Audio PC's ....which is best?

[sergef50]

Hi guys put this in hosts cos im not sure where it would go...apologies in advance...anyhow..

...soon i get a new loan (more dept...wooppeeee as a musician its my duty to get into loads of dept) to spend on loads of new hardware and so on....on my list is a specific audio "PC" im sticking to pc's instead of macs for now...but if anyone has any advice on the best places to go for the best top notch audio production pc builds i would be eternally greatfull.

Thanks guys.

[Carbonboy]

Dell make nice PCs. They are particularly quiet (how many times do people forget about this aspect of their PC). The 8400 series is what you want.

Get a dual head card + two LDC monitors (17" at least).

However if you want to build your own...then there is no better place to start than with this...

http://www.quietpc.com/nz/tnn500a.html

That way you can build an AMD or Intel system.

Carb.

[Cabinfever]

personally i would never get a dell. the only way to get a good audio pc is to spend massive $ on a pre-built audio machine, or to configure your own - not too hard.

a good motherboard, plenty of ram, and a big power supply are the way to begin.

[Carbonboy]

1)personally i would never get a dell. 2) the only way to get a good audio pc is to spend massive $ on a pre-built audio machine, or to configure your own - not too hard.

3) a good motherboard, plenty of ram, and a big power supply are the way to begin.

1) Why? Explain what's wrong with the model I have suggested.

2) The 'only way'...why do you say that?

3) What specific hardware do you suggest then?

Carb.

[Chickenman]

Debt... the musicians silent companion


I would definately say build your own, there aint no point in wasting money on shit you don't need.

You need an average graphics card: Ati 9000 or equivalent.
At least 2 hdd's
I would go for the asus a7n8x (I did) or similar socket A mobo with an athlon 2800 xp or similar.
A cd writer.

You can buy the above for reasonable prices now and then you can spend money where it's important....

Soundcard, heaps of ram and get as quiet a case as possible.

[Cabinfever]

defensive aren't we ? but i'll be humouring you.

no doubt dell works for some people. *anything* will find admirers somewhere. but generally dell have a bad name in music. but don't believe me, read this for a load of dell horror stories (and a couple of good ones):

http://www.cakewalk.com/forum/tm.asp?m= ... age=1&key=

2) if you want a good daw what other ways are there but to buy something designed (in whole or part) for audio, or to configure one yourself

3) there's plenty of good advice out there on this topic. the above link gives many.

[Amberience]

I wouldn't trust ANY mediocre "consumer" PC setup. Don't bother with Dell, or PC-World, or Curry's, or Tiny, or Dixons etc, ad infinitum....

Build your own, or go with a specialised Audio PC maker like Digital Village (www.digitalvillage.co.uk) or Inta Audio (inta-audio.com)

[fishbowl.tucson.az]

Hi guys put this in hosts cos im not sure where it would go...apologies in advance...anyhow..

I like my Shuttle XPC. But I'm still hoping for a fanless, high spec machine that fits in one or two rack spaces.

Until that happens, I've resigned myself to be happy with the shuttle, which has been great.

I'm thinking about doing this: keep the shuttle, but use VNC with a fanless, diskless mini-itx machine, so that I can put the non-silent machine in another room. Downside, I won't be able to watch video from my music workstation. Upside, it's the only truly silent solution I've been able to think of that even has a chance of working, and it would not be terribly expensive.

I do wish the fanless mini-itx machines were good enough to run soft synths, etc. They actually might be ok for that, but I don't think one will do anywhere near what I want from the workstation in my music room. Perhaps an ITX solution for an on-stage rig might be workable, but I haven't thought much about it.

How about a source for 1- or 2-U rack enclosures? For Mini-ITX or other small form factor (SFF) PC systems? All the rack cases I can find, are way too deep to fit in an SKB case, and none are really focused on being silent.

[ticketofame]

At first, you should really think about getting into debt for something like a PC. The value of this machine is going to be near zero in rather no time. Without some kind of business plan or enough money to pay the PC (or the loan...), you could bring yourself in financial difficulties for nearly nothing in the long run.

Don't get me wrong - I'm really a audio PC enthusiast and I'm always (hopefully;-) improving my own PC.
If you want to get an economical solution, I think an Athlon XP with a decent mainboard is the way to go. If you've got more money to spend, I would recommend to choose an Athlon 64 or Athlon FX with 1 MB cache.

Regards, Philipp

[Carbonboy]

defensive aren't we ? but i'll be humouring you.

no doubt dell works for some people. *anything* will find admirers somewhere. but generally dell have a bad name in music. but don't believe me, read this for a load of dell horror stories (and a couple of good ones):

http://www.cakewalk.com/forum/tm.asp?m= ... age=1&key=

2) if you want a good daw what other ways are there but to buy something designed (in whole or part) for audio, or to configure one yourself

3) there's plenty of good advice out there on this topic. the above link gives many.

Not defensive at all, you just need to justify your claim. A forum with someone complaining about hardware X doen't mean its bad, just look at the Host wars here for example 99% tosh. You can find any number of forums with people complaining about anything. You need to show what's crap about the Dell 8400.

2) My second suggestion was just that.

3) There's also lots of BS out there.

FYI: I use Dells for audio production business, NP. PM me and I'll send you my link.

Carb.

[Cabinfever]

yeah, and sonic foundry (now a sony team) use dells for development work, but only after they strip the guts out of them (don;t know why they bother in the first place).

on the other hand acid is buggy as hell

and with respect i don;t need to justify or prove anything. its my opinion based on experience. take it or leave it.

[egbert]

Dell use non-standard parts.

Don't expect to be able to give a Dell PC an upgrade later by fitting a new Mobo, CPU and RAM. They don't wan't you to do that - they want you to buy a whole new machine. You want a clean install of WinXP with no unnecessary crap AND the OEM OS disks so you can do it again if necessary. You are also better off with a decent mother board and full access to the BIOS etc.

Building a machine out of well chosen parts proven to be suitable for DAW work is the way to go. Dells and the rest are specced to impress gamers and corporate buyers.

Eg

[sergef50]

Hehe hi guys....my current system is home built, athlon 3200 64bit, Abit KV8-MAX3 Mobo with a gig of 400mhz Crucial ram. its a V high spec machine as it is, i have 2 160gig Sata drives, one for Storage one for Live and Projects, also running 2 other drives one 40gig one for the OS, and a 100 gigger for general use.

"At first, you should really think about getting into debt for something like a PC. The value of this machine is going to be near zero in rather no time. Without some kind of business plan or enough money to pay the PC (or the loan...), you could bring yourself in financial difficulties for nearly nothing in the long run. " Well considering i work for barclays as a bank manager in the daytime...its a staff loan at an amazing rate, and im earning a shit heap of money. i though of this ages ago buddie,not sure why you would think i hadnt?

My problem at the mo is self built one is not running no where near what it should be (imho) and i wanna just like a carillion special built system, for the guaranteed performance and for the full support when things go wrong.



thanks for all your posts very enlightening views!!

keep um coming.

[ticketofame]

Well considering i work for barclays as a bank manager in the daytime...its a staff loan at an amazing rate, and im earning a shit heap of money. i though of this ages ago buddie,not sure why you would think i hadnt?

Hey, no offense intended.
You just didn't mention anything like that before and I have read lots of similar postings of people who really didn't know what they were doing financially.

My problem at the mo is self built one is not running no where near what it should be (imho)

What audio card are you using? I switched from M-Audio to RME a year ago and it made quite a difference performancewise.
Besides that, really hefty performance jumps have become rather seldom today. It's more about evolution than revolution.
All these special audio PCs aren't doing any magic either. It would be quite interesting to get some performance numbers of specialized machines like Carillion's to compare to our homemade systems.

[Manc Chris]

I got this system from Inta-Audio, after some good recomendations, including an excellent review in CM recently, where they stuck it top of the performance pile, ahead of all the P4's they had reviewed. I endorse them further, its a 2.2 cpu, but the system is so optimised that it beats most P4 machines on speed, easily. The support is superb, whilst they were building the machine they called me a few times to discuss exactly how I wanted things set up, and we also set up extremely reasonable HP terms on the machine. Take a look ..


http://www.inta-audio.com/script/workst ... &filtval=2