Music Computer Advice

[John Thomson]

Hi all, I'm a newbie to the site. I had a look on the Scan.co.uk website for a computer for music production. As there is a vast array of options on the site, which can be mind boggling, I was wondering if anyone had purchased a system from scan for the same purpuse.

I'd like to hear what type of system you bought and what sort of things your are able to run with it. I know obviously the more you spend the better you will get, I'm looking at something that will be stable enough without having to spend in excess of £2000.

Will an I7 system be just as good as a Xeon system? And is there any compatability issues with any of the DAW, Cubase, Ableton etc. I mean boards and stuff like that.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

John

[g8ina]

Im running Cakewalk, Cool Edit Pro, and the soft Moog Modular on my fairly old homemade Core Duo at 3GHz with 4GB RAM. All fairly standard stuff, all rock stable.

[ik9000]

signing onto thread - trying to help my mate put together a machine for sound editing + recording so interested what people have to say

[PeteG@Scan]

Hello,

Sorry gents, I did post up here on Friday, but my message appears to have dropped off the board for some reason. :-/

Question to John - Could you give me some indication of your main (larger) plugin's please? All P.C's can handle the basic sequncers but the real power requirements come from the plug in's and a user using VSL or large EW collections tend to need different specs from say someone using Kontakt and less intensive vsti's.

[kalniel]

The other thing is to absolutely minimise DPC latency, so choosing mature components that are reliable, run cool, and have stable drivers is a must. Xeon (being server orientated) might be better for this than desktop.

[John Thomson]

Thanks for the reply Pete.

Sequencer wise it will be Cubase 6, Ableton 8, Reason 6 & FL10. VST wise it will be Refx Nexus 2, Access Virus T12, Sylenth, Native Komplete 8 Ultimate, Fxpansion D:cam Squad Synth and Spectrasonics Omnisphere. Mastering wise it will be Waves and UAD stuff. Audio interface will be Fireface 400.

I used to be a Mac user which used the Xeon chips, Due to pc's using I7 and Xeon chip's I'm unsure which system to go for top get ther best power for budget.

Thanks

John

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There are socket 1155 Xeon CPUs sold by Scan:

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-...on-socket-1155

The E3-1230 is worth considering. However,these Xeon CPUs are based on the socket 1155 consumer CPUs.

AFAIK,Xeon CPUs based on the new socket 2011 are not available ATM. Consumer versions are sold but have an incomplete feature set when compared to their Xeon counterparts.

[PeteG@Scan]

Currently if I was to buy right now it would be the i7 Extreme on the x79 chipset as it's a generation newer than any of the Xeon solutions. Benchmark wise have a look at the last chart I compiled using DAWBench ( http://www.scanproaudio.info/?p=551 ) and if you need a quick run down of how that works the's another link at the bottom back to an earlier article.

The next set of Xeon's will of course offer more performance but I can't say at this point if it'll be a decent choice bang per buck wise until we get to test them out. If your budget is around 2k the the x79's are the way forward for you currently, althrough if you have 3K plus in mind and want the best performance possible and don't mind hanging on a month or so (i'm not sure on releae date myself) the new Xeons could be a decent choice.

As it is to match the X79 solutions on the current gen Xeons you'd need to drop 4K+ on a pair of hexcores to even get remotely close to the perforamance offered by the cheaper none Xeon solution. The single socket 1155 solutions as mentioned by cat whilst a decent idea and would have been ideal a year or so back have now been supassed and a basic 2700k system overclocked will perform far better at a lower cost.