a real computer for music?...

  • Thread starter Thread starter robinv
  • Start date Start date
Sorry robin, I didn't mean this as a slam against you or
Carillon - but us electronic musicians are a pretty technical bunch.

Okay - overclocking bad idea for a company to promote.
I just want a little extra jam so I add in that extra reverb unit.

For years we had to deal with 2x16 LCD displays to control
100 paramters on sound modules. We hooked up midi, analog cables, spdif for years.

We've been buying modules from Roland, EMU, Alesis - costing fortunes. All I'm saying is we should
be doing it for $600 a pop for a 100% programmable systems.

That fact that you can fit 173 audio channels on Firewire is not the point. The point is it cost 70 bucks (in hardware). Some computers come stock with this interface. (Sony VAIO) Why do I have to buy another card for TDIF, ADAT, SPDIF, LMNOP-DIF. If these are audio 'standards' why are there so many of them?
That is why these things are complex - trying to get all
these standards to work together, both from software development point of view, and from a user trying to figure out what all the jacks and cables are for.

XC - I want the 1 firewire cable to replace all the SPDIF, and analog cables - not to hook up a drive. I might have 8 channels of digital audio running out of the Duron box running Samplitude, Gigasampler etc into my mixing box running Cakewalk. Note, I should be able to run as many programs on the Duron box as I have CPU to do so. When I run out, I slap down another $600 dollars and buy the next flavour of Duron (maybe its 2 GHz by this time). Note there are no MIDI cables either, the control also runs over firewire. After all, MIDI is what? 21.25 kbits? eeks! that doesn't even put a dent in 400 MBit channel.
 
Hey Robin
Sounds like great idea but what's critical is how its marketed. By the time time the purchaser has read all these various BB's they probably know too much. Have your marketing people find a way to catch the customer before they read the forums...Like the way protools got so much free promotion from the free software....whatever you do try to steer them away the giga sampler/homestudio whiner forums...and thanks for your great website...
Good Luck!

KCC

another homestudio whiner
 
As a newbie to digital hard disc recording I can appreciate these all-in-one systems. I am doing as much research as I can but am not very computer literate and, while music is a great hobby of mine, is one facet of my busy life. I may decide to built my own computer but time is money and there is something to be valued in having an experienced builder with a greater knowledge base than me assemble a system. Experience is one thing that no amount of reading or money can buy.

An analogy: I could write a manual on how to do a percutaneous CT/CAT scan guided lung or pancreas biopsy with choices of different anesthetics, needles, techniques,pitfalls, etcetera. You could read it and do it yourself...after you spent days or weeks mastering the medical lexicon which is a language unto itself just like digital music. However, if one of your family (exluding in-laws) needed the procedure, I think you'd rather have a trained radiologist (like moi`)with experience and education from pedigree institutions peform it than do it yourself and learn from your mistakes on the first go around.

I'm sure I could build my own guitar or bass or amp. But I think I'll let Roger Sadowsky or PRS or Mike Soldano do that for me too.
 
ofcourse money buys experience. how else do you get experience? you spend too much money and too much time .. and people call it experience.

That pro became pro because (like your medical school) he wasted his time on a certain subject. ah wasted... you know what i mean.

guhlenn
 
hey jim - i just had a pro assemble my machine for me and im pretty pleased with it. the guy is at http://www.drastiksolutions.com and he beat all other USA-based competitors that i could find. and if i have my dollars-to-pounds conversion correct he beat carillion (who started this thread) as well, plus i got 256 ram and (2) hardrives (each bigger than the 20 meg).

one thing that has worked out really well is that they turned out to be local to me (minneapolis) and the support has been really good.

so yes, id recommend getting an experienced builder (and would recommend drastiksolutions in particular) and let u stick to the percutuneous pancreas stuff (must make for some interesting music...)
 
Why didn't I buy a pro assembled machine is that once you get it home you have to run it.
Up until fall 99 i did'nt know how to use a mouse let alone record anything on a PC. I started on a P166 and cakewalk homestudio. I studied these forums and looked at the specs of the major pro assembled rigs. I'll admit that I've become a little obsessed with digital but I'm definitely still a newby around here. I went down to my local computer store (there are many in san jose) and had them build me a machine based on the specs of wave digital and the digi 001 (probably the most finicky card) and went for it.....
Why I mentioned all this is that "Building" my own DAW gave me the necessary basics to be able to operate it, know whats compatible with it, What is wrong with it and how to fix it, and most importantly what it can and can't do.
Folks this IS the bleeding edge of this technology (check giga studio forums for one). The fundamental issue is that all computer systems for audio constantly require maintenance and I don't mean an oil change or cleaning the tape heads...Pro assembled systems contain the same parts that mine does and with the exception of some mysterious thing tweaking they all claim to do that no one else does ...they will function the same.... you will have widows crashes, msg 32 errors etc etc etc..ad infinitum.
Aside from the fact that Carrilion was created by Robinv(one of the best in the business) the main feature that they offer is the going into your computer and fixing it for you....except when the network is down or you crashed it so bad it won't even boot etc etc ad infinitum ......

there is a world of people out here that will help you out when you hit the digital wall but fore warned is fore armed
 
The links to Carillion and Drastik Solutions don't work at this time. Are they correct links, websites down, out of business?

Tangentially: I read these forums which can be very helpful and I am grateful for peoples insight. But sometimes I wonder where I am. Is this "Home Recording" or "Pro Recording"? All I want to do is record originals and mix them down to a good sound on CD and let the world know that I am the next Hendrix-Vai-Marcus Miller fretted instrument Master Chief Billy Sunday, Lord of the Cosmos shred-head soul funkmeister. Er...maybe not and I'll keep my day job.
 
try this one:

http://www.drastiksolutions.11net.com

sorry, i didn't have the exactly correct URL.

and yes, yer rite - the support that these guys can offer is their biggest service. i called justin at drastik late ona friday nite and he was there and able to walk me thru my problem. when he built it for me, he let me know how we was doing it and i learned from that too (maybe not as imprinted as if i had slogged thru myself, but it was sufficient to understand the basics of how it was configured). i also left enuff things to add myself, so that the system is truely, uniquely my own.

and when i bought my system from drastik, i not only got some new equipment, i got a new friend - justin and i can trade loops and hang out at the clubs where they will spin our stuff on occasion.

ok, well i don't really mean for this to be a love letter or anything, haha - just a satisfied customer that is happy to pass on info that may help someone wading their way thru all this shit, cuz like u said, it can be pretty daunting.
 
well, i dont know why, but that link didnt work either when i tried it from the post above.

just put "drastiksolutions" into the address box on yer browser and it will give u search results that will take u to the site.

(the carillon link -from the very first post in this thread - did work for me the other nite)
 
hmmmm. i doubt if that justin dude is your friend man. i think he sees a walking wallet.

call me a pessimist...

greetz guhlenn
 
Hey, interesting comments and thoughts. I've had my eye on Drastik for a while and he does produce some excelent systems. Price wise we soon hope to have a production facility and distributer in the US so that should keep the prices a bit more local. Itll also mean 24 hour support which is cool.

The web site is up and down at the moment as we test and implement the new upgrade and user area before we go live in a couple of weeks and move it all onto some massive server in a bomb proof basement somewhere :) sorry about that and please bare with us.

I've always advised people to build their own PC's for exactly the reasons of geting to know how a system works, and that its off-the-shelf pc's that cause me the most tech support, besides its good fun in a pulling out finger nails kind of way. Whenever i build myself a new system it always ends up being an all nighter and ive built hundreds of machines in my time (my own fault for buying cutting edge stuff ive never seen before).

I've found the Carillon thing very exciting though because its addressed all my moans about music systems we've built in the past and i can honestly say that we've gone about it completely the right way and they bloody work!! Also this is not all about pro users its about home and project studios. Who needs a silent computer if you have a machine room? This is about people making music in their spare room, in their spare time with as much help and as little fuss as possible so they dont have to know computers inside out to get on with enjoying their music - which is what this is all about afterall.

Cheers
Robin
http://www.carillondirect.com (when its up)
http://www.pc-music.com (because i love you)
 
I am looking for a new DAW, but haven't really the time nor inclination to get my hands dirty and build one myself. So I looked around at three of the main manufacturers here in the UK Red Sub, Millennium and Carillon all promise ready to use out of the box set up's, all nicely packaged and all with good after service. What bugs me is the fact that all the PC components are 50% upwards in price of your nearest PC expert (comparing the same harddrives cpu's chips etc)
I suppose the higher price you pay (something like GBP500.00) is for the piece of mind that it will work from the box with no complications !
There seems to me a market here in the UK for a company to set up and charge a competative price between PC's for the home and PC's for audio.
I am still in somewhat of a quandry, if money was no object then I would just go to the PC audio guys but that extra GBP500.00 could get me some other gadget to fuel my creative juices !!


yours puzzled kevin
 
well why do you think this part of the forum even exists... we all want trouble free recording and have no money...

read and learn...

greetz guhlenn;)
 
EErrrrmmmmm good point, I have always found money overrated anyway.....

Kevin
 
The direct money comparison thing is a big misconception as you very rarely compare like with like. When we were pricing up our systems we compared ourselves with an off-the-shelf Dell computer of the same configuration and found ourselves to be within about 100 quid. If you compare us to a Tiny computer or a Patriot from PC world then yes we'll look expensive but you are comparing two completely different things.

The cheapest way of getting a computer is to buy the bits seperately from a computer fair and build it yourself. So it'll take a day to get working and then perhaps another day to get Cubase and the soundcard working right - hmmm sounds like about £500's worth of work in any engineers book :)

Also we're not box shifting teenages building pcs in a warehouse in Slough, we're musicians and engineers building quality products.

Its also a tiny nique market. We cant buy cpus and hard drives in their thousands like some pc firms do so yes our components may be a little bit more expensive, but we make up for it by the pricing of the software/soundcard, which we can do much cheaper than buying it seperately.

Swings and roundabouts i guess. You have to decide whether the perceived premium is worth it :)

Robin
http://www.pc-music.com
 
250 a day... bloody hell I'm in the wrong job :)
But seriously thats what I'm mulling over....
 
i'll pipe in here in support of the, shall we say, "system integrators". i'm based in the USA, but i saw the same thing - almost double for what i paid compared to an off-the-shelf pc. but......the off-the-shelf didnt quite have what i wanted, and maybe worse yet, it was loaded with a bunch of junk that i didnt want (for one thing it had a sound card that i would throw away immmediately). in general the off the shelves are for a whole nother purpose - general home or business use, with more empahasis on games, multimedia, and internet.

i know you could tear it apart once you got and prob even reconfigure it for still less money in total, but try and get any support from dell or hp, or whoever, after you've taken a hatchet to their standard machine.

as far as the cost per day for engineered service, the rate does seem a bit high, but its not way outa bounds with industry standards for specialists. and besides, i think robin has oversimplified the task - it might take two days if everything goes right the very first time. this would assume that all of the various components (which an integrator, if they are good, keeps up on way better than myself - hey that's their job to know - yeah?) work together, in concert perfectly. if they don't, u gotta trace down answers thru a whole lot of different vendors.

finally, the after-sale support issue is huge. i know my last post may have bordered on fawning, and i may be naive as guhleen so coldly pointed out - but time will tell in my case. in general tho, these guys that do this for their bread are musicians to large degrees(not department store salesmen, or corporate tech support voices) and i think they genuinely like to see u succeed with their gear and they love to hear the bomb results u might get out of em.

i think this industry is highly supportive of its own, and all interested newbies - witness this BBS - and if u take a look at robin's site (just to name one - and no, i'm not getting paid to say this - dont even know the dude - or if he's even a guy - lol) u will see kinda what i mean - lots of music related links and tons of info on sound cards, recording, etc, etc.

we all know this - it aint really about computers - its about MUSIC.

so u can look at the price difference at 2x to start, factor in what you, yourself would spend in time and money to monkey it around to get it to be what u want - that reduces the delta. factor in again, the help u have just by getting someone else involved in your projects and your dreams - and the diff comes down further and further.

but, hey, if this isnt the very first time you've tried to assemble a computer from scratch - sure, i'd say go for it (obviously ppl like robin and justin can do it - they just have dedicated themselves to this, done it alot, and make it their primamry focus).

as one of the senior guys out here likes to say - your milage may vary.
 
don't mind me gbvbdgdfggsmd....

i'm just paranoia.

guess the machine's worth it but if you don't have the cash you don't have the cash right? and i don't charge myself (paranoia maybe... no multiple personality syndrome LOL) so everything i do is my hobby (or life, pathetic ey?) and for free.

greetz guhlenn;)
 
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