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[Riley Casey]

Fun facts  ... http://www.computerworld.com/article/3131906/apple-mac/ibm-says-macs-are-even-cheaper-to-run-than-it-thought.html

More to the point, how heavy duty are your PT sessions?  A less than ultimate Mac would do a fine job of running Q Lab and PT assuming you aren't mixing 40 channel sessions with loads of plug ins.  As an audio workstation in a live venue are you largely capturing multi track, doing some light editing and running shows live or are you indeed doing significant mix down of large multitrack sessions?  Support is less of an issue with Macs than PCs btw because to a much larger extent things really do "just work" on the Mac side.

[brian maddox]

Fun facts  ... http://www.computerworld.com/article/3131906/apple-mac/ibm-says-macs-are-even-cheaper-to-run-than-it-thought.html

More to the point, how heavy duty are your PT sessions?  A less than ultimate Mac would do a fine job of running Q Lab and PT assuming you aren't mixing 40 channel sessions with loads of plug ins.  As an audio workstation in a live venue are you largely capturing multi track, doing some light editing and running shows live or are you indeed doing significant mix down of large multitrack sessions?  Support is less of an issue with Macs than PCs btw because to a much larger extent things really do "just work" on the Mac side.

I agree with 'the artist formerly known as Ed'. 😀

You probably don't need Mac Pro level power.  A high end iMac will probably do nicely, and may have a longer support life.  When I was looking at a very similar question, I elected to go iMac and was very happy with the results.

An All the bells and whistles iMac Is a pretty serious machine.  And the thunderbolt enables just about any add on you can think of.  I was doing 64 channel mixes with a LOT of plugins and barely crashed the surface of available processor power.

So my advice is spend your money on a serious iMac.  27". All the bells and whistles.  You'll be happy with the results.

[Erik Jerde]

Be careful with the sonnet enclosure that your cards are supported.  I've got a h264 encoder card that doesn't work in their enclosures (or any I think).  It's one of the big reasons that a 2009 Mac Pro lives on and gets regular use.

[Justice C. Bigler]

I would only get a 21.5" iMac. The 27" screen is too big and I don't have space for it in my booth and it would just look obnoxious with my FOH set up in the theatre. With the Mac Pro that I am specing I am going to also include a 22" (non Apple) 4k display.

Plus the 21.5" iMacs only come with an integrated Intel GPU, which I doubt will run the occasional video playback that we do.

I'll wait and see what gets announced next week. But I'm not getting my hopes up.

[Kevin McDonough]

Hey

Yeah I would defo wait till after the 27th and see what Apple announces, before making any final decision.

No comment on the Mac Pro debate (not an Apple user beyond my iPad), but if you decide to use a Windows machine I've had good luck running Show Cue System as a substitute for QLab.  There are certainly differences between the two, but SCS has always managed to suit my needs and is reasonably priced.

I would also second this statement too though. If you feel you need to move away from Mac and are looking for a windows alternative, I've been using SCS for years and it's been great. I playback audio, video and midi regularly and on a stable PC have never had it crash or freak out. The user interface isn't as pretty as Qlab, but its very feature rich and once you know your way around it can be very powerful.


K

[Milt Hathaway]

Plus the 21.5" iMacs only come with an integrated Intel GPU, which I doubt will run the occasional video playback that we do.

My standard QLab (etc.) video playback machines are 2011-vintage Mac Book Pros, integrated GPU and all. In most cases drive speed will have more affect on video playback than the GPU will.

[David Simpson]

Just wanted to chime in with another vote of support for Show Cue Systems, should you go the windows route. I have been using it for about 8 years now, never had a single issue at all, very quick to learn, and great support / software updates.

~Dave

[Justice C. Bigler]

My standard QLab (etc.) video playback machines are 2011-vintage Mac Book Pros, integrated GPU and all. In most cases drive speed will have more affect on video playback than the GPU will.

How many separate video outputs are you running?

[Riley Casey]

Justice, have you posted any of your questions on the Q Lab Google group?

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/qlab

[Justice C. Bigler]

Justice, have you posted any of your questions on the Q Lab Google group?

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/qlab

No.


I'd rather hear from normal users rather than the cult of QLab. I've always been less than enthused about the responses that I get from the QLab Google group or figure 53 themselves.


The main question in this thread is less about QLab itself or what to move to if I move to Windows, and more about whether the current Mac Pro represents a good investment in funds at this time.

[ProSoundWeb Community]