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Post by svart on Oct 5, 2020 12:22:58 GMT -6
Seems that the latest Intel NUC generation is pretty much comparable to high end laptops, just without the screen and keyboard but generally with more ports. Only downside is that they cost similar amounts without being portable, but then again I don't really see myself toting a laptop around either so it's probably going to sit on the desk forever.
Anyway, as you see, in my ongoing deliberation about the direction I want to take in the future of the studio I'm stuck on whether or not I'd want to use a laptop or a "desktop" type of machine.
I still plan on using a large (32") monitor as I don't want to be staring at a tiny laptop screen while editing, but it might be nice to have the option of pulling things like plugin GUIs to the laptopscreen while maintaining the timeline editing on the large screen. I don't do much typing, just hotkey combinations during editing and I currently use a small (laptop sized) keyboard to do this since it fits in the drawer under my desk.
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Post by Guitar on Oct 5, 2020 13:13:40 GMT -6
I'm really interested in the NUC's too. If you mount one to the back of a monitor it's basically the windows version of a Mac Pro or something like that. You could still move it around pretty easily I think.
Haven't bought into one yet, but there's no chance for me with a laptop, I just don't trust them. Not for me. Too many issues. I had one and it will probably be my last.
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Post by mulmany on Oct 5, 2020 14:58:10 GMT -6
I was researching this a ton...the high end Skull Canyon and above NUCs have all the bells and whistles one needs while taking up a 1u-2u rack shelf. You will get Tbolt as well. I ended up jumping to a Mac Pro trashcan because I did not want to jump back to Windows.
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Post by plinker on Oct 6, 2020 10:30:19 GMT -6
NUCs are for really tight spaces. You pay a monetary price to cram it all into a tiny form factor -- and they are not always easy to upgrade.
If you want smaller than a traditional desktop, and don't plan to move it around, then a small form factor (SFF) machine might serve you better, and cost less. I like refurbished, bare-bones Lenovo SFF. You can find them on newegg.com. Then add the amount of RAM & SDD that you want -- upgrade video, etc. They are highly, and easily, configurable.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Oct 6, 2020 17:41:34 GMT -6
Everybody I know who has ever used a NUC has wanted throw the thing out the window where as only about 1/2 of laptop users. Size seams the most important design factor everything else is completely secondary. They do tend to run hot.
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Post by Guitar on Oct 7, 2020 9:32:30 GMT -6
Everybody I know who has ever used a NUC has wanted throw the thing out the window where as only about 1/2 of laptop users. Size seams the most important design factor everything else is completely secondary. They do tend to run hot. What are some examples of complaints with the NUC? I'm just wondering specifically people don't like about them. |
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Oct 7, 2020 9:44:26 GMT -6
Everybody I know who has ever used a NUC has wanted throw the thing out the window where as only about 1/2 of laptop users. Size seams the most important design factor everything else is completely secondary. They do tend to run hot. What are some examples of complaints with the NUC? I'm just wondering specifically people don't like about them. Heat, weird issues with USB compatibility, general QC. They seam to work fine if you don’t hook anything up to them or push them, great for say a kids home work machine, not so much for audio or video. A school I used to have as a client had a bunch donated to the music dept. The head of the dept called me after they couldn’t get the things to work with some fairly basic Edrol interface and the manufacturer offered less support than Walmart. Thank god for Covid, it’s given us time to trade, beg and borrow a bunch of I5 iMacs so that at some point this music lab will be functional! |
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Post by Guitar on Oct 7, 2020 9:53:44 GMT -6
What are some examples of complaints with the NUC? I'm just wondering specifically people don't like about them. Heat, weird issues with USB compatibility, general QC. They seam to work fine if you don’t hook anything up to them or push them, great for say a kids home work machine, not so much for audio or video. A school I used to have as a client had a bunch donated to the music dept. The head of the dept called me after they couldn’t get the things to work with some fairly basic Edrol interface and the manufacturer offered less support than Walmart. Thank god for Covid, it’s given us time to trade, beg and borrow a bunch of I5 iMacs so that at some point this music lab will be functional! Thanks I guess I'll calm down my excitement about NUC for now. That form factor is so promising. |
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Post by popmann on Oct 7, 2020 11:50:51 GMT -6
I'd say laptop. Advantage of the NUC being primarily that it doesn't run off/through a battery--so some power management configs and longevity. But, a laptop can allow yo uto turn OFF that 32" screen--keep that little laptop screen over to the side of the mixer...that was the only advantage I saw in my year and half with the Macbook. That when I DIDN'T turn on my 27" LED...it was like my brain said "ahh" and went back to listening like I used to before my visual cortex was being constantly molested during the process of making music. It was simple enough to do a new playlist...new track...quick little "what would this sound like if..." edit with the little touchpad and 13" screen. Then plug up the big screen for MIDI sequencing or mixing or vocal comping--whatever there's an actual advantage in it... Not to mention...I mean...normal laptop stuff...Netflix laying on the couch in the studio...typing advice to people on a forum rather than getting these last few lines of lyric written...  --you could easily run it as a secondary machine to run a piano VI or whatever at some point recording audio to a bigger system. In that kind of role, A NUC would require a whole secondary keyboard/mouse...or I guess work off RDP... Edit: I think if you really want a fixed function machine (where a NUC might complete), I don't know why you care about the form factor enough to make it louder and less powerful than it would be otherwise. |
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Post by svart on Oct 7, 2020 16:54:40 GMT -6
Heat, weird issues with USB compatibility, general QC. They seam to work fine if you don’t hook anything up to them or push them, great for say a kids home work machine, not so much for audio or video. A school I used to have as a client had a bunch donated to the music dept. The head of the dept called me after they couldn’t get the things to work with some fairly basic Edrol interface and the manufacturer offered less support than Walmart. Thank god for Covid, it’s given us time to trade, beg and borrow a bunch of I5 iMacs so that at some point this music lab will be functional! Thanks I guess I'll calm down my excitement about NUC for now. That form factor is so promising. I dunno. I appreciate Eric's insight but I've seen a lot of positive experiences as I've been doing research. Far more than negatives I'm sure. The nucs are essentially laptops without screens and keyboards, so they generally work about the same in performance. I also find Intel hardware to be some of the most reliable made |
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Post by svart on Oct 7, 2020 17:03:31 GMT -6
I'd say laptop. Advantage of the NUC being primarily that it doesn't run off/through a battery--so some power management configs and longevity. But, a laptop can allow yo uto turn OFF that 32" screen--keep that little laptop screen over to the side of the mixer...that was the only advantage I saw in my year and half with the Macbook. That when I DIDN'T turn on my 27" LED...it was like my brain said "ahh" and went back to listening like I used to before my visual cortex was being constantly molested during the process of making music. It was simple enough to do a new playlist...new track...quick little "what would this sound like if..." edit with the little touchpad and 13" screen. Then plug up the big screen for MIDI sequencing or mixing or vocal comping--whatever there's an actual advantage in it... Not to mention...I mean...normal laptop stuff...Netflix laying on the couch in the studio...typing advice to people on a forum rather than getting these last few lines of lyric written... --you could easily run it as a secondary machine to run a piano VI or whatever at some point recording audio to a bigger system. In that kind of role, A NUC would require a whole secondary keyboard/mouse...or I guess work off RDP... Edit: I think if you really want a fixed function machine (where a NUC might complete), I don't know why you care about the form factor enough to make it louder and less powerful than it would be otherwise. This would be a studio specific unit, laptop or nuc alike. No netflix, no internet. I'm generally a stickler for simplicity, so smaller is better. I also love my big monitor. The GUI is a means to an end, nothing more, but I also don't want to be squinting or zooming to ridiculous amounts while working either.. |
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Post by johneppstein on Oct 8, 2020 17:58:55 GMT -6
NUC, Schmuck.
It seems to me that for a studio machine upgradability is a key factor and, as far as I can tell, upgradability is not a strongpoint of NUCs.
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Post by BenjaminAshlin on Oct 8, 2020 19:52:28 GMT -6
NUC, Schmuck.
It seems to me that for a studio machine upgradability is a key factor and, as far as I can tell, upgradability is not a strongpoint of NUCs.
Your statement may be reasonable, but isn't really true considering how many studios are using Macs, most of which have no upgradability. With the NUCs you can upgrade the memory/NVMe and in the ghost canons you have 2 internal PCIe slots(although fairly space restricted). |
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Post by mulmany on Oct 8, 2020 20:09:24 GMT -6
svart, you are talking about the "Canyon" versions correct? The two high end ones that look like a VHS! Not the little square guys.
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Post by svart on Oct 8, 2020 20:46:43 GMT -6
svart, you are talking about the "Canyon" versions correct? The two high end ones that look like a VHS! Not the little square guys. Really any of them. The canyons just have a strange arrangement with AMD brand GPUs but as far as I know everything else is the same. |
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Post by svart on Oct 9, 2020 9:48:40 GMT -6
Looking at other small form factor computers, the Dell optiplex 7070 looks cool. The cpu is more powerful than most laptops I can find that aren't super expensive, and they're available for relatively cheap.
About 600 for an i7-9700, 16gb ram, 512gb m2 ssd, etc. Passmark scores are decent enough and there's a spot inside to add a second hdd or ssd.
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Post by plinker on Oct 10, 2020 0:27:30 GMT -6
Looking at other small form factor computers, the Dell optiplex 7070 looks cool. The cpu is more powerful than most laptops I can find that aren't super expensive, and they're available for relatively cheap. About 600 for an i7-9700, 16gb ram, 512gb m2 ssd, etc. Passmark scores are decent enough and there's a spot inside to add a second hdd or ssd. That’s a great price. Where are you finding that? |
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Post by svart on Oct 10, 2020 8:41:28 GMT -6
Looking at other small form factor computers, the Dell optiplex 7070 looks cool. The cpu is more powerful than most laptops I can find that aren't super expensive, and they're available for relatively cheap. About 600 for an i7-9700, 16gb ram, 512gb m2 ssd, etc. Passmark scores are decent enough and there's a spot inside to add a second hdd or ssd. That’s a great price. Where are you finding that? Ebay. There's a lot of resellers dumping unused/surplus units. |
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Post by svart on Oct 12, 2020 11:12:11 GMT -6
I'm still on the fence about a small form-factor PC vs laptop, but it seems that the SFF PCs generally have better CPUs for the money than laptops. I've saved a handful of Dell, HP and Lenovo SFF PCs in the 500-700$ range to consider. All of them have I7-8700 or I7-9700 hexacore CPUs and at least 16gb of ram. To get something similar would be around 1100$ for a laptop.
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Post by plinker on Oct 12, 2020 13:06:17 GMT -6
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Post by BenjaminAshlin on Oct 13, 2020 4:12:07 GMT -6
I'm still on the fence about a small form-factor PC vs laptop, but it seems that the SFF PCs generally have better CPUs for the money than laptops. I've saved a handful of Dell, HP and Lenovo SFF PCs in the 500-700$ range to consider. All of them have I7-8700 or I7-9700 hexacore CPUs and at least 16gb of ram. To get something similar would be around 1100$ for a laptop. Make sure you check the DPC latency of any all in one system. Previous Dell xps laptops had pretty bad latency. That is the beauty of a desktop system... you can mix and match to ensure you have low latency |
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Post by svart on Oct 13, 2020 11:06:44 GMT -6
I'm still on the fence about a small form-factor PC vs laptop, but it seems that the SFF PCs generally have better CPUs for the money than laptops. I've saved a handful of Dell, HP and Lenovo SFF PCs in the 500-700$ range to consider. All of them have I7-8700 or I7-9700 hexacore CPUs and at least 16gb of ram. To get something similar would be around 1100$ for a laptop. Make sure you check the DPC latency of any all in one system. Previous Dell xps laptops had pretty bad latency. That is the beauty of a desktop system... you can mix and match to ensure you have low latency Good advice. I read into that and it was mostly the ACPI driver. Turning the CPU down to 99% fixed it for most people. But I have to wonder, how can you mix and match to ensure low latency? Most latency issues are driver or setting related and if they aren't, you're simply stuck spending money trying different boards and parts. |
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Post by Guitar on Oct 13, 2020 11:40:52 GMT -6
I'm very interested in this topic of PC latency. Is there some short way to say or some resource about how to get the best system latency? I've heard a lot of people talk about it but not too much "real" information. That tip about turning the CPU to 99% is a good example, at the moment I don't know how to do that.
I have a few of the utilities to measure this stuff, I just don't know a lot of the techniques to improve the performance.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Oct 13, 2020 15:37:03 GMT -6
I'm very interested in this topic of PC latency. Is there some short way to say or some resource about how to get the best system latency? I've heard a lot of people talk about it but not too much "real" information. That tip about turning the CPU to 99% is a good example, at the moment I don't know how to do that. I have a few of the utilities to measure this stuff, I just don't know a lot of the techniques to improve the performance. You want low latency, go HDX, or find a interface with built in DSP and use it exclusively. |
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Post by Guitar on Oct 13, 2020 15:38:34 GMT -6
I'm very interested in this topic of PC latency. Is there some short way to say or some resource about how to get the best system latency? I've heard a lot of people talk about it but not too much "real" information. That tip about turning the CPU to 99% is a good example, at the moment I don't know how to do that. I have a few of the utilities to measure this stuff, I just don't know a lot of the techniques to improve the performance. You want low latency, go HDX, or find a interface with built in DSP and use it exclusively. I've got an extremely low latency interface (Presonus Quantum), I was more asking about how to optimize the computer itself. |
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--you could easily run it as a secondary machine to run a piano VI or whatever at some point recording audio to a bigger system. In that kind of role, A NUC would require a whole secondary keyboard/mouse...or I guess work off RDP...
