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-- Help me build an audio workstation
Help me build an audio workstation
I posted this in chillout, but i would appreciate people who actually KNOW about what an audio workstation computer should have seeing the thread and providing comments as well.
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...threadid=134597
Please let me know your thoughts, especially on the soundcard.
Difficult to say without more info.
Will you work a lot with audio (I'm counting hardware synths and samplers here also), or with Vsti's? Will it be the central unit (as in all the instruments are routed directly through it) or will you use an external mixer for easy patching?
For your processor, Intel or Amd, it's about equal. The newest P4's have hyperthreading, but most sequencers/audio progs still have some quirks with it. Be aware AMD's run hotter, and cooling has to be watched more closely. If you want to keep it quiet, look for a good case (Chieftec are great for noise dampening), get a decent heatsink with a quiet fan (Thermalright SLK800/900/947U with a quiet fan is one of the best combo's, Papst are best performance/noise fans).
For audio editing, lot's of ram won't really make that much difference, but it will if you use softsamplers (they eat up ram). Try to get as much as you can afford basically. Prefer single ram chips, and try to get RAM that is certified CAS2 at least.
The chipset, dunno, KT600 is pretty new and new KT revisions tend to have bugs most of the time.
CD/DVD : if you're serious about audio, Plextor is still the way to go (did you know they design their drives together with a mastering engineer to make sure it has the best possible quality for audio work?).
Motherboards : Soltek are pretty good, but like Epox, they are mainly made for people who like to overclock. If you want performance and stability, Asus and Abit are still the reference.
Video card : if you're not an hardcore gamer, a "normal" Geforce or Radeon will do, FX5200 is more than enough. If you wanna do video editing, a VIVO (video in video out) card could be useful though.
Now the soundcard... If you're serious with audio, forget the audigy right away. But here it depends what you really wanna do.
If you just want to do some stereo work (audio editing, softsynths etc), look at the M-audio Audiophile 24/96 or the Terratec DMX6fire 24/96.
But if you want to use the workstation as a real central unit (with synths connected to it and all) you might need more i/o's. On PC based systems, you can't get much better than RME. The Multiface is a good start, but it's expensive. The higher M-audio Delta ranges are worth considering too.
Having a killer system isn't all, it must be configured properly too. Get back to me if you want more info on that.
sounds good
Oh yeah, forgot, the harddrive is also important. If you can afford it, get a separate physical drive for your audio files.
What matters most is seek time but even more : sustained transfer rate. Best of the best is still a SCSI setup, but it's so expensive it's almost solely for pro setups. SATA (Serial Ata) is fastest when it comes to IDE HD's, but be aware there are much reported problems with XP not detecting such drives.
Stick with the known brands, Seagate Barracuda's are great, Maxtors are great too (but be sure to get them with fluid bearings), and Western Digital are nice too. Try to get with 8MB cache if you can.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Dj Thy Oh yeah, forgot, the harddrive is also important. If you can afford it, get a separate physical drive for your audio files. What matters most is seek time but even more : sustained transfer rate. Best of the best is still a SCSI setup, but it's so expensive it's almost solely for pro setups. SATA (Serial Ata) is fastest when it comes to IDE HD's, but be aware there are much reported problems with XP not detecting such drives. Stick with the known brands, Seagate Barracuda's are great, Maxtors are great too (but be sure to get them with fluid bearings), and Western Digital are nice too. Try to get with 8MB cache if you can. |
Yes, and no. Seek time reduction is useful, but not as important as sustained transfer rate, as that dictates the track count. And usually, consumer RAID systems (mostly controllers that are integrated on the motherboard) don't make huge difference there. An harddisk with high sustained rate (look at those badass 15k RPM scsi disks) is still faster for audio than a RAID array
But on the redundancy of data, agreed, can't be safe enough.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by djway RAID is also very important/nice when it comes to production. RAID 1, will allow lower seektimes (IE faster access), and will be fully redundant, so if one drive dies, the other will still have all the data. RAID and production go hand in hand! --djway |
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