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Hi, I am sure this has been discussed before and so I appolgise if that is so. I did a search and didn't find anything so here goes.

I am about to buy a new laptop to use with the VDJ software and I am trying to choose between a MAC and a PC. Obviously you can get a PC for less, but is it up to the task? The main question is with the VDJ software. I would ask if people could share their expereinces with both machines and in particular were there any pros/cons that you had to face or any features that are better on one platform over the other (from a VDJ perspective), or is it genuinly just down to a personal choice?

Thanks in advance
Andy
 
Posté Wed 11 Nov 09 @ 8:32 pm
I am a PC and support both at my regular day job. I do not use a laptop, rather a rackmount PC. Laptops are rapidly improving and are capable of handling whatever VDJ can throw at it. My requirements cannot be met by a laptop, since I want reduntdant power supply and redundant RAIDs. You have to make the decision yourself.
 
Get a mac then you have both ;)
 
+1 on the mac;)
 
I'm not opposed to Macs but have always used PCs/Laptops as my background is in databse development which has been predominantly PC based.

I have a core-due gateway running Vista Home Premium (nearly two years old now) with 4Gb RAM (upgraded from 1Gb myself) and have only ever experienced problems with VDJ that were down to user error or poor config.

Many people just expect VDJ to work out the box, but you do need to spend time working on your setup to get it working "just right" - and that probably goes for Macs as well.

What are you most comfortable with? Do you use Macs on a regular basis? Are you familar with how the OS works?

What you have to remember is that even though you will be using a controller or timecodes, you will still have to interact with the the software, and you need to be comfortable with that.

If your keen to try a Mac for the first time - go for it. Just make sure you put the time in to get used to it before going live with it.

Make the decision on what works best for you. Both are equally capable of supporting VDJ and ALL its features.

Cheers,

Roy
 
The cool thing about the mac is that you can have osx and windows on the same computer and they completely independent or each other. I would get the pro version of the mac just because they have an awesome graphics card in them (2 actually)
 
Let be clear about one thing - MACs are PCs.

When talking about the MAC os and Windows - VDJ is developed for both and works great on both systems.
What really matters is the hardware.
A MAC out of the box comes with decent hardware but if you take a close look at the specs, you can usually get a PC with the same specs for less.

mac is a brand name but there are plenty of other systems out there just as good and most of the time better than mac.
 
I have a MacBookPro that I specifically bought for VDJ. After having it for about 6 months, I still haven't gig'd with it even once. It is a nice machine, but the Mac version of VDJ is very limited, especially for video effects on which I depend greatly. I am still using my 5 year old P4 2.8Ghz laptop with XP SP1. I am probably going to put the Mac on Craigslist and use the money to buy a comparable PC and still have a bunch of cash leftover.

Don't get me wrong... I am definitely not a windows fan. I am a UNIX guy which is why I do love MacOSX, and have an iMac as my primary home machine, but for VDJ, I suggest a PC running windows. You could pay more for a comparably equipped Mac running windows, but why?
 
Thanks Everybody,

Great comments, observations and suggestions. I appreciate all your words, and I especially like the idea of the rack mount with a RAID set up... That makes a lot of sense.

I am a "Windows" PC guy but i know that the music industry uses MAC for most of their stuff which is why i was considering it. I guess better the devil you know and so I will go with the Windows based machine for now.

Thanks again

Andy
 
ahalford wrote :
I appreciate all your words, and I especially like the idea of the rack mount with a RAID set up... That makes a lot of sense.


Again, that depends on your use... If you build a rack mount PC, you then have to deal with carrying around a PSU in case of power failure for example. A Laptop has a battery that will give you enough time to keep playing while you sort the power issue out...

Yes RAID is good, but so is having two identical external HDDs - just a lot cheaper. You don't need rapid read times unless your loading tracks every 10 seconds. Plus you do not really write that often to the drive during a gig you only read the track, so another benefit of RAID not really used.

The guy that had the RAID system was also doing live recordings of bands, therefore that system was exactly what he needed.

I toyed with the iea of building a rackmount PC for DJing, but when you get in to the nitty gritty of it all, a laptop is just that much easier. Battery backup and screen built in, highly portable, space efficient, etc...

I've been DJing for nearly 18 months with my current config and have only had issues when I bugger things up. Other than that it has been rock solid.

Roy
 
SevanKambel wrote :
Let be clear about one thing - MACs are PCs.

When talking about the MAC os and Windows - VDJ is developed for both and works great on both systems.
What really matters is the hardware.
A MAC out of the box comes with decent hardware but if you take a close look at the specs, you can usually get a PC with the same specs for less.

mac is a brand name but there are plenty of other systems out there just as good and most of the time better than mac.


+1

I'd buy that for a dollar!!!!!
 
If i had a dollar for every DJ said they didn't want to use a plastic controller cause it feels cheap, I'd be rich. You guys can keep those plastic pcs, I'll stick with my aluminum Mbp thanks...
 
I have a Mac Pro at home, Snow Leopard as the main OS, Windows XP on a bootcamp drive and Windows 7 as a parallels partition.

The whole machine is blisteringly quick and very good quality.

I wouldn't chance VDJ on a mac for a gig though, I use a Windows 7 machine for that.
 
the only thing mac got is the OS and they make some good looking items.a mac will never be powerfull as a pc i7 intel laptop no mac book pro can handle this
 
It is the quad core Nehalem I have, not a laptop. It's a pretty high spec workstation that blows 95% of Windows PC's away.

I would love to use it for video with VDJ but there are too many problems in the mac version judging by comments in the mac forum.
 
you should check out 6.03 on that thing :) The new imacs have the i5's its only a matter of time before the mbp line gets refreshed.
 
Curious GadgetMan, if you lose power how do you power your amps to keep the music playing or did you mean if your power supply fails your battery can act as a backup. I assume the latter, this is why my rackmount power supply is redundant. You can find them in good servers.
 
ahalford wrote :
Hi, I am sure this has been discussed before and so I appolgise if that is so. I did a search and didn't find anything so here goes.

I am about to buy a new laptop to use with the VDJ software and I am trying to choose between a MAC and a PC. Obviously you can get a PC for less, but is it up to the task? The main question is with the VDJ software. I would ask if people could share their expereinces with both machines and in particular were there any pros/cons that you had to face or any features that are better on one platform over the other (from a VDJ perspective), or is it genuinly just down to a personal choice?

Thanks in advance
Andy


To answer to your original question, and without entering in a heated debate about mac vs PC:
From a purely VDJ perspective, if you have the choice, use Windows rather than MacOS.
VirtualDJ has been designed for Windows first, and adapted to MacOS at a later stage.
And even though the Mac version runs well, the Windows version will always be a little more efficient.

Also, if you're doing or plan to do video mixing, then your choice should really be the Windows version.
VirutalDJ uses some optimizations using the graphic processor of your videocard that are usually used in games.
Windows gives game developers such direct access to the video hardware, but MacOS doesn't have an equivalent yet (that's why you have so many games on Windows on so few on MacOS).


Again, I'm just giving here a factual comparison between VirtualDJ Windows and VirtualDJ Mac, as seen from the source code point of view.
Some users will probably tell you in a heated manner that Windows or Mac, unrelated to VirtualDJ, is better than the other. But I don't think that was the point of the thread here.
 
Virtual DJ runs Better on PC than Mac. Certain Things works using mac & Virtual dj but all works fine with PC. I have a mac and the serato box doesnt show up if i wanted to use the audio interface. It shows up in PC. I cant hear the heaphones on the VCI 300 & a mac but in PC, you download Asio for all & it works. Certain things works for mac using Virtual dj but using a pc, Everything works with virtual dj.
 
To clarify what I was saying here in this case, a base mac running bootcamp will run VDJ very well, and in many cases outperform similar pcs. As the support staff was saying no hardware graphics acceleration is available on osx currently. Macs have really good hardware in them and a nice form factor was my other point. In the sea of cheap laptop computers with bad specs the Mac hardware is among the best ie good graphics cards, nice processors and added bonus of being aluminum keeps them cooler then normal pcs. Sorry if I confused anyone with my other posts. Again I'm looking at this from a purely hardware standpoint.
 
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