I am considering purchasing a new machine dedicated to solely music production. I would prefer a PC machine because of the ability to buy better hardware for the same outlay as a mac.


I like to make music by looping a section and adding/auditioning some ideas live as the loop is playing. When I say loop a section I don't mean looping solely wav samples I mean I have 15-20 channels of percs, bass, midbass, sweeps, drums etc looping all with FX on each channel (sidechains, compression, waves Rbass plugin etc, VST FX including on master channel taking up CPU).......


THEN I start jamming with the midi keyboard controlling Sylenth adding some notes live as the sounds come to my head. Sorta like im playing along with a band and im riffing. Then when I find something I like I will record the notes and now keep looping with the new midi part from sylenth (full of FX, EQ) and start adding pads and thats where my method is flawed as my CPU freaks the fuck out and the machine just dies. Always when I get to the pads stage (I guess they are CPU intensive).


That is how I like to do it and it is what I enjoy. Doing it any other way just doesn't allow me to hear/imagine the sounds that should be there if that makes sense to anyone. I kinda get int a rhythm and can just hear sounds that are not there yet.


My current hardware / ASIO / External soundcard etc (and it is pretty old to be fair) is limiting this and I then find I spend less time being creative and having fun. So much so I haven't actually touched music in well over a year!


So with that being said I have decided this year to attempt to build a PC that can cope with this style of workflow. I am more than happy to go external soundcard if it can take a load off the machine along with any other tips or suggestions to eek performance out of this thing (overclocking, raid, SSD). Also was using ableton so not sure if things have advanced there and there is some tips to get more performance based on some tweaks.

Based on my limited knowledge:

1. Quad core overclocked CPU
   
2. 16Gb Ram
   
3. win 7 64 bit
   
4. Three SSDs (as fast as possible) in a raid formation (don't care about reliability i want speed so I think thats raid0?)
   
5. USB 3.0 (for external soundcard)
   
6. Externla soundcard (no idea whats the best out there right now but anything that can take heat off the machine i guess is the winner here and can have a midi keyboard plugged in).
   
7. 2 possibly three monitors (so graphics card not sure if onboard can handle three screens?)
   
8. Tweak the absolute bejesus out of the OS to have literally the bare bones running in the background (i mean right down to removing animations for menus and everything)
   
9. Cooling no doubt needed
   
10. PSU
    

Last edited by the-sixth on Jan-22-2014 at 01:51

Sounds like a bit of overkill to me.

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quote:

Originally posted by the-sixth I like to make music by looping a section and adding/auditioning some ideas live as the loop is playing.

quote:

Originally posted by wayfinder Sounds like a bit of overkill to me.

Yeah, for that type of use, those specs seem like WAY overkill. I can't see a need for overclocking, cooling, 16GB RAM, etc. Storage and backup is something that you should always prioritize IMO, but for general loop-based creation, you're better off investing some of that into your soundcard and monitoring setup.

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Buy a MacBook Pro. It will do everything you want and have higher resale value.

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quote:

Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox I've never had a problem with FLs tech support till this day. (I've actually never used it till this day)

quote:

Originally posted by floyd741 i think echosystm is a pretty cool guy. eh pwns robby rox and doesn't afraid of anything.

Sorry guys to clarify when I said

quote:

Originally posted by the-sixth I like to make music by looping a section and adding/auditioning some ideas live as the loop is playing.

I think everyone assumes I mean I play loads of wav samples and just add more channels of wav files. That is not what I mean.

When I say loop a section I mean I have 15-20 channels of percs, bass, midbass, sweeps, drums etc looping all with FX on each channel (sidechains, compression, waves Rbass plugin etc, VST FX including on master channel taking up CPU).......

THEN I start jamming with the midi keyboard controlling Sylenth adding some notes live as the sounds come to my head. Sorta like im playing along with a band and im riffing.

Then when I find something I like I will record the notes and now keep looping with the new midi part from sylenth (full of FX, EQ) and start adding pads and thats where my method is flawed as my CPU freaks the fuck out and the machine just dies. Always when I get to the pads stage (I guess they are CPU intensive).

quote:

Originally posted by echosystm Buy a MacBook Pro. It will do everything you want and have higher resale value.

Already have one and doing the above it cannot cope thus the project hehe (8gb Ram, 2.5ghz intel i5)

quote:

Originally posted by the-sixth When I say loop a section I mean I have 15-20 channels of percs, bass, midbass, sweeps, drums etc looping all with FX on each channel (sidechains, compression, waves Rbass plugin etc, VST FX including on master channel taking up CPU)....... THEN I start jamming with the midi keyboard controlling Sylenth adding some notes live as the sounds come to my head. Sorta like im playing along with a band and im riffing. Then when I find something I like I will record the notes and now keep looping with the new midi part from sylenth (full of FX, EQ) and start adding pads and thats where my method is flawed as my CPU freaks the fuck out and the machine just dies. Always when I get to the pads stage (I guess they are CPU intensive).

That's pretty much what I figured you meant. I do the same thing with my MacBook Air, my i5 Dell laptop, and my desktop (Q6600, 8 GB RAM). They all handle it easily if I'm using something like Sylenth alongside other similar synths (CPU hogs like Diva, not so much). My typical project has several dozen tracks and I can still lay down parts in real- time, which is how I usually work. I wonder if maybe you've got a bad plugin, maybe a problem with your setup (bad RAM stick perhaps?), and/or just need some better optimization.

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forget the over clocking.

RAID 0 SSD will do nothing unless you are streaming huge sample libraries and don't want to use your ram.

most interfaces that are 16 I/O are USB 2 including guys like rme. 3 adds nothing except a little overhead. There is enough bandwidth and speed. Your performance will either slightly go down or stay the same. So make sure you have USB 2.

Rule of thumb.

What you and most people think makes a killer computer is generally for games. Most guys that do specs do them for games. All those nerds that say what is great again, all for games.

Most video cards will handle 3 monitors at 1080p .

The power supply is generally were most people cheap out which is the most important thing in my opinion. NO point having a nice computer if you have a shitty psu. You should make it a priority to get something that isn't shit.

WIndows 7 doesn't really need to be tweaked.

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your cpu is going crazy because you are running all the audio on it. get a proper soundcard to do that for you. overclocking etc is waste of time really. with a soundcard taking off the load youll have more than enough cpu power to do whatever..
and i will always go for internal soundcard vs external, at least until the cables hooking it up runs on fiber. thunderbolt maaaybe, but it's still cant beat the zero-latency you can it when connecting the interface directly to the motherboard with fat-ass pci-e pins.
cooling is something u should put money into tho. watercooling is sweet and quiet, but fans are cheap. so yeah. maintaining optimal air flow in a cabinet can also be challenging when having loads of wires going around. at least the cables have shrunk dramatically in size compared to what was standard 5 yrs ago.

other than that, what L4C is pretty spot-on.
get the best psu u can find. u dont want it to conk out on you.
1000 watts easily. I run a 650 or 750 one, and that's barely enough to run my rig if I overclock my GPU (double-fanned bastard).

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quote:

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quote:

Originally posted by the-sixth Sorry guys to clarify when I said I think everyone assumes I mean I play loads of wav samples and just add more channels of wav files. That is not what I mean. When I say loop a section I mean I have 15-20 channels of percs, bass, midbass, sweeps, drums etc looping all with FX on each channel (sidechains, compression, waves Rbass plugin etc, VST FX including on master channel taking up CPU)....... THEN I start jamming with the midi keyboard controlling Sylenth adding some notes live as the sounds come to my head. Sorta like im playing along with a band and im riffing. Then when I find something I like I will record the notes and now keep looping with the new midi part from sylenth (full of FX, EQ) and start adding pads and thats where my method is flawed as my CPU freaks the fuck out and the machine just dies. Always when I get to the pads stage (I guess they are CPU intensive). Already have one and doing the above it cannot cope thus the project hehe (8gb Ram, 2.5ghz intel i5)

as ever with these threads......whats your current soundcard???????????

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quote:

Originally posted by the-sixth Sorry guys to clarify when I said I think everyone assumes I mean I play loads of wav samples and just add more channels of wav files. That is not what I mean. When I say loop a section I mean I have 15-20 channels of percs, bass, midbass, sweeps, drums etc looping all with FX on each channel (sidechains, compression, waves Rbass plugin etc, VST FX including on master channel taking up CPU)....... THEN I start jamming with the midi keyboard controlling Sylenth adding some notes live as the sounds come to my head. Sorta like im playing along with a band and im riffing. Then when I find something I like I will record the notes and now keep looping with the new midi part from sylenth (full of FX, EQ) and start adding pads and thats where my method is flawed as my CPU freaks the fuck out and the machine just dies. Always when I get to the pads stage (I guess they are CPU intensive). Already have one and doing the above it cannot cope thus the project hehe (8gb Ram, 2.5ghz intel i5)

The i5 in that MBP is only a dual core and doesn't work too well with audio. I just sold a Mac Mini with exactly that spec for that reason.

My i5 desktop can handle well over 100 channels of what you're describing though.

You don't need 3 SSD's either.

Just get an i5/i7, 8GB RAM, a 256GB SSD for OS and installs and a couple of gigs of 7200rpm storage and you'll have power to spare.

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..and another +1 on L4C's PSU recommendation. Don't skimp there - make sure it's got enough wattage to run all the components in your computer (mobo, graphics card, RAM, HDs/SSDs, etc.) and with plenty extra to spare. Look around - there are some online PSU calculators (I know that newegg.com has one).

quote:

Originally posted by tehlord Just get an i5/i7, 8GB RAM, a 256GB SSD for OS and installs and a couple of gigs of 7200rpm storage and you'll have power to spare.

Yup, and spend the rest on a good sound card.

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