pc recommendations for 16 channel

C

cello_pudding

Well-known member
i don’t have a budget, but what should i look for?

i probably will want 16gb ram 2tb ssd, pc, but are there subtle aspects i should look for or avoid? would a laptop be inferior or just fine? i don’t imagine modding or adding stuff.

i’m getting an allen and heath qu-16 for doing live sound and studio recording. wanting to record myself and others potentially. possibly making some 4k music videos and live streams at some point.
 
The thing about laptops is that they tend to have processors with lower base speeds, like 1 to 1.5GHz. Still, a good Core I7 (10th gen or later) should be able to handle 16 channel audio. I'm running a 3.2GHz 4th Gen I5 and can easily record 8 channels using Reaper. I do 1080 video rendering on the same machine with 12GB RAM and the Intel onboard graphics. Sure my frames per second aren't the greatest, but in my case time ISN'T money. I can set it up, start the render and go have lunch or cut the grass. It's all done when I come back. BTW, I have a TB SSD and a 2TB hard drive. The system (Lenovo H50) is about 8 yrs old but still hums along fine.

If you're going to be doing 4K video, then you probably want to stay away from a laptop. A desktop with something like a I7-12700K or I7-13700K should easily do the recordings, has a higher base speed (2.7 or 2.5GHz with 16 cores) and the UHD graphics will do the video encoding but may be a bit slower to render than a good video card. Of course that is something you can always add later if you find the need.

One issue you run into is balancing the high temps and fan requirements of high performance video cards with the noise level. Video cards can pull from 100 to 300 watts of power and that means they need airflow. Dual and triple fans are the norm. Plus a really good video card can run $300 to 1000.

For stuff like this, I prefer to have a small tower, where I can add extra SSD/hard drives and memory easily. Plus you'll have extra USB ports for things like external backup hard drives (yeah, you really ought to be doing this), you mouse and keyboard, and interface. Some laptops only come with 2 USB ports, and you run out really fast. Better to have 8 ports and need 4 than to have 2 ports and have to use a USB hub that may not play well with your interface.

Are you looking for an off the shelf prebuilt system, or planning to assemble yourself (or have it custom built)?
 
My 19 year old AMD Sempron laptop handles 16 channels of 96kHz 24 bit audio just fine. You don't need much power if you use something like Reaper.

Our lad has been doing 1080 video animations and video editing with my 2nd gen i7 Dell Precision laptop and he's been fairly happy but he's just been given a 4th gen i7 laptop and he's even happier with that. The Dells can be used with a docking station which means that you can hang all kinds of peripherals from them when you are at the studio and then take the computer away with just a click of a button for remote recordings.
 
James, my AMD PhenomX2 will do fine for mixing in Reaper, but it had severe issues when I tried to record using my Tascam 16x08 with it. I had to bump buffers up quite a bit and had bad latency. Hence the Lenovo purchase.

The only issue with getting a new system today is that anything pre 8th Gen Intel won't be compatible with Win 11 without doing some shenanigans. If you're buying a system today, you should be thinking 5-7 years minimum lifespan, and Win10 End Of Life is suppose to be 2025. That's just 2 years away. That's why I would recommend going 12th or 13th Generation. But certainly you don't need an I9-13900K to do audio recording unless you are doing an entire orchestra of virtual instruments.
 
i don’t really do virtual instruments.

i love acoustic everything.

(i do own a native instruments mikro maschine mk3)

besides that, i have a piano, glockenspiel, banjo, cello, pump organ, guitar, and do lots of vocal layering.

i’ll look into the desktop. it is super easy to take a laptop for live gig recording. wouldn’t be terrible for field recording.

i have been thinking about heavily modifying a camper to be an iso/control room with solar so i can record or plug in to have a show anywhere i want to and if i move, i just tow it with me.

i currently just have an asus zenbook. 237 gb. 2.38 ghz with 8gb ram with windows 10.

thanks for all the replies! i haven’t been an active member for 14 years, but i’m getting back into it. i went to college for music in 02-06. so much has changed! love the qu16’s digital control of live sound. it’s like i’m in a recording studio with parametric eq, compressors, etc right at my board.
 
It's refurbished which will bring the price down but it's also small form factor - Not as wide as a regular PC case,
which means you'll be very limited if you ever decide to add a discrete GPU.

I can't really help with specifics but if you're planning on doing any video work at all spec the machine for that.
If it handles 4k video, it'll handle audio. (y)
 
cello_pudding said:
i don’t have a budget, but what should i look for?

i probably will want 16gb ram 2tb ssd, pc, but are there subtle aspects i should look for or avoid? would a laptop be inferior or just fine? i don’t imagine modding or adding stuff.

i’m getting an allen and heath qu-16 for doing live sound and studio recording. wanting to record myself and others potentially. possibly making some 4k music videos and live streams at some point.
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You should go with a MacBook Pro M2 - it will be able to handle anything you throw at it.
 
cello_pudding said:
whoa…why is this so cheap?

would this be terrible?

Amazon.com

www.amazon.com
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Besides being a refurb, it's a 7th Gen Core I7 which means Windows 10 only. In 2 years, you lose any security and system updates from Microsoft, unless you're into tech and want to kludge the Win11 install. Of course that includes the risk that MS will not support "unsupported hardware".

If you just want to run it in your studio and not go browsing round the 'net, you should be fine.
 
TalismanRich said:
The only issue with getting a new system today is that anything pre 8th Gen Intel won't be compatible with Win 11 without doing some shenanigans.
Click to expand...
Our lad's 4th gen i7 laptop came with Win11. I guess the refurbishers did whatever shenanigans are needed although I think they have their own official deal with Microsoft so I don't know whether they can get a version of Win11 for older computers or if they just hack the OS.
 
There is information on how to do the install. The question is whether MS will "pull the plug" on such systems at some point. Install Win 11 on unsupported hardware . There is a chance that the system would actually have the security feature that MS requires for Win 11, or could have the firmware updated to TPM2.0. The Optiplex 7040 is listed as possibly being upgradeable (depending on date of manufacture). Plus there is the question about whether Win11 compatible drivers are available.

My concern is that if the OP is asking such basic questions, he's probably not a "techy", otherwise he would probably be comparing builds on PCPicker vs prebuilt systems at NewEgg or Staples. I've built at over a dozen computers over the years, and the past two have been prebuilt ones because is was almost the same price and SO much easier.

I would actually be more inclined to go for this system than the refurb. Dell-Inspiron 3020-Desktop-Computer-Tower . Performance of the I5-12400 is better than the I7-7700 with more cores and hyperthreading, video processing is better, memory bandwidth is higher. The cost is similar.

As for the Macbook Pro M2, they are great systems, but I'm also guessing that if the OP is looking at a refurb system at under $600, he's not looking to spend $1200-2500 for a Macbook M2.



Of course, I could be totally off base.
 
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