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Post by mulmany on Apr 9, 2014 9:39:55 GMT -6
Just bought a used HP Z800 hex core workstation. Jumping the Apple boat in favor of price, payed about half of what a comparable 2010 Mac Pro would be.
What have I done! LOL! Now I need to read up on all the audio optimizations that need to be done to the bios. I know for certain that auto update will be turned off!
I don't think I will ever buy a new machine again. Payed 3 grand for my maxed out '08 17" macbook pro, it has served me well but that's a lot of money for a laptop. I will relegate it to mobile only now. I am not doing the video production anymore so don't need the mobile form factor. I am getting a 4x boost in power over what the macbook can do, so I should be good. I only max it out on my larger mixes at double rate sessions.
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Post by svart on Apr 9, 2014 9:52:00 GMT -6
On newer machines, turn off all power throttling (C-states, C1E, EIST, "speedstep", etc). Uninstall any programs that came with the computer that "monitor" or "overclock" the processor such as AItweaker, etc. Those are unreliable. Set computer to have zero power saving functions in the control panel.
I also uninstall all programs and windows features that I'm not using or never will. I'll also disable services that will never be used, but be careful doing this.
One of the biggest things that has keep my 11 year old windows machine working without a single crash is do not use it to get online! Never. Not even once. Disable and uninstall the LAN adapter so you can't. Most crashes I've had with my computers or others have had was due to unwanted updates of OS or drivers and/or viruses/malware/scareware/ransomware, etc.
Anything that is going to be installed once it's working, you should download on another machine, scan for viruses and then install from a burned CD or thumb drive. Anything that someone gives you, like audio files, should also be scanned first before being put on the machine.
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Post by adogg4629 on Apr 9, 2014 10:42:37 GMT -6
Check out this link:
It is a great video walk through for tweaking and optimizing the bios as well as Windows 8.1 for audio production. It is some of the same stuff Neil does in his Pro Tools PC.
Best
AD
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2014 13:59:27 GMT -6
Did you consider a Mac Mini? Just curious if you did and why it may have been shot dow as this is my present idea.
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Post by RicFoxx on Apr 9, 2014 16:24:39 GMT -6
Did you consider a Mac Mini? Just curious if you did and why it may have been shot dow as this is my present idea. Not to derail this thread but you Cant go wrong with a I7 Mac Mini quad core set up right. |
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Post by allbuttonmode on Apr 9, 2014 16:33:35 GMT -6
I am very interested in finding out more about Mac Mini as a DAW computer. Will it actually be able to stand up to multitracking and large mixes in 48/24 or 96/24? I really want it to...
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Apr 9, 2014 18:03:21 GMT -6
Workstations don't come with all of the crapware consumer PCs have. You want to disable power saving and disk compression features but windows 7 and 8 require almost no tweaking otherwise. I run totally up to date 8.1 on a Dell workstation and have fewer problems than most of the folks I know running macs. Most people see my taskbar and just assume it's a mac.
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Post by formatcyes on Apr 9, 2014 18:15:37 GMT -6
I run linux, osx, and windows so not a fanboy for any particular os.
First I hate windows 8 seriously windows W.T.F. Windows 7 was there best os really liked it stable and fast.
For my DAW I use a mac mini i7 8g ram (traded up/across from a win 7 machine).
Pro's
The osx software is really simple neat and easy to use.
The mini mac is quiet even when the fan spins up it is still fine in my one room studio.
Stable altho protools 10 is giving me some grief I don't think it is the os because it was good untill the last few updates (protools).
Con's
My old window box had more power (however it was noisy) it ran more plugins and virtual instruments. A five year old machine had more power than the mini mac.
If you want power on a budget windows is going to be number 1 if you want plug and play with less hassles mac mini.
For me I would not go back to my old windows machine really like my mini but it's not perfect.
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Post by popmann on Apr 9, 2014 18:42:30 GMT -6
I am very interested in finding out more about Mac Mini as a DAW computer. Will it actually be able to stand up to multitracking and large mixes in 48/24 or 96/24? I really want it to... The problem with referring to "power" that way....is that it all depends on how you work. Audio production is REALLY mature tech. What system are you on NOW that isn't handling what you throw at it? |
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Post by tonycamphd on Apr 9, 2014 18:43:46 GMT -6
i've got a nehalem mac pro 8 core, with 120 gig SSD boot drive and some 10,000 rpm secondaries, 12 gigs ram, it's insanely stable and a total beast, hits around 17k on geekbench, best part is it cost me about $1,900.00 very lightly used.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2014 20:21:47 GMT -6
I'm running Win8.1 up-to-date(with classic shell...), but we have a Win7 machine as well. Pro version. (Skipped everything between XP and these...)
I can only report Bob Ohlsson is totally right about Windows workstations nowadays.
Modern fast machines run stable for audio. Some friends of mine say they have less problems on Win machines than on Macs - less annoyances - not at least due to the many regular updates, not despite of them... It is really, really rare nowadays a patch from MS breaks any functionality. Can't remeber a single one causing me problems in the last years. No real advantage doing any special "tweaks" and "optimizations". It is not anno 2000 anymore.
There are many misunderstandings about this. Like e.g. disabling unused services would gain any real advantages. If they are doing nothing, they do not use CPU, they mostly use extremely low RAM which you have plenty nowadays, i only disable antivirus and automatic updates when i actually am in recording, but i doubt it would make any problem at all if i wouldn't. 8 cores a 4.1 GHz and SSD can take plenty of audio processing and tracks while doing other stuff in parallel.
I also have experience with apple and linux. Since the 80's, made a living as an IT specialist for more than 10 yrs + related professions...
The Win systems are much better than their reputation based on the old systems from the 90's´to 2000 and the consumer targeted systems...and ranting so-called "specialists", babbling the same stuff since the 80's to the customers to justify their service rates......
Actually, more people create problems by so-called optimizations and disabling stuff because somebody seemingly beeing a "specialist" or "professional" told them, than solving them...
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Post by mulmany on Apr 9, 2014 21:16:51 GMT -6
Did you consider a Mac Mini? Just curious if you did and why it may have been shot dow as this is my present idea. I did consider the Mac Mini. Was going to do the i7 with the processor upgrade. That would put it at a grand, and if I want esata $, PCIe $, anything else $ , since expansion is all done with Thunderbolt. That was really what pushed me over the edge, the limit of expansion. I don't want to spend more money on adding peripherals. The only thing I am giving up is Thunderbolt and I can live without it for now. I looked at building a machine with all the bells and whistles but it still would have been 3 times more then the used Z800 I bought. I have been on a laptop for so long that I really want the ability to expand without limitations. I see the mac mini as a lateral move even if the performance would be great. The bench marks for the 2.3 i7 mac mini are higher at single core processes but lower at multicore tasks. You also need to look at all the factors and there are a lot. Eventually price and scale ability won out. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2014 21:19:06 GMT -6
Sounds like a smart call!
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Post by mulmany on Apr 9, 2014 21:24:38 GMT -6
I am very interested in finding out more about Mac Mini as a DAW computer. Will it actually be able to stand up to multitracking and large mixes in 48/24 or 96/24? I really want it to... I know Post guys that are running a mini/PT Native and can handle what their PT HD3 rigs were doing. Now they say they would not give up the reliability of their towers/PT HD though, but it is workable when they need it. |
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Post by mulmany on Apr 9, 2014 21:25:39 GMT -6
Sounds like a smart call! I hope. It shows up next week. |
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Post by allbuttonmode on Apr 10, 2014 8:08:55 GMT -6
I am very interested in finding out more about Mac Mini as a DAW computer. Will it actually be able to stand up to multitracking and large mixes in 48/24 or 96/24? I really want it to... The problem with referring to "power" that way....is that it all depends on how you work. Audio production is REALLY mature tech. What system are you on NOW that isn't handling what you throw at it? I've got a great setup at the moment, but I am running out of pci-e slots, as I've got 3 quads, 1 octo and 3 Lynx AES cards stuck in there. One of the quads can't fit at the moment. I want to go the thunderbolt route in the future, but I'm not willing to pay for a fullblown Mac pro or use an iMac in the studio. I've read a few places that people use minis as DAW computers, but I've no idea how their workflow is. I thought about buying a magma box, but I the pci-e format looks like it's dying, so thunderbolt seems like the way forward. Also, I wouldn't mind ditching the enormous pc cabinet for the little box that is mac mini. |
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Post by svart on Apr 10, 2014 8:47:03 GMT -6
Not sure how this became a "Lets all stump for mac minis" thread, but personally, I'll never use external USB/thunderbolt boxes. Everything that I think is worth using is connected to computers via PCIe/x cards. I also think that paying 3x the cost for the some hardware running an overrated and expensive unix based OS, is not very smart when you can buy the same hardware running a loathed but cheap unix based OS..
But then again, I also had 3 macs die on me over the years and all my PCs kept right on running except for the viruses I got surfing porn and stuff. My bad though.
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Post by tonycamphd on Apr 10, 2014 9:01:33 GMT -6
I used to build my own pc's, i would only use matched intel chipsets to avoid issues, I would bare bones the OS, used them up till XP, then I got a G5, and now I'm on a Mac pro, I liked the stability of all of them, the OS of the macs have been superior since day 1 though IMO
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Post by svart on Apr 10, 2014 9:10:57 GMT -6
I'm a tinkerer. If I can't mess with the low level systems of an OS, I have no use for it. With apple, you are simply paying for them to keep you from tinkering and for them to force the companies who want to do business with them to pay to have their software and drivers and hardware "approved", which is why people seem to think they are more stable in the end.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Apr 10, 2014 9:26:15 GMT -6
My experience has been that DAWs perform best when run as close as practical to whatever the developers were running for debugging. As applications go, they are extremely complex.
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Post by adogg4629 on Apr 10, 2014 9:26:51 GMT -6
i've got a nehalem mac pro 8 core, with 120 gig SSD boot drive and some 10,000 rpm secondaries, 12 gigs ram, it's insanely stable and a total beast, hits around 17k on geekbench, best part is it cost me about $1,900.00 very lightly used. Those really are the best buys if you can find somebody to d-lid a Xeon CPU for you. You could upgrade the 2009 to the complete Mac Pro 5.1 specs including ram and CPU. I'm beefing mine up to a 12 core myself. Of all the blogs and threads I've read on this matter, this one is the best: pindelski.org/Photography/mac-pro/AD |
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Post by adogg4629 on Apr 10, 2014 9:37:10 GMT -6
My experience has been that DAWs perform best when run as close as practical to whatever the developers were running for debugging. As applications go, they are extremely complex. I agree with Bob on this. While I'd love a PC for myself (and have them), what I use with other engineers and mixers are entirely Macs. Maybe it's because we all have this perception that Bob brought up (that seems 100% logical). Apple has a very narrow spec that you can more easily engineer for, and more and more coders and engineers work on macs now. I could be wrong-hope I am. |
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Post by svart on Apr 10, 2014 9:41:31 GMT -6
Interesting Xeon replacement thing.. But all benchmarks were done with a benchmarking program.. It's well known that most plugs are single threaded and most editing applications don't fully utilize multithreading across multiple cores, so your actual increase in speed comes mainly from CPU frequency increases in DAWs and DVWs.
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Post by tonycamphd on Apr 10, 2014 10:10:41 GMT -6
Interesting Xeon replacement thing.. But all benchmarks were done with a benchmarking program.. It's well known that most plugs are single threaded and most editing applications don't fully utilize multithreading across multiple cores, so your actual increase in speed comes mainly from CPU frequency increases in DAWs and DVWs. PT 11 is supposedly capable of utilizing all CPU threads, and ram? I'm hybrid, so i'll prob never touch it, but nice to know it's there. |
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Post by tonycamphd on Apr 10, 2014 10:16:27 GMT -6
i've got a nehalem mac pro 8 core, with 120 gig SSD boot drive and some 10,000 rpm secondaries, 12 gigs ram, it's insanely stable and a total beast, hits around 17k on geekbench, best part is it cost me about $1,900.00 very lightly used. Those really are the best buys if you can find somebody to d-lid a Xeon CPU for you. You could upgrade the 2009 to the complete Mac Pro 5.1 specs including ram and CPU. I'm beefing mine up to a 12 core myself. Of all the blogs and threads I've read on this matter, this one is the best: pindelski.org/Photography/mac-pro/AD spectacular find adogg! I have the 8 core 2.66 xeon, bought it a couple years ago, i researched the heck out of it before hand, crossing fingers looking for "4,1" ha! I had to drive to Anaheim (from nrth San Diego) to get it, love the idea that i can pump it up on the steriods lol. I have been using final cut proX, and i'm thinking about the Orion32, which has problems on prior macs, so i feel it paid off, and i'm always sure i could benefit from...best Stimpy voice..."more power capan" 8)  |
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