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Post by lolo on Aug 2, 2015 6:29:36 GMT -6
Any one care to share some tips on a new Studio PC. Mine is 6 years old and struggling. Have to constantly bounce/prints in sessions and it kills the creative process and mixing process. and pisses me off!!! And that is if I have a session with a couple of plugins on every track. Get quite alot of crashes. Please feel free to share a decent PC build for a singer/ songwriter project studio? I record vocals, guitars, bass all live, also use quite a bit of VST instruments. Have a hybrid setup but also use quite a bit of plugins. RME UFX interface. Run Cubase 7.5. Budget is roughly $1000. Other option is to buy a good second hand gaming pc and upgrade if necessary. Are gaming PC's generally good for recording/mixing? Sorry if it is a stupid question. I'm no computer pro  |
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Post by tonycamphd on Aug 2, 2015 8:45:42 GMT -6
Nahalem Mac Pro, 2009 or later, up to 12 cores, STILL as good as they get, and u can install 5,1 firmware. I've run 96k sessions up to 30 tracks with linear phase eq's (amongst others)on every single channel, still haven't touched 70% system usage.
Mine is a dual quad core, super stable, badass. Couldn't be happier.
good luck with whatever u decide lolo
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Aug 2, 2015 11:23:12 GMT -6
My 2011 MBP I7 is pretty damn impressive so far, it benchmarks a about the same as most of the quad cor MacPros!
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Post by bradd on Aug 2, 2015 12:16:01 GMT -6
Yes, but running Cubase, I would probably stick with a PC. I had very good luck with my ADK built PC prior to switching to Logic. I would highly recommend contacting Scott or Chris at ADK. They can set you up.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2015 12:31:47 GMT -6
My PC is around 2 yrs. old and i built it myself from quality components.
Funny that you ask, i based the innards on a gaming PC configuration with slight changes.
A largly overdosed silent PSU (800W bequiet), GTX660 GPU, i7@ 3.6GHz, 16GB ram with option to extend to 32, a very silent CPU cooler, 24-7 WD drive (red?)for data, Samsung SSD 256GB for system. High quality case.
I can hardly hear anything from it, it is supersilent. Even if i open the case it is supersilent. I can sleep with my head residing in 1m distance, and i'm extremely sensible for noise...
It is fast, silent and i have no complaints since.
Components were at a higher budget, i paid 1,200 Euros, but that was 2 yrs ago.
Built with patience and care to details on an afternoon.
The studio machine was custom built by a company. Better mainboard, even higher quality components and case, 1000W PSU, it costed a horrid 2300 Euros. Workflow and performance are roughly the same. We just wanted all the bells and whistles and more failure safety.
This said, we wouldn't have a custom build from a company again. Our own builds are higher quality and more attention to details. We had to rework the built and asked for a price reduction (and got it) after we saw the insufficient quality...
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Post by Ward on Aug 2, 2015 13:48:56 GMT -6
Just like Tony said!! A 2009 Nehalem is still an awesome machine, and for us a few bucks more you can get the very last Westmere with 12 dual cores, like I have... and it just FLIES like at super-sonic speed.
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Post by Guitar on Aug 2, 2015 14:50:10 GMT -6
I'm going to build a "hackintosh" pretty soon. I will probably also have it be dual boot for Windows.
It's good fun to build a computer. I can recommend the Noctua fans and CPU coolers to keep your sysetm cold and quiet.
I also like the Corsair HX power supplies with modular cabling. CPU you probably want to go i7. Gigabyte motherboards have been treating me right.
My 5-6 year old PC is kind of jogging along due to Windows upgrades, adding extra hard drives, updating Cubase to 8 Pro, using UAD and Apollo. She's not the fastest mare in the stable but mumble mumble gets me where I need to go in style. I do feel like I'm almost itching for a brand new machine with big power and I've already started gathering parts. Then the old hag will be transformed into a mobile recording rig. I can't wait to have two computers.
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Post by popmann on Aug 2, 2015 22:32:54 GMT -6
Must be the VSTis and new reverb plugs.....my elderly Core2Quad never sees the 100% useage at 88.2 or 96khz. But, then--I'm doing all audio....and have external reverb/delay.
I've said this before....it should be repeated here....If you will dedicate a box to audio....and if you have to use VSTis (like more than one at a time at least)--just build a second box. I plug the Macbook up to the Kronos for most any MIDI stuff--the PC records and mixes audio. Part of the issue you're seeing is because VSTis are 99% recorded at 44.1. Running them at 96khz requires a LOT of real time resampling. I can FLOOR my old box with VSTis. That box of yours is likely fine for high rez audio. run the other (VSTi) box at 44.1 and plug it into analog IO to record it into the audio box.
I know....musicians like having their VSTis inside their host...making music in the DAW rather than using it to record their music. so YMMV.
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Post by jfoc on Aug 3, 2015 8:45:15 GMT -6
I built myself a computer 4 years ago by myself, never having any experience before using this guide. www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-your-own-pc,2601.html It was much easier than building a preamp. No soldering, everything just plugs in. Like Legos for grown ups. Make sure the motherboard & processor are compatible. Make sure the PS can support everything Also dont buy more RAM than your OS can use msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28VS.85%29.aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_7I ordered everything from mouser(newegg). Basically you need case power supply motherboard processor RAM Hard drive (graphics card maybe, newer processors have an integrated one) I also reccomend putting the OS on a solid state drive, makes booting up a snap |
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Post by Guitar on Aug 3, 2015 9:04:37 GMT -6
I didn't know mouser sold computer parts... I get all my stuff from Newegg
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Post by Deleted on Aug 3, 2015 10:21:53 GMT -6
It is pretty true about VSTIs sucking up most of the performance of a modern computer. I use alot of computation intensive VSTis and manage to get our machines having quite some workload on the CPU cores. Pure audio projects barely show any load on modern CPUs at all.
Exception maybe some computationally extreme VST effects like Nebula + Co....
It's correct that many VSTi's may be light on CPU at 44.1 and start to use up more and more computational power at higher/double speed rates.
This is mostly a result of the internal oversampling that *many* of them use. Especially the more quality hybrid synths with sampler engines and all bells and whistles.
Most of them don't have options to turn oversampling off except for bouncing/downmix.
Often used is AFAIK 2x or 4x oversampling. Soometimes even 8x oversampling is used.
You easily can see why this can bring older machines into trouble and forces synth freezing/bouncing in many cases.
Modern CPU and DAWs that make proper use of multicore CPUs can take quite some pound of synths before they come down to the knees. For live playing you can oftenly get "acceptable" latencies as well, depending on driver and OS performance tweaks.
No problem for me, as i am used to have live acoustic monitoring latency from stage experience, but newer generations of musicians "might" have more trouble with it.
If this is a problem, a solution i would use is using a midi synth with hardware synthesis and pick a somehow "prototype sound" from it for monitoring while midi recording and tweak the midi track to fit the software synth later.
Not that much of a real problem for me, but when it comes to midi drum tracking, this may be an issue....
All in all, modern CPUs have great performance for low prices. You can get alot of performance on a budget...
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Post by jfoc on Aug 3, 2015 11:08:45 GMT -6
I didn't know mouser sold computer parts... I get all my stuff from Newegg mental fart...I meant newegg |
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Aug 3, 2015 14:50:52 GMT -6
I can offer a few tips I've picked up recently in my quest for a new machine.
1. the sweet spot for CPU power is 6 cores. More than that adds overhead and heat with little or no performance increase for a DAW.
2. You want a Haswell 3rd generation CPU because of DDR-4 support and more floating point calculations per clock cycle.
3. You want an SSD system disk and a 6 terabyte audio drive. Larger or smaller spinning disks increase the amount of data on each platter which reduces speed and/or reliability. My understanding is this optimal size will not go away due to physics.
4. You want USB C and possibly Thunderbolt 3 on the motherboard. Both use the same connecter. This isn't available quite yet.
5. Native support for PCI and PCI-E cards without bridging chips is gone. The future of audio interfaces is USB-C, Thunderbolt and high speed Ethernet.
6. You need a dedicated graphics card. For audio, you want the least powerful one that will do the job because they all eat CPU power as they become more powerful.
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Post by svart on Aug 3, 2015 15:07:24 GMT -6
One more thing to add..
Most folks spend their money on CPU/HDD/RAM, etc and buy the cheapest powersupply with whatever money they have left. DON'T do that..
A large amount of BSOD/KernelPanic situations happen from cheap powersupplies in superfast new computers.
Make sure you dedicate a good portion of your money for a good supply that's also somewhat overpowered for the computer. Don't overpower it too much though, as supplies that are lightly loaded can also have regulation issues. I'd shoot for 30% overrated at max draw.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Aug 3, 2015 19:05:10 GMT -6
I've been told 750 to 1000 watts.
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Post by guitfiddler on Aug 4, 2015 7:19:02 GMT -6
I have built a few hundred machines over the years, and I have never had a problem with Corsair HX, or Enermax PSU's.
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Post by lolo on Aug 4, 2015 8:04:34 GMT -6
Thanks Guys, some great info here.
Looking at some different options (build or buy) Saw a almost new gaming pc last night for sale. With some highend specs. Might look into that. Will post the specs here when I get a chance.
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