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RE…INTEL XEON VS NORMAL RETAIL CPU (i5/i7/i9/ryzen etc) FOR LOTS OF VIRTUAL PLUG IN INSTRUMENTS.vsti’s. Some background. There seems to be debate amongst studios as to what is best. High end xeons based daws or normal retail cpu based daws. Ive been reading up on this debate topic on various forums related to daw work. eg…these type of pc’s which are very nice….xeon https://pcaudiolabs.com/rok-box-ob-1-xeon-daw/There are various builders of very nice custom pc’s for recording studios… At various price points depending on components chosen. The question in my mind is what processor will handle not only big sample vi’s but the most ? As if i get heavy into vi’s i dont want to get a pc that puffs out under load. The other question i have is given one can buy refurbished off lease xeon workstations for 600 buks Or less...is this a viable alternative ? eg the HPZ and lenovos an dells. there are some amazeing deals on refurbs one could use for a powerfull daw.
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The problem with trying to keep up is that everything evolves. You want the absolute best that you can run Windows audio on, you're looking at a 56 core Maya rendering station — you have $150,000? Oh, the $53k Mac Pro is better and the $10k Mac Studio blows both of them away.
Now let's get real. You can run over a thousand instances of VIs on a 10 Core i9, Mac or PC. How many do you need?
One of the problems with Windows is that you should select the audio drivers that ensure best performance and not everything is compatible with everything else. You need to to find out what others are using to get the results you desire. That means starting with the app, finding user groups, asking pointed questions, finding where the conflicts are with other apps and asking how those are resolved.
You won't find the nuts and bolts of that here. BIAB's requirements aren't all that demanding; it runs on practically everything.
Just comparing specs will not tell you anything without context. Likewise, price/performance is meaningless unless you know what you are going to do with it.
BIAB 2023 Audiophile, 24/60 Core M2 Mac Studio Ultra/8TB/192GB Sonoma, M1 MBAir, 2012 MBP
Digital Performer 11, LogicPro
Finale27.4, Dorico5, Encore5, SmartScorePro64, Notion6, Overture5
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Mike.
Good points.
Frankly i would never use a boat load of vi’s in a song…
Maybe up to 12 max different vi’s spread over max 40 traks.
I would never have more than 40 traks in a song.
I adhere to the way i was taught in a big studio years ago…
Ie less is more. I’m not doing big off the floor symphonic dates requiring lots of traks.
Just my crazy rock songs for laughs and occasionally a more serious mor or ballad.
As to latency. Its not an issue with me. I am absolutely impressed with my audient interface as to low latency (and mic pre’s).
I typically use bb and rb for building the bed traks for a song…then i would be doing the
“Icing on the song cake” using some vi’s and live traks i record….
The reason being i want to augment the pg rt’s with vi’s in situations where i cant find a suitable RT soloist for a song i’m working on.
Fyi i go through every single rt in bb when i’m developing a song…as ive found some happy sound accidents this way and sound pictures like yesterday…after going thru’ 1000 rt’s.
one of my great joys is to use a rt in a song that bb tells me is wrong rt for my genre...lol
i do a ton of experimenting.
Frankly i’m mighty impressed as an ex tech with the apple m series silicon. But i just cant justify spending 10k , particularly given the pace of tech change . and ive had great results anyway so far from a refurbisher i buy my cheap studio pc’s from…the refurbisher really understands my needs.
best/thanks for commenting.
om
ps i'm studying right now where the dante protocol fits into the daw world....as i know little bout it.
Last edited by justanoldmuso; 05/02/22 09:22 AM.
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As far as your original question, it depends.
I've got 2 XEON Platinum 8153 CPUs. Including logical there are 64 CPUs. That's the main advantage they have is number of CPUs.
i5/i7/i9 etc, win on processing speed. I have a large number of CPUs but the speed is 2.0 GHz. So the more CPUs your i5/i7/i9 has the closer it can come to competing with a XEON.
XEONs are also dreadfully expensive. All that processing power = $$$. In my case the above CPUs with 128 GB RAM in a Dell Precision 7920 Engineering Workstation brand new retail is over $10,000. It's intended as a high end workstation for like a CAD/CAM Engineer or an IT Developer, etc...... I got lucky on mine in that it was someone's factory warranty old machine that they had received a replacement on. I got it for just under $3K.
Where this machine excels for me is with anything to do with video rendering. I can process 5 minute 4K videos in seconds when my old machine could take a half hour to do the same. It also handles gaming and flight simulation very well. So with those things in mind, this machine has no issues at all with anything audio I throw at it. Basically if you have lots of money to throw at a PC, go for a Xeon. For most folks, the i5/i7/i9 solution is the most practical.
 Steve BIAB/RB 2022, Pro Tools 2020, Korg N5, JBL LSR 4328 Powered Monitors, AKG/Shure Mics.
PC: Win11 PRO, 4 TB M2 SSD, 2 TB HD, 128 GB Memory
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Steve.
i'm jealous of your xeons lol.
what i'm trying to figure out is why high end studios often choose xeons over other cpu's. given the expense.
frankly i'll prolly end up with a cpu with a passmark score of 20000 and a good single thread score.
best
om
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what i'm trying to figure out is why high end studios often choose xeons over other cpu's. given the expense.
They can budget a more expensive PC that will be more of a workhorse and earn them more $$$ in return.
Steve BIAB/RB 2022, Pro Tools 2020, Korg N5, JBL LSR 4328 Powered Monitors, AKG/Shure Mics.
PC: Win11 PRO, 4 TB M2 SSD, 2 TB HD, 128 GB Memory
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Steve.
You know your stuff mate..kudos.
Heres my quandary.
The most i would ever do on a new pc is max 40 traks with max 10 vi’s running at a time.
And i wouldnt use vi’s and other plug ins that take over the processor anyways.
Just low usage plug ins.
Now given that single thread processor performance is important in daws…
and given my level of track and plugin counts above, and given i would like to keep the cost down for just the processor under 350 dollars moolah…what do you think would be a suitable cpu ?
Ive done a lot of studying of single thread cpu performance/benchmarks this past week …
And what i find interesting is there arent huge gaps tween the more mid level processors
And higher end ones. Am i correct in thinking a processor with single thread rating above 3000 might do a suitable job ? the rest is easy ie fast ram/ssd’s coming out the ying yangs etc.
Good silent power etc etc.
Best steve.
om
Last edited by justanoldmuso; 05/03/22 02:35 AM.
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what i'm trying to figure out is why high end studios often choose xeons over other cpu's. given the expense. Sometimes the justification for things is because they're expensive. Which lawyer ... the one with the Ford or the one with the Mercedes?
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
Kawai MP6, Korg M50, Ui24R, Saffire Pro 40.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11; Win8.1: Scarletts
BIAB2022 UltraPAK, Reaper, a bunch of stuff.
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No offense OM, but dang you are super-analyzing this stuff. You are putting far more research into it than I would. That's not a bad thing.  I'll give you the advice I've heard on the forums many times before, buy the most you can afford or are willing to spend.
As far as the processor with single thread rating above 3000 might do a suitable job.... yeah, that should do it.
Steve BIAB/RB 2022, Pro Tools 2020, Korg N5, JBL LSR 4328 Powered Monitors, AKG/Shure Mics.
PC: Win11 PRO, 4 TB M2 SSD, 2 TB HD, 128 GB Memory
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Time to clear up a bit of confusion:
All of the high end stuff out there is designed to crunch AV files including gaming and video. All of it—no exceptions. The Maya box, MacPro 7.1 and Apple Studio that I mentioned earlier were designed for film, TV and animation studios. Of course, they can host DAWs but so can just about everything.
Audio doesn't put that big of a load and neither do VIs. If you use one instance per VI, the OS spreads the load among the cores.
Single-thread GB scores are fairly useless except for arguments on internet boards. DAWs are multi-threaded. When I went from a 14 Core Xeon W to an 18 Core, Digital Performer (my DAW of choice) got noticeably faster. I did the upgrade to get a faster GPU (Vega 56 to Vega 64X) and more storage onboard for my AV work and was pleasantly surprised that my audio apps were faster—just didn't see that coming.
DP ran ok on my 2010 4 core i7 and 70–90 tracks including VIs was doable. Sure, having it run faster now with a couple thousand if I needed is nice but I'm still running 40–90 in my current work. The payoff for me is that video files that took 3 days to render on my 2010 with its ATO860 took 15 minutes with the Vega 56 and now take 30 seconds to 3 minutes on that Vega 64.
When Time=$$$$, it's easy to justify the expense. I skipped the Mac Pro 7.1 because the 18 Core iMac Pro gave me much bigger bang for the buck. I'm now looking at the new Studio. If I can get one more project done a month, it will pay for itself in six and increase my income in seven.
Back to my earlier point. You want compatibility. BIAB is pretty much good with everything but many apps are not. That's where you need to do your homework.
Good luck.
BIAB 2023 Audiophile, 24/60 Core M2 Mac Studio Ultra/8TB/192GB Sonoma, M1 MBAir, 2012 MBP
Digital Performer 11, LogicPro
Finale27.4, Dorico5, Encore5, SmartScorePro64, Notion6, Overture5
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Steve.
Your not the first to say i’m “super analytical”...lol.
I just dont want to get a system that bites me in the proverbial.
Best
om
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Steve.
Your not the first to say i’m “super analytical”...lol.
I just dont want to get a system that bites me in the proverbial.
Best
om
om, by the time you make your decision what you select will be outdated I am a little confused though; I know it doesn't take much for me to get confused. First you are talking about really big libraries then you say you just need something to work with RTs, which, in most cases, are not the really big libraries. Thus I stand by my original suggestion and that is purchase the fastest CPU, with 32 gigs of ram, and at least two SSD drives and at least one hard drive for archival. It looks like I'm talking in the $0.5K to $2K price range. You do not need a super expensive music computer if you are only working with RTs and a few MIDI tracks. Then look for a decent orchestra library. There are many orchestra VSTis out there that do not need a Kontakt, SampleTank, etc to run them, but I must admit I am a big fan of Kontakt. Actually there are a lot of orchestra libraries, as well as many other sound libraries for the free Kontakt Player: https://www.producersphere.com/best-free-kontakt-libraries/I practice what I preach. My 11 year old 8 core, 3.4 GHz i7, with 16 gigs of ram still works for me. I have had 30 or more MIDI tracks running with few problems. Most of the time I will convert those MIDI tracks to audio tracks while discarding the MIDI software programs. It is when I start adding a lot of effects that I can run into a problem. I turn off everything running in the background, disable my Ethernet card, and put my buffers to the max and the usually helps and in most cases solves the problem. Good luck and I hope this helps. PS - I have one more music computer purchase to make and I will again follow the above advice. That way at my age I should be set for life. PPS - You might want to get a move on as the chip shortage is getting worse. YMMV
Me, it's not about how many times you fail, it's about how many times you get back up.
Cop, that's not how field sobriety tests work.
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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