Advice on Building a Computer for Recording/Production?

P

Pacman454

New member
Hi Guys,

I'm hoping some of you who have been there and done it before will have some words of wisdom. I don't expect anybody to do all the work for me but if you have any advice or components or specs etc I'm all ears.

My current setup:

Audio Interface: Pod x3 and Yamaha MG 166 usb (Use the Yamaha live, havent got it working for recording yet)

DAW: Cubase 5 and FL Studio ...

Midi devices: Roland eDrum Kit and Akai Mpk 25 midi Keyboard/controller (I'm currently daisy chaining the roland through the midi keyboard)


I Am going to go for best specs possible(within budget): roughly: i7 or AMD equivalent, 2 harddrives, 16 gb ram. graphics card for 2 monitors.

So here are the questions you guys might be able to help with:

Should I include a firewire port? ... (seen a few devices with firewire, is

Should I include an audio interface in the computer aswell as having the external devices? ( the reason I am considering this is if it had a midi in, it would eliminate need for daisy chaining the edrum through the midi keyboard. There is a latency issue at the minute but this could be from the laptop I am using now.

I realise this post is getting quite long now so I am just going to leave it at that. Feel free to recommend specific brands models or advise on computer, as you can prob see I'm far from an expert.

Thanks in Advance:
 
Firewire is better than USB - firewire does stuff in hardware that usb relies on software/cpu for, so usb always uses more cpu.. A 2nd hd is nice for the space, but speed-wise, any modern hd will suffice - I've tracked 16 tracks on a crappy laptop with a 5400rpm ide drive. An i7 is more than enough horsepower for a typical home-recordist. My main daw is an AMD x2 and I dont notice in cpu utilization ever, even with a ton of tracks. Plugins use cpu, a few dozen tracks with 6 plugins each might start bogging you down. For me, dual monitors is a must, (more would be great too!). Even with a small project, main project window, mixer, plugins, etc fill up 2 1080p screens really fast. I haven't seen a laptop without a vga/hdmi output on it for a long while now. A lot of memory is nice, tracks load and work from memory then, hugely reducing i/o. Tracking can buffer practically infinitely, if your pc wants to run a virus scan or something in the middle of a session you'll have a much better chance of making it thru unaffected!
 
Before you go and do all of this, you might just try an interface and see if the laptop will do the trick. I didn't really say how many channels you plan to record. If you are a one man band and don't play drums (using MIDI), two channels works rather well, maybe four. But there is little reason to get more unless you start recording drums and a whole band at once. So, go and get a good interface first, try it for 30 days (most places have a pretty good return policy and see if it does the trick.

Your specs seems pretty good. I am not going to go into the Firewire/USB debate. As far as I understand, both Firewire and USB do nothing more than deliver information back and forth between the computer. The Audio Interfaces converts and does all the work. But I will save that for someone else. In this case I/O is your primary concern.

Since you are building it, then this id for a desktop. First, get a good MB and power supply, don't be cheap. Good quiet fans as well. On your hard drives, make sure they are at least 7,200 RPMs. You can get 10,000, there are not many, but they are out there. The SDD drives are pretty fast but it still seems there are a few issues with them. They have many advantages for read/write (near RAM speed). If you go with SSD, I would keep maybe your system and have a project area. Use a second drive for long term storage since SSDs tend to be much smaller.

Since you are going with a desktop, you have the advantage of PCIe, this beats FireWire, USB, you can't get faster throughput. But, they tend to be more expensive. I am using an M-Audio and can get my buffer down to about 64 and worse case 512 (this card is less than $150). So my latency is so low, I can record, with effects and hear myself with no issues. It is only two channel, but they have better ones that have more inputs, once you start looking into 16+, the price kicks up to more than $1000. The higher end PCIe interfaces usually have a card and an interface box.

It will be hard to find an MB without on-board sound, so an external interface is a must. Plus, I would disable the on-board sound at the BIOS. Check to see what you have now and what you can work with an then ease into it before throwing money at it. Just with a two/four channel interface, there is so much to learn. At least after a while, you will know what you want and invest long term.

Hope this helps.
 
Nah, you won't need an internal 'interface' as well as the external. We're always advised to disable whatever on board sound comes with the motherboard and use a pro interface - whether that be external or internal.
 
1. Firewire is not "better" than USB. That's simply ridiculous. The nonsense about USB relying on CPU/software is meaningless and has been for years. CPUs are so fast now that the load imposed is negligible. Firewire/1394 is an older interface that is on the verge of disappearing entirely from the PC universe. However, if you have a Firewire audio interface (or an older digital camcorder) you'll need one. That said, 1394 ports are cheap -- you should be able to get one for $15 or so.

2. Get a USB 3.0 card. USB 3.0 is lightning fast. At the moment, only external drives have USB 3.0 interfaces (though, at the moment, only external drives benefit from the speed). However, it shouldn't be long before audio interfaces support USB 3.0 and multi-input devices will definitely benefit. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1 -- all your current devices will work just fine on a USB 3.0 port.

3. I can't think of any advantage to an internal audio.
 
Hey Guys thanks so much for the advice. Really appreciate it: A friend of mine is going to put it together/show me how to do it and this is the first list we've put together. This will be the cheaper option. Next will be the 8 core 16Gb ram choice.

Feel free to advise on any of the below components: The laptop I have at the min is 3gb intel pentium .. just doesnt cut the cheese once I have a few midi tracks in and all the rest. Some of the plugins I'm using are pretty cpu intensive. Sup Drummer, Nxus, Massssive. Gitar Rig etc .. And I know you can freeze them or bounce to audio tracks but I'd like more headroom to play with

quad core 3.8ghz chip/cpu with 8gb of ram and built in graphics
218euro




case
26euro
best-value-999-modded-case-with-usb-3-0---fan-control-red-fans


good power supply
42euro
corsair-430w-builder-series-cx-80--bronze-atx-power-supply


dvd drive
17euro
pioneer-vr-220bk-24x-int-sata-dvdrw-black-oem


2 hard drives
59euro x 2
seagate-1tb-barracuda-sata-6gb-s-64mb-7200rpm-hard-drive-7XD5.


2nd graphics card
31euro
sapphire-technology-ati-radeon-hd-5450-650mhz-1gb-ddr3-pci-express-dvi--low-profile


=451 euro

( Tried to include links but it wouldnt let me as I'm only a noob :P ) Hopefully you can get the picture from here.
 
suprstar said:
A 2nd hd is nice for the space, but speed-wise, any modern hd will suffice - I've tracked 16 tracks on a crappy laptop with a 5400rpm ide drive. An i7 is more than enough horsepower for a typical home-recordist. My main daw is an AMD x2 and I dont notice in cpu utilization ever, even with a ton of tracks. Plugins use cpu, a few dozen tracks with 6 plugins each might start bogging you down. For me, dual monitors is a must, (more would be great too!). Even with a small project, main project window, mixer, plugins, etc fill up 2 1080p screens really fast. I haven't seen a laptop without a vga/hdmi output on it for a long while now. A lot of memory is nice, tracks load and work from memory then, hugely reducing i/o. Tracking can buffer practically infinitely, if your pc wants to run a virus scan or something in the middle of a session you'll have a much better chance of making it thru unaffected!
Click to expand...

Cheers. I think I will go for second harddrive because they are so cheap these days . 2 x 1Tb for 100 euro. Does anyone know the reason why people recommend to record audio to a separate or external hd ... Also I dont plan on even hooking this computer to the internet so I can disable everything that I dont need for recording eg virus scanners
 
I wouldn't record to external drive - somebody accidentally pulls the connection wire or power out, drive connection could just drop off, whatever... just seems unreliable.

Now I'm right now in the middle of building my workstation and there are going to be 5 drives: one for system, programs and plugins (2TB black caviar), one SDD for system cache and programs temporary stuff (120GB?) and 3x2TB black caviars in raid for speed and safety (these are the drives that carry audio files, sound libarys,...).
 
why 2 hd's? For 1, it's a 2nd set of heads - when windows starts doing stuff (and it WILL, even if you uninstall AV and everything else you can think of), your 1st drive with the OS will be working on that, while your 2nd drive is unaffected and able to write tracks without contention. 2 - for the extra space. You can fill up a 1tb drive pretty fast...

There are a few good reasons to use fw vs usb even if ptravel doesnt think so.... I dont believe usb overhead is insignificant when you have a lot of tracks going. If you're talking about a 2-channel interface then i'd agree it doesnt matter.

Should I choose a FireWire or USB audio interface? : PreSonus Audio Electronics

hits most of that main points I'd think of, you can google around for additional info/pros/cons. When it comes to DAW's, if you're building a box, get a fw card, who cares, they're cheap! If you have a laptop and can't then work with what ya got.
 
suprstar said:
why 2 hd's? For 1, it's a 2nd set of heads - when windows starts doing stuff (and it WILL, even if you uninstall AV and everything else you can think of), your 1st drive with the OS will be working on that, while your 2nd drive is unaffected and able to write tracks without contention. 2 - for the extra space. You can fill up a 1tb drive pretty fast...
.
Click to expand...

One Harddrive will contain windows and all software and vsts etc. The second will contain all audio and recording files. Then I have an External for Backup.

Firewire point noted. I think I will wait until I need one though. Will have a slot available when needed :)
 
Seidy said:
I wouldn't record to external drive - somebody accidentally pulls the connection wire or power out, drive connection could just drop off, whatever... just seems unreliable.

Now I'm right now in the middle of building my workstation and there are going to be 5 drives: one for system, programs and plugins (2TB black caviar), one SDD for system cache and programs temporary stuff (120GB?) and 3x2TB black caviars in raid for speed and safety (these are the drives that carry audio files, sound libarys,...).
Click to expand...

That Sounds Like a Pretty cool System to me. Gonna do a bit of research raid and see if its for me and within budget.

When you say Sound Librarys do you mean sample packs and Vsts?? .. I was planning on putting these on the same harddrive as Windows and other software .. Any reasons why you have done the opposite .. Not saying I am right btw! .
 
Pacman454 said:
One Harddrive will contain windows and all software and vsts etc. The second will contain all audio and recording files. Then I have an External for Backup.

Firewire point noted. I think I will wait until I need one though. Will have a slot available when needed :)
Click to expand...

I guess this will depend on the number of tracks you are recording, but I have one hard drive two partitions. One system, other application and data. This is mainly in case I need to do a system reinstall without affecting my data partition.

But I only record two tracks at a time (usually one), but it has not given me any issues.
 
PTravel said:
1. Firewire is not "better" than USB. That's simply ridiculous. The nonsense about USB relying on CPU/software is meaningless and has been for years. CPUs are so fast now that the load imposed is negligible. Firewire/1394 is an older interface that is on the verge of disappearing entirely from the PC universe. However, if you have a Firewire audio interface (or an older digital camcorder) you'll need one. That said, 1394 ports are cheap -- you should be able to get one for $15 or so.
Click to expand...

Really? That's good to know, in case I decide to upgrade to an external interface in future. I actually did think Firewire was superior to USB, for some reason.

However, it makes sense for me to ask, if I'm using a slightly older system, say five years or so behind, then would FW give me an advantage over USB 2? Because I notice your reasoning seems to be based on using USB 3.
 
Doctor Varney said:
Really? That's good to know, in case I decide to upgrade to an external interface in future. I actually did think Firewire was superior to USB, for some reason.

However, it makes sense for me to ask, if I'm using a slightly older system, say five years or so behind, then would FW give me an advantage over USB 2? Because I notice your reasoning seems to be based on using USB 3.
Click to expand...
Firewire is faster than USB 2, which makes it desirable if you're transferring truly massive amounts of data, e.g. digital video. The bandwidth needs of digital audio are modest, even for an 8-channel audio interface, and USB 2 handles it easily.
 
Pacman454:

When you have made your decision regarding your CPU and motherboard, do a little research for RAM incompatibilities when choosing RAM modules.

Every so often, a given motherboard will not play nicely with a given set of RAM modules - even if the motherboard manufacturer's compatibility chart states otherwise.

RAM issues may not be apparent on boot-up, but can lead to intermittent odd behaviour - a system crash or random reboot, for example. Once the RAM is installed, go in to the BIOS set-up to verify that the RAM timing and voltage settings are correct. These should be set automatically, but occasionally something has to be manually tweaked.

System stability is, to my mind, paramount for AV work, so my advice is to not mess with overclocking.

Hope that helps.

Paul
 
Oh my, there is a bunch of 'not clear' advice going on in this thread, regarding firewire being better than USB for recording.

Let me just make a statement:

I run 24 tracks, via 1-USB2.0 connection seamlessly now. Main interface (Steinberg UR824) handles 8 tracks on it's own, and the other 16 via ADAT connections. All runs through one single USB2.0 cable.

Anyone who says firewire is better, is just speaking from what they have heard. I still hear people say that USB2.0 can only do 8 tracks. A $200 Tascam 1641, 4 years ago, did 16.

Silly, silly, silly...
 
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