There are other things I am doing on the computer beside music. Video for one thing. ...I don't know what I may want to do with a computer in the near future so I set a budget of around $2000 and want the best machine I can build for that amount of money.
I was in a similar situation. I've mostly got Dell refurbs for years and wanted to upgrade my Dell Precision T5400 Engineering Workstation a couple of years ago. I too do video editing and also fly flight simulators (Big resource hog). It would take about 30-45 minutes to render a 5 minute 4K video even though the specs were good. I got real lucky on Ebay and found a Dell Precision 7920 Engineering Workstation (basically a server in a PC case) that had stacked features in which it would have cost about $10K at retail price. I found it from a reputable seller and was able to get it for $3K. That 5 minute 4K video now takes only about a minute or two to render. Lots of time saving. Going from 8 to 64 cores really helped on that. Needless to say that flight simming and music production are a breeze on this monster. Once the pricing comes down a little, I could even expand on the CPUs but I think I future proofed it by getting what I did. I shouldn't have to upgrade for years.
Basic specs: 128 GB RAM (2) Intel Xeon Platinum 8153 CPUs @ 2 GHz each, 16 cores each processor for 32 cores total, 64 cores including logical. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Graphics card - Barely wedged that in the case. C:\ 1TB SSD - Operating System & Apps D:\ 2TB HDD - Media Storage E:\ 250GB SSD - Working drive for music/video projects
There are other things I am doing on the computer beside music. Video for one thing. ...I don't know what I may want to do with a computer in the near future so I set a budget of around $2000 and want the best machine I can build for that amount of money.
I was in a similar situation. I've mostly got Dell refurbs for years and wanted to upgrade my Dell Precision T5400 Engineering Workstation a couple of years ago. I too do video editing and also fly flight simulators (Big resource hog). It would take about 30-45 minutes to render a 5 minute 4K video even though the specs were good. I got real lucky on Ebay and found a Dell Precision 7920 Engineering Workstation (basically a server in a PC case) that had stacked features in which it would have cost about $10K at retail price. I found it from a reputable seller and was able to get it for $3K. That 5 minute 4K video now takes only about a minute or two to render. Lots of time saving. Going from 8 to 64 cores really helped on that. Needless to say that flight simming and music production are a breeze on this monster. Once the pricing comes down a little, I could even expand on the CPUs but I think I future proofed it by getting what I did. I shouldn't have to upgrade for years.
Basic specs: 128 GB RAM (2) Intel Xeon Platinum 8153 CPUs @ 2 GHz each, 16 cores each processor for 32 cores total, 64 cores including logical. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Graphics card - Barely wedged that in the case. C:\ 1TB SSD - Operating System & Apps D:\ 2TB HDD - Media Storage E:\ 250GB SSD - Working drive for music/video projects
This is a really good idea when buying a used machine. There are a lot of corporate places selling off machines of this type. A lot of times the want to move off the Microsoft platform and go to something much more professional like UNIX. If it is mission critical it is probably not running on Windows.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
sslecta. omg WELL DONE . do me a favour would you ?? call it tech curiosity. pretty please. lol.
please open up realband and action>> test audio performance. tell me how many traks that beast will do reported by rb will you ?? i bet its huge.
re unix. i would love to see a baby distro OS that ran biab/rb/reaper. well actually what i want is the two major win/apple platforms OS's to be way leaned down to be offered as a pro audio OS. as an option. get rid of everything else but audio support.
my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..) https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs (90 songs created useing bb/rb) (lots of tips of mine in pg tips forum.)
Interesting Muso. Never knew that this function was available in RB.
Ran mine at 44.1K and the app reported 332 tracks with the MOTU ASIO driver for the average of 3 runs. Switch over to the Steinberg driver (v2.04 that came with the Yammy Montage) and got 322 on the average of 3 runs.
I am running a MOTU 828MK3 interface but not sure if the difference in ASIO drivers is significant or not. Does that mean that the MOTU driver is more efficient?
There are a lot of corporate places selling off machines of this type. A lot of times they want to move off the Microsoft platform and go to something much more professional like UNIX. If it is mission critical it is probably not running on Windows.
That's odd. I've worked for several large financial companies in St. Louis and they tend to be mixed. I've never seen more than 50% Linux machines in server environments around here.
Back 20 years ago the law firm I was at for a few years ran rack mounted servers that had dual core Zenon CPUs. They bought like 25 of those servers at one time and the team doing the installs opened a few to look at them assuming that if 3 or 4 were okay, they would all be okay. Well, maybe not. On one of them the heat sink came loose during shipping, but the server room was so loud we didn't hear it banging around in the case. We powered them up one at a time, and that one was like 23rd in line, so we powered those last few up almost at the same time and walked out to let them run for an hour. In about 6 minutes we heard an alarm and went in to find that one server freaking out from heat. I sweat you could have cooked on that CPU. And THEN we had to hear about it from the bosses about why we didn't inspect EVERY one before powering them up. (And they were right, We were just being lazy.) Fortunately they had thermal protection so the thing shut down when it got to the same temperature as the SUN and the CPU didn't burn up, but wow, that was a lesson. Those Zenon's at the time were so expensive they required a mortgage and they would have been perfectly right to make us pay for the replacement. Remember, we couldn't prove the heat sink came off in shipping because we didn't inspect anything. (Though of course would could have lied... but that's not me. And the largest law firm in Ohio doesn't lie.)
Nice story Eddie. I did replace the Xeon CPUs on that last Dell I had the T5400. The price wasn't too bad on them since it was an older machine, processors. I did see lots of notes on being very careful on getting the processor properly seated before fastening it all down. Luckily, I had no issues and those processors ran well right up to selling the machine.
If I want more cores and processor speed for my machine, nearly $32,000 for the pair..... Not gonna happen. LOL
wow, thats a really really good report. that many traks. impressive. as i didnt program rb or the interfaces i really dont know the driver impact. but your test certainly implies there IS driver impact.
sslecta. thanks for that. those intel processor prices are crazy. we need more processor manufacturers. more competition. i refuse to pay more than 1k for a computer. also i refuse to use usb protection dongles.
but i pay for everything.
my i5/ssd reports 191 traks. steinberg drivers.
---------------------------- basically i use the rb test to give me a basic idea when testing out refurbs and new machines at the pc store. i take along the ultrapak drive with me and do a test in rb. i dont think its a perfect test. but usefull.
perhaps you good folks could vote +1 on my post in the realband wishlist forum where i argue for a expansion of the basic rb audio performance test app. (please give it a read.)
the reason being ive see on various recording forums people running into problems with useing a computer that just wont meet their REAL needs. the idea is a small test app. ideas like an early warning system and sandboxing are also mentioned.
best. muso.
Last edited by justanoldmuso; 11/17/2006:14 AM.
my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..) https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs (90 songs created useing bb/rb) (lots of tips of mine in pg tips forum.)
Thanks for that. those intel processor prices are crazy. we need more processor manufacturers. more competition. i refuse to pay more than 1k for a computer. also i refuse to use usb protection dongles.
I agree on the processors. You just need to wait until they become the right age and the prices drop down quickly. It will be a while in my example above. As far as dongles, no biggie here. Luckily, all my software uses the same iLOK one and there's no issues. Pro Tools, Melodyne, etc. I just plug it in when I fire up the tools.
Originally Posted By: justanoldmuso
basically i use the rb test to give me a basic idea when testing out refurbs and new machines at the pc store.
Good idea, another tool you could add to that drive is LatencyMon. It's been referred by Matt and others here in the forums for a few years. It's only a 2 Mb .EXE file.
The only thing about running tests like these is that they are kind of moot. If your system is not performing, do you have to know how much your system is not performing to know you need a new computer or just THAT you need a new computer?
I mean, do you need to know how much you weigh to know you gained weight when suddenly your everyday jeans don't fit?
This comes from a guy who has not work his everyday jeans in a really long time, and never skimped on a computer purchase. Overbuild, overbuy. Don't buy the car with the V6 to pull your motorhome because you think it might be enough car only to find out somewhere 157 miles from nowhere that it isn't. And then pay for a transmission or engine rebuild that cists more than what you would have paid for the V8 to start with. When I built that Pro Tools computer I went right to an i7 (which at that time was the highest "i") and 64 MB of RAM. If I never need that horsepower, great. I want it if I have it. What's 3 or 4 more monthly payments to do it right the first time?
There are a lot of corporate places selling off machines of this type. A lot of times they want to move off the Microsoft platform and go to something much more professional like UNIX. If it is mission critical it is probably not running on Windows.
That's odd. I've worked for several large financial companies in St. Louis and they tend to be mixed. I've never seen more than 50% Linux machines in server environments around here.
Extremely jealous, much better price and rackmount. There you go. EDIT: Just noticed no CPUs/Memory. Those CPUs will cost you.
Yes the processors are pretty pricey.
What I meant about the servers was there seem to be more used windows servers for sale. Sometimes a company will try to run something on windows and find that OS is not robust enough and go to UNIX or Linux. I guess all that depends on how big the company is and if they run their own network.
Sometimes a company will try to run something on windows and find that OS is not robust enough and go to UNIX or Linux.
Billy, got it, thanks. I believe the Dell Engineering laptop I have is from one of those big batches of company-returned equipment that they offered cheap as a refurb.
Yes Steve, all kinds of crazy things happen in large companies. Many companies have subcontracted out there IT needs.
IBM came into a large bank and ripped out all the ethernet cable and installed Token Ring when they got the management contract. When the bank got fed up with IBM another company ripped out all the Token Ring and reinstalled ethernet. All the IBM servers and workstations were replaced with Dell. All IBM routers and switches were replaced with Cisco.
This sort of thing happens a lot and all that used equipment gets sold off to people who refurbish it and re sale it.
The idea of getting a $10,000 dollar machine for $3500 is a logical risk.
I got to seriously thinking about buying that sort of refurb. I then decided to go back to the original idea and just build a new machine.
The savings for using a AMD Ryzen does not mean anything to me. They may be better processors but I have never had anything but problems with them. There is certainly nothing wrong with intel.
I have made up my mind to use a i9 intel so the only real question is which motherboard and is the case I had in mind big enough to hold the radiator I want to use.
The other stuff is straightforward...Samsung SSD's DDR4 Cooler Master power supply. Some decision about the best video card for my needs.
Building computers is not rocket science. And anyway, the first thing I always do when I get a name brand computer is format the drive and get rid of all the bloatware.
As to the issue with the current computer, who knows, It is running without issue now, and has for the most part given me no trouble for over 10 years.
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MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
MIDI SuperTracks Set 46: Piano & Organ
Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
Playable RealTracks Set 5
RealDrums Stems Set 9: Cool Brushes
SynthMaster Sounds Set 1 (with audio demos)
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FLAC Files (lossless audio files) for the 20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums
MIDI Styles Set 93: Look Ma! More MIDI 16: SynthMaster
MIDI SuperTracks Set 47: More SynthMaster
Instrumental Studies 25 - Soul Jazz Guitar Soloing
Artist Performance Set 20: Songs with Vocals 10
RealDrums Stems Set 10: Groovin' Sticks
SynthMaster Sounds & Styles Set 2 (sounds & styles with audio demos)
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