Thread: What Operating System do you primarily use for computer audio?

"I don't think Apple promotes very much at all. There is the occasional product placement on TV shows, but not many commercials, or other obvious adverts. "

That's not correct , at least in Australia. A couple of the locally made primetime soapies feature Apple Laptop placements all the time, and not just a brilliant white Apple logo just about blinding you.It's sometimes a very bright red Apple logo. Quite often they appear to have buggerall to do with the storyline.
There can be up to half a dozen blatant placements in a single 30 minute episode.
Alex

Presently use Linux (Vortexbox). Like it except when unusual situations come up and then it gets very geeky and using command line code starts to come in.

Will probably switch to Apple or Windows soon, just for convenience, driver availability, and so on.

Probably Windows, as I've never owned an Apple and the learning curve would leave me frustrated. I really just want to play music, I don't want to mess around with the Computer and OS.

Originally Posted by esldude

Then there is BSD, noticed it wasn't in the poll. One of the most stable computer setups I ever had was an earlier version of PC-BSD. Then they updated, and altered it and it was near useless. And so it goes. Open source is ......shall we say.... empowering.....interesting......and still....frustrating. I will use it most often due to the freedom anyway.

I guess BSD goes in "other". I use OpenBSD for firewalls and internet-facing services, but not for audio, so have no experience with the BSD audio capabilities. And yes, I find open source occasionally frustrating, but not as frustrating as Windows and Apple...

Originally Posted by chg

I'm surprised when I see CA users' willing to tolerate Windows.

Considering the trouble people people go through to get their music systems Just Right, I would have assumed that they enjoy the suffering

Originally Posted by sandyk

"Or, maybe Apple just makes better products? "
That's why in Ocotober 2011, Windows still had >92% market of the Desktop market share worldwide, although Apple was making up some ground.

Of which 99.99% of the Apple installs were legal, and 98.04567% of all the Windows installs are illegal...

Multiple choice is too tough Bill.

I usually fill in the circle for letter C :~)

I'm using FreeBSD for a NAS. It's a great OS for utilities but In my experience unusable for audio playback.

Is it right to understand that with Apple products it is not necessary to have many processes brought down for better SQ ?

Originally Posted by crisnee

@chg, you must be living under a rock. Apple doesn't promote? They've had an ongoing series of commercials with an Apple guy and a Windows guy in the U.S., never mind the endless Iphone/Ipad ads. Where is your rock? In which land?

-Chris

Good Lord Chris when is the last time that series of commercials ran? Maybe two or three years ago?

Originally Posted by AlainGr

Is it right to understand that with Apple products it is not necessary to have many processes brought down for better SQ ?

Generally speaking for a dedicated music server operation it is recommended to minimize processes on a Mac for highest potential sound quality

Thanks for the answer. It's just that I do not remember reading a lot about this here, except for a few threads were it seemed more Windows oriented :-)

Originally Posted by The Computer Audiophile

I'm using FreeBSD for a NAS. It's a great OS for utilities but In my experience unusable for audio playback.

... except for one variant, called OS X.

Mac OSX

I have 2 dedicated machines running OS X feeding my music. I recently installed Linux (Ubuntu) on my MBP as a dual boot too - eager to give that a try!

Originally Posted by lugili

Voyage mpd

Yay! Ditto! Have moved over to running Voyage mpd embedded on an Alix box (the old firewall from work!). Totally silent, low power. Pulls files off the NAS. It's as simple a setup as can be. Controlled either via the laptop or the iPod depending on which is closest to hand. Am very pleased with it.

Windows 7.

Voyage MPD

Originally Posted by AlainGr

Is it right to understand that with Apple products it is not necessary to have many processes brought down for better SQ ?

I turn off spotlight and time machine, mainly as a precaution, and because I don't need them on my music player, but on all my other computers, which I use for a lot of stuff in addition to music, I never turn anything off, turn on a bunch of non-default stuff (like web servers) and have (almost) never had a problem, even when maxing out all of the processors.

Originally Posted by sandyk

Windows 7 /32
It should be noted, that as this forum is U.S.A. based, the poll results are likely to be heavily biased in favour of Apple products.This may in part be due to their heavy promotion in Educational Institutions ?
Alex

Lets have a look:



Yup, the US is pretty strong on 3rd place.