catch my drift

buy a 15'' I7 macbook pro from the refurb shop, current generation or one down. You'll get an extra hi-res screen for pro-tools which is really really useful, the current and one down model are actually powerful and have good ram and fast storage, plus it's also portable if you ever want to record something live say at a gig.

it really is an investment rather than a spend.

I'd strongly advise official mac, rather than things like hackintosh, more so when you want to use audio devices and you want the best stability and performance possible from pro-tools. Happy to talk about my setup with pro-tools, took me ages to work out what I wanted / needed after pro-tools 8 as the move from 8 to something else required a complete hardware and software refresh, so I weighed up a lot of pros and cons.

Danny1969

Mac Pros are expensive but are made from better quality components to a higher standard than you average PC. When I say this I'm talking about the case, the power supply and the actual components on the board, the inductors in the buck convertors, the quality of the caps etc. Obviously the CPU, ram and drives are the same as you will find in PC's. This doesn't mean Mac Pro's don't go wrong, they can do and are far more expensive to fix when they do so Apple Care is essential

I have PT 6.4 running on a G4 mac from 2002  which get used regularly, PT10 on an HD3 running on a Dell Precision Workstation and PT9 running on a Macpro from 2006 ish . Although I prefer the Mac's the PC is fine but it is a certified PC to run Protools ..... I don't know what the deal is now but but it used to be a good idea to use a machine that was certified with PT if you wanted stability, the Macs were fine because the hardware was uniform. 

Much as I love Protools there are alternatives. In the studio we used PT because it's the most widely excepted pro format and IMHO the best software for editing drums and comping vocals and such. At home I'm quite fond of Reaper, it's a total bargain for home use 

Axe_meister

Although I do like Macs. For the same budget you can get and equally night quality and faster PC.
A £400 PC with the same specs as a £1500 Mac is going to be be crap, but a £1500 PC is going to be equal in quality and likely to be higher spec

Winny_Pooh

I've run pro tools on pc's for years with no issues and have an older i7 desktop that's reliable and an i5 U series Lenovo with PT 12 & 10 on it.

Get a PC, depreciation on electronics is bad enough already without purposely buggering yourself just for nicer looking future landful. 

crunchman

Foster said:

I'd look into a cheesegrater mac too, Pro Tools can be a bit of a bitch on either system but from personal experience (and knowing people who have similar experience) OSX is more stable and less interfering for pro audio stuff than Windows.

When I was with my ex her sister's partner scoffed at me for buying a macbook pro to run pro tools/ableton/logic/max msp/photo editing stuff claiming "you'll have no end of problems". When her dad wanted a new computer to run pro tools he was advised by same guy to spend £2k on a brand new PC running Vista...

I think they spent most nights trying to get pro tools to work on that PC. I didn't have any issues and could happily plug in an Mbox/002/003 without the mac throwing a hissy fit. 

Win 10 is very different from Vista.

In the meantime the Mac OS has got more bloated.  When I "upgraded" from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion on my old MacBook Pro, it slowed it down noticeably.

monquixote

crunchman said:

Foster said:

I'd look into a cheesegrater mac too, Pro Tools can be a bit of a bitch on either system but from personal experience (and knowing people who have similar experience) OSX is more stable and less interfering for pro audio stuff than Windows.

When I was with my ex her sister's partner scoffed at me for buying a macbook pro to run pro tools/ableton/logic/max msp/photo editing stuff claiming "you'll have no end of problems". When her dad wanted a new computer to run pro tools he was advised by same guy to spend £2k on a brand new PC running Vista...

I think they spent most nights trying to get pro tools to work on that PC. I didn't have any issues and could happily plug in an Mbox/002/003 without the mac throwing a hissy fit. 

Win 10 is very different from Vista.

In the meantime the Mac OS has got more bloated.  When I "upgraded" from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion on my old MacBook Pro, it slowed it down noticeably.

Indeed, Macs aren't super reliable these days and Windows has got much better. I don't regularly use Windows so I can't really give a sensible comparison, but I don't know if I'd buy a Mac with my own money.

Mine regularly refuses to acknowledge displays have been plugged or unplugged and Finder regularly crashes.

Foster

I still run on Lion! It's not often I have problems. Some things run stupidly hot so I might invest in an SSD and moving bulky stuff like photos to a couple of external drives

Foster

crunchman said:

Foster said:

I'd look into a cheesegrater mac too, Pro Tools can be a bit of a bitch on either system but from personal experience (and knowing people who have similar experience) OSX is more stable and less interfering for pro audio stuff than Windows.

When I was with my ex her sister's partner scoffed at me for buying a macbook pro to run pro tools/ableton/logic/max msp/photo editing stuff claiming "you'll have no end of problems". When her dad wanted a new computer to run pro tools he was advised by same guy to spend £2k on a brand new PC running Vista...

I think they spent most nights trying to get pro tools to work on that PC. I didn't have any issues and could happily plug in an Mbox/002/003 without the mac throwing a hissy fit. 

Win 10 is very different from Vista.

Thankfully you're correct. I use windows 10 at work, it's actually pretty good!

darcym

you'll find pro-tools support (should you ever need to use it, more so with the perpetual license and support agreement) is much much better on macs, you'll find some plugins as well are only available on mac, as well as the support community, you'll get better tips/tricks and advice on the mac. The windows community is there, but if you look at the number and quality of the posts on the DUC (Digi User Center) forum you'll see it's all geared towards mac, you'll find this on most of the pro software I'd expect you to use.

monquixote

Very interesting article about the new Mac Pros

https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/05/apples-2019-imac-pro-will-be-shaped-by-workflows/

The TLDR is:

Apple realise they have screwed up and have abandoned the trashcan for something modular

They won't be coming out until 2019