Music PC for Production

[lem]

Yes it would cost thousands from apple, but do you really need a computer that high spec'ed?
I have bottom spec Mac's and I never exceed 50% CPU, unless I have many many instances of NI Massive!

[Barfunkel]

I don't really see the point for a high spec computer when you're doing minimal. Maybe when you're mixing pop and have 200 audio tracks. I've never used more than 8 tracks in my productions (though it's partly because I only have an 8-channel soundcard, I'd like to be able to record 12 channels at once). My 4 year old laptop, that wasn't even high end when I bought it, manages that just fine.

[simonb]

My production PC for the last couple of years has an i5 and 4GB RAM. At the time I didn't see any benefit to spending more on the i7. No regrets so far to be honest, I'm pretty happy with it. That was 2 years ago though, prices might've come down a bit and software is always getting more powerful, I've not really been keeping up.

I built my own. Building it is the easy part - the hard bit is choosing the components to buy (brands, socket types, etc.), I found it completely bewildering and asked my brother to do it for me...

[lem]

........and software is always getting more powerful, I've not really been keeping up.

I think music software is quite far behind in terms of the hardware technology around. I haven't noticed that music software is requiring more processing power. As you, I haven't really been keeping up.
Obviously things like big sample libraries benefit from more RAM... etc... and certain Arturia plugins can be pretty agro on the CPU. But for that reason I am kinda put off using them, (that and having a dongle).

[jackbrazzo]

Guys thanks so much for the replies. Looks like building my own is the way ahead. Can I just get an OS from PC world? Will be looking at Windows 7 of course.

Love the Mac's but way too expensive (lovely looking though!). As for playing ableton live I wont be at least not yet. I'd rather play vinyl and CD's

Thanks again

[Shepherd_of_Anu]

I have come to feel that multiple screens are an essential feature for any decent working setup regardless of what you are doing. From programming, designing, editing, or making music having multiple monitors just makes everything so much easier. I don't even like working on my laptop anymore because I find all the clicking between windows just frustrating.

For just music software though... it is especially nice to have multiple monitors if you happen to be using Rewire in an application so that you can have everything right up front all the time. Plus if you use reason as part of your setup it can be nice to have one window just for your timeline and the other for the rack.

Someday I would like to get a third monitor which I could swivel 90 degrees so that there is more vertical real estate to view vertically. That would be sweet for things like reading news articles on websites, writing long documents or programming.

So ya, multiple monitors are the best. Huge boost in productivity. You really only have two ways to get information out of a computer so you might as well make the most of what you can.

[::BLM::]

I never got into using two or more screens. I even bought another one but hated it, so went back to using one.

[lem]

As blm said, i have had two monitors. now i have one, and i cant say i really miss it.
not a big fan of staring at a computer screen and having two seems to double the chance!

I agree about workflow, it was useful for plugins. i dont use many 3rd party plugins anymore and find abletons one window system really useful.

i would have an apple cinema display tho!