Please help me to help musician son with his rig

[rjalex]

Dear friends,
I know something about computers but very little about music

I hope you'll have enough patience to read through this long post.

My son is studying to become a pro bass player and knows quite a lot about music but not as much about computers and music software.

A few days back he hinted that he might be able to make some little money by creating "beats" (whatever those are) for his singer friends at the music school.

I tried to understand what he meant and I think I have understood he might be good using Ableton as his "loops" oriented DAW and maybe Cubase to record his live playing ? Please correct me if I'm totally misunderstanding.

So he needs a computer since he only has an old and ailing PC Win laptop.

Since a new Mac here in my country with specs I think are good for his requirements are very expensive (2500+ Euros) I have two choices:

a) Pass him my beloved 27" late 2009 iMac (i7 2,8GHz and 1TB HDD)
b) Build him a Win PC. The budget for the configs I've come up with are between 1800-2000 Euros (monitor included)

Given this situation would you have a recommendation on the best course ?

Thanks a lot.

[RichieWitch]

Ableton Live is a full-featured DAW and a perfectly good option for recording as well. So you can save some money by passing on Cubase.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Dear friends,
I know something about computers but very little about music

I hope you'll have enough patience to read through this long post.

My son is studying to become a pro bass player and knows quite a lot about music but not as much about computers and music software.

A few days back he hinted that he might be able to make some little money by creating "beats" (whatever those are) for his singer friends at the music school.

I tried to understand what he meant and I think I have understood he might be good using Ableton as his "loops" oriented DAW and maybe Cubase to record his live playing ? Please correct me if I'm totally misunderstanding.

So he needs a computer since he only has an old and ailing PC Win laptop.

Since a new Mac here in my country with specs I think are good for his requirements are very expensive (2500+ Euros) I have two choices:

a) Pass him my beloved 27" late 2009 iMac (i7 2,8GHz and 1TB HDD)
b) Build him a Win PC. The budget for the configs I've come up with are between 1800-2000 Euros (monitor included)

Given this situation would you have a recommendation on the best course ?

Thanks a lot.

actually, i think you could get a mac that's more than enough for the job for the same as you are budgeting for a pc-build, and could get away with spending far less if you insist on building a pc

either will get him where he wants to go, especially as ableton is cross-platform. your imac would also work well. in this case, i'd suggest asking your son whether he wants to use a mac or pc as this will make a world of difference for the things he will do when he isn't making music e.g gaming is still better supported in the windows environment

with regard to building pc's, you would likely need to research this from a music/daw perspective, as various parts work better than others when dealing with audio workstations. there are also companies that build bespoke audio workstations, so that's another option

i'd agree with the poster above that cubase would be unnecessary in this situation as ableton can also function in a traditional, linear manner. even if you wanted to record, mix etc in another daw (mixing is not ableton's strongest ability), then you'd save a ton of money (cubase is one of the more expensive daw's), if you settled on cockos reaper 5

also, unless you're doing this as some kind of surprise, then perhaps get your son to join up; it would be much easier to offer advice if we could get an idea of the kind of projects he had in mind

[DJ Warmonger]

Build him a Win PC. The budget for the configs I've come up with are between 1800-2000 Euros (monitor included)

Donate half of that for charity.

Any modern PC can handle music easily. A significant cost are DAW and plugins. The best way to save money is to run Windows, there are tons of free plugins for it.

If you want just to compose with use of recordings and samples, Ableton is suited for that reason. It is also good choice if your son doesn't want to dig deep into synthesis. It's focused, as the name suggests, on live performance and sample manipulation. Doesn't need technical knowledge to make music.

[rjalex]

Thank you all so much for your kind advice.
As it's a surprise I'll have to decide and hope for the best.
He's been playing/fiddling with Windows computers for all of his life and so maybe that's the reason I'm inclined to keep him there out of some familiarity.
I'm giving him this gift along with my RME Babyface and Roland MIDI keyboard, which I stopped using a while ago out of lack of time and skills, as the basis for his little "home studio" (he has mics and his bass guitars on top).

Although I think I understand what you wrote about Ableton (which is the DAW I tried to use and know a little about) I was thinking about Cubase since that's the DAW they use at his music school and so all the courses and live expert advice would mainly be on that.

I don't know anything about Cockos and will read about it.

I am sorry my bad English is probably not making me fully clear but his main use would be building "bases" for him or his fellow musicians plus record his bass guitar on top of that via the RME babyface.

Thanks again

[Karma_tba]

If his laptop can run Ableton Live he has all he needs for now. Making "beats" is an over crowded market (beside there's a multitude of free beats available on the internet). His friends have access if to tons of beats if they have the internet and a search engine. If he is already pursuing playing bass why waste money on what might be a trendy whim, besides he should be able to download free instrument racks for Live, I see lots of them online everyday. Kids sometimes know more than they let on ( I am a parent of four)and will take advantage of your lack of knowledge.

[rjalex]

I do think the market is crowded but just like my own area of expertise, photography, the crowding might be in the low quality / low originality space. I did "challenge" him on this and he believes his performing musician skill and his music theory skill (he's been studying and giving exams of these areas for 4 years now) can result in better quality products plus his environment at the music school is actually requesting these products for him.

From what I understand he might also use this rig to play drums or other musical tracks and record his bass lines over it, some sort of "homegrown pre-production" to show his ideas to others.

His laptop is barely alive for web browsing It's me wanting to give him this PC as a gift so I don't feel exploited at all

Thank you

PS Father of three here (but the girl counts double points !! ).

[Karma_tba]

I do think the market is crowded but just like my own area of expertise, photography, the crowding might be in the low quality / low originality space. I did "challenge" him on this and he believes his performing musician skill and his music theory skill (he's been studying and giving exams of these areas for 4 years now) can result in better quality products plus his environment at the music school is actually requesting these products for him.

From what I understand he might also use this rig to play drums or other musical tracks and record his bass lines over it, some sort of "homegrown pre-production" to show his ideas to others.

His laptop is barely alive for web browsing It's me wanting to give him this PC as a gift so I don't feel exploited at all

Thank you

PS Father of three here (but the girl counts double points !! ).

I'll grant the extra points as my four= one + triplets! The triplets are two boys and a girl. They are grown now (oldest boy is 22 and the triplets are 20) Good Luck with whatever choice you make, supporting your kid's interests are paramount. You are a good Dad.

[rjalex]

Triplets ? I stand awed My older boy (the musician) is also 22 (Feb 1993). When the girl was born I bragged having transitioned from being an amateur to a pro dad The jump from 1 to 4 is beyond my imagination I'm sure you could tell us incredible stories.

Thanks for the kind words. Love the kid very much and will do whatever I feel is supporting his dream (as long I'm able to and think it's not a total whim).

[rod_zero]

Don't know where are you located but from US prices:

- Intel Core i7-6700K 8M Skylake Quad-Core 4.0 GHz $369
- MSI Z170A GAMING M5 LGA 1151 Intel Z170 : from 189 USD
- CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 : 134 USD
- ADATA Premier Pro SP900 ASP900NS38-256GM-C M.2 256GB SATA 6Gb/sec MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) 109 USD
- Nvidia 730 gt (Passive cooling for avoiding noise): 54 USD

So far: 809 USD, you just need the case, PSU, monitor and another hard drive, 300 USD tops.

So yeah 1000.1200 euros should be able to buy a quite good computer.

[rjalex]

Hi Rod,
Thank you very much for chiming in. I am based in Italy.

I have listed the following components:

€320,13 motherboard (Asus z170 deluxe for the rich connectivity)
€311,69 i5 skylake
€299,69 case (FD R5) e power (fanless 550W)
€213,81 RAM corsair (DDR4 2x8GB)
€189,67 Corsair AIO H110i GTX (AIO)
€144,69 hdd 2tb (WD Black 2TB)
€138,49 ssd PRO 256 (Samsung Pro 256GB)

which land in the 1600 euros range plus bits and pieces

plus a huge great monitor that will double as his HomeTeather screen (an HP Envy 32") which adds some 450 Euros

[rod_zero]

I think you are expending way too much on motherboard, RAM(seriaouly there isn't a significant difference between cheap and expensive ones), and video card, I don't see the need for such expensive components.

I don't know if I would go for a fanless PSU, seems way to risky.

[rjalex]

I see your point (save for the video card, I did not configure any ) Going to use the integrated mobo graphics and see how it goes.

I have good experiences with that PSU so far, so let's hope they will be confirmed

Thank you !

[rod_zero]

Also I would consider investing savings from RAM and MOBO maybe in to a i7 5820, gives you two more cores.

Also I see I thought that GTX thing was a GPU but now I see it is a liquid cooling solution, IMHO liquid cooling for a audio is a no go, it's way more noisy. I would go for a Noctua CPU cooler which have good reputation for being silent and if you want you (well why would you get a nice cooler if it isn't for..) to overclock. And you save some bucks there too.

[rjalex]

Thanks for the very good advice.