good companies for a music computer?

[slacker]

I want probly a pc which is going to be mainly used for making music probly on reason and that kinda stuff (gonna do some research on the software front too), and Ihave about £1000 to spend. where is a good place to look? see I really don't know much on this front...

cheers you lovely technoheads.

[Barely Human]

Your best off building your own from scratch, then you can shoose precisely what components you want. But if you really want something building by a profesional firm, then Carrilon are usually regarded as the best for music production (but it will cost ya)... http://www.carillondirect.com/clnweb/index.jsp?country=null

[RDR]

:dontevengothere: DONT BOTHER GETTING ONE FROM A COMPANY!!!!!! ESPECIALLY NOT DIGITAL VILLAGE!!!!!!

I work for access to music in the uk and one of our colleges bought 10 music computers from digital village. expensive, slow, unreliable, when we opend them up the components were piss poor. They kept breaking down and DV messed us around so much that after a year of us asking when they would repair them the warranty ran out and they refused to do anything.

I REPEAT! DONT BOTHER!!!

Build your own from components bought on-line, quality motherboard is a real key - ASUS or ABIT do some good ones. Also if you are going to get athlon, make damn sure you dont get a MOBO with VIA chipsets on either the northbridge or southbridge.

Spend a bit more and get pentium 4. it IS worth it. quieter, better instructions on the chipset. stable. It is a hard lesson to learn especially when the althon stuff is cheaper, but you'll be better off in the long run.

It isnt hard to build your own, a trained monkey can do it (look at me!!!) im no expert (obviously)

building your own can save you loads of money and hassle, you'll learn about what makes your computer tick and you dont have to rely on piss ant companies to mess you around (i know i dont, im perfectly capable of annoying myself without the help of a money grubbing so called audio speicalist) :protest:

Rant over... i feel drained... :lol:

I cant comment about carrilion, they are expensive tho...

[Milesy]

dont get a mobo with via rev5 or sis 7001 chipsets if you plan
on using usb devices. as the usb sucks :doh:

[pablo_sonic_terrorist]

I work for a large college in Coventry i'm a music tech.
although we haven't used these guys for any systems of our own, loads of students and staff here used a local company

www.inta-audio.com

They have had their pc's in Sound on Sound, they got really good reviews and are well priced, if you don't fancy the challange of building from scratch!

If you can afford a bit more, Philip Rees the guys who made all those wacky midi boxes are building kick ass pc's for audio which would scare the shit out of carillion!

[acidsaturation]

....ESPECIALLY NOT DIGITAL VILLAGE!!!!!!....

Yeah indeed. Got mine from DV when I was young and foolish, cos it seemed the best deal for the price. The things actually that most pissed me off was little stuff like the hard drive being positioned in the bottom slot so when I upgraded and added a other drive the cable wouldn't reach and I had to take the whole bloody thing to bits nearly and start a again.

Mind you works like a dream now I've done that!!!

But yeah - Build yr own.

[detfella]

www.inta-audio.com


i got mine from them. very nice people, very good service, and pretty decent price :clap:

[dirty_bass]

Red Sumarine are good, but I would build your own.
I got some advice from on here and built a new studio PC.
Athlon 64, Asus Motherboard, 1 Gig of Corsair Ram, New Seagate Hard drive, it`s feckin wonderful.

[neilried]

cheers you lovely technoheads.

Def build your own - I just built a replica of a Carillon for about £650 excluding the soundcard and have absolutly everything I could desire.. Infact I had enough left to buy the monitor speakers I wanted....

A couple of things to consider - get an Intel Chip, pref from Pentium Family over anything, Make sure your new board supports SATA (fast hard drives) and also make sure it has the Intel 875P Chipset on the board, then you wont look back!!!!

Rough spec from Aria.co.uk for main components, excluding case power supply monitor keyboard etc as you can get deals on these depending on how pretty you want it to look.

Asus P4P800-E Deluxe Motherboard £78
Manufacturer ASUS
Model Number P4P800-E Deluxe
Min Recommended CPU Socket 478 for Intel Pentium 4/Celeron up to 3.2GHz+ (Including Prescott)
BIOS Type AMI
Chipset Intel 865PE
CPUs Up to 3.4GHz P4
Dimensions 305 x 245 mm
Form Factor ATX
Hardware Monitoring YES
Max Memory 4GB
Memory Type Dual Channel DDR 400
No. of Additional Slots 1 x ASUS WIFI Connector
No. of AGP Slots 1 (8x/4X)
No. of IDE Ports 4x Serial-ATA w Raid 0/1, 2x ATA UDMA-100, 1x UDMA ATA 133
No. Of Memory Slots 4
No. of PCI Slots 5
No. of USB Ports 8 max
Onboard LAN YES - Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit Lan Controller
Onboard Sound YES - Realtek ALC850 8-channel CODEC
Onboard Video NO
SATA Connectors 4
Supported Bus Frequency (MHz) 800

Intel P4 Prescott 3.0 GHz [OEM,1MB,478] £116

Kingmax "Hardcore" 512Mb PC4000 DDR400 Memory£72

Sony 52x52x24x16 Combo Black £30
52 x CD Reader
52 x CD Writer
24 x Re Writer
16 x DVD READ ONLY

200GB Seagate Barracuda7 SATA[8MB] £82

nVidia GeForce FX5700LE 256MB AGP £65

Get someone to build it for you with Win XP with Service Pack 1, a few tweaks http://musicxp.net/ and you got a monster on your side...

[Barely Human]

cheers you lovely technoheads.

Def build your own - I just built a replica of a Carillon for about £650 excluding the soundcard and have absolutly everything I could desire.. Infact I had enough left to buy the monitor speakers I wanted....

A couple of things to consider - get an Intel Chip, pref from Pentium Family over anything, Make sure your new board supports SATA (fast hard drives) and also make sure it has the Intel 875P Chipset on the board, then you wont look back!!!!

Rough spec from Aria.co.uk for main components, excluding case power supply monitor keyboard etc as you can get deals on these depending on how pretty you want it to look.

Asus P4P800-E Deluxe Motherboard £78
Manufacturer ASUS
Model Number P4P800-E Deluxe
Min Recommended CPU Socket 478 for Intel Pentium 4/Celeron up to 3.2GHz+ (Including Prescott)
BIOS Type AMI
Chipset Intel 865PE
CPUs Up to 3.4GHz P4
Dimensions 305 x 245 mm
Form Factor ATX
Hardware Monitoring YES
Max Memory 4GB
Memory Type Dual Channel DDR 400
No. of Additional Slots 1 x ASUS WIFI Connector
No. of AGP Slots 1 (8x/4X)
No. of IDE Ports 4x Serial-ATA w Raid 0/1, 2x ATA UDMA-100, 1x UDMA ATA 133
No. Of Memory Slots 4
No. of PCI Slots 5
No. of USB Ports 8 max
Onboard LAN YES - Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit Lan Controller
Onboard Sound YES - Realtek ALC850 8-channel CODEC
Onboard Video NO
SATA Connectors 4
Supported Bus Frequency (MHz) 800

Intel P4 Prescott 3.0 GHz [OEM,1MB,478] £116

Kingmax "Hardcore" 512Mb PC4000 DDR400 Memory£72

Sony 52x52x24x16 Combo Black £30
52 x CD Reader
52 x CD Writer
24 x Re Writer
16 x DVD READ ONLY

200GB Seagate Barracuda7 SATA[8MB] £82

nVidia GeForce FX5700LE 256MB AGP £65

Get someone to build it for you with Win XP with Service Pack 1, a few tweaks http://musicxp.net/ and you got a monster on your side...

Not a bad machine there. But there is deffo a couple of things i would change.

1. Get a plextor cd/dvd burner - I cannot recomend these drives enough. They are the best you can get, bar none..

2. Get 2 harddrives - One for your system and programs, and the other for all your storage of samples, media and anything else. This can really improve your overall performance..

[neilried]

Not a bad machine there. But there is deffo a couple of things i would change.

1. Get a plextor cd/dvd burner - I cannot recomend these drives enough. They are the best you can get, bar none..

2. Get 2 harddrives - One for your system and programs, and the other for all your storage of samples, media and anything else. This can really improve your overall performance..

Opps :oops: was meant to be a 2nd drive listed and with the CDR/DVD bundle it was the best looking one in stock at aria at the time I had a look for you. But its a matter of preference... I actually never use the CD in my PC apart from burning the odd track to cd so I can hear how awful they sound on my hifi!!!!

With 2 drives make sure they are both SATA, the system is a bit simerlar to memory in that it will run as fast as the slowest component can... and you can get 80GB SATA drives for F*** all these days which is more than adaquate for XP Install....

[AcidMutant]

I'm actually considering building a new PC myself too, might use these guys for parts, do the prices seem ok? - http://www.ebuyer.com

[neilried]

I built a PC for the misus at the same as I built mine as she was getting designs on outlook, internet, scanner etc on my PC..... So built an AMD machine for her... think I got a board (network and video built in)processor (2400) memory (256MB) for £107 inc VAT.

Thats a great price?!?!? But not to me its not coz the dam things not worth the steam of a w@nk for audio work...

Theres no point basing the config for an audio PC round a cheap as chips board so you can buy a slightly better processor. Because the bottle neck is the cheap board....

I searched the suppliers extensivly when I bought my components and swapped about in the end... Think the board and Chip came from Aria.co.uk, hard disks and Ram from another and the rest from another...

In all honestly to anyone looking to build an audio PC look at someone like Carilons Website, pick a PC, look at the spec and find out what chipset the motherboard has (usually rebranded Asus boards in the Carillons anyway) Search on the net and look for a simerlar board with same chipset and then search on www.kelkoo.co.uk to find the cheapest UK suppllier...

Honestly though I cannot stress how good that Asus board is, it capable of everything you could want out of an audio PC without going into dual processor teritory...

Hmmmmm thats my "of on a tangent" rant over :oops:

PS I dont work for ASUS or ARIA I've just built 4 of these spec audio PCs over the last 6 months and both companies with both products & price have done me proud....

[dirty_bass]

I would use ebuyer, as aria tend to be a bit slow, and generally they don`t have that much good quality stuff.
And the new athlon 64 combined with a good motherboard is superb.
Intel are donkeywank microsoft butt ****ers, don`t buy their shit.

[neilried]

I would use ebuyer, as aria tend to be a bit slow, and generally they don`t have that much good quality stuff.
And the new athlon 64 combined with a good motherboard is superb.
Intel are donkeywank microsoft butt ****ers, don`t buy their shit.

All a matter of opinion like I say Ive used aria for 4 PCs Ive built in the last 6 months and never had speed or stock or price problems.

Dont agree re Intel, but never 'buy' MS.... ;o)

[xfive]

Not tryin to start a flame war here but the A64 beats the pants off P4 in 32bit applications, and also for the exact type of thing we do with these machines in regards to sequencing etc etc.

Check tomshardware.com for benchmarks and such.

It's not that its THAT much faster... its only a slight margin.. but when you factor in the part about Athlon's being cheaper, running cooler, and using less power... it becomes quite attractive.

[neilried]

It's not that its THAT much faster... its only a slight margin.. but when you factor in the part about Athlon's being cheaper, running cooler, and using less power... it becomes quite attractive.

Shiiiiiit wish Id have known more about these when I built mine if thats the case...

I have no speed complains and doubt that most of us would notice the difference UT it is ****ing noisy when its been on a while!!!!! :doh:

[xfive]

Well your noise could be due to other things mate..

Get an ultra quiet power supply (Antec makes good ones). A nice tight case... (again Antec makes great ones)... quiet case fans (those are usually the culprits)... and quiet cpu fans.

Also the Seagate Barracudas are some of the quietest drives you can get.

There are some great articles around on making super-low-noise machines..

[tocsin]

I just picked up an ASUS P4P800E Deluxe myself and, so far, have been quite happy with it. I only had one minor issue with it. Seemed you need to upgrade this bios to get the built in USB 2.0 ports to run at 2.0 speeds rather than 1.1. Upgrading the BIOS on these things couldn't be simpler. Program on the CD does it all for you. After that, it still wasn't running at 2.0 speeds though. Fix was simple enough. Uninstalled the USB drivers and let windows redetect them on boot. Then everything was good.

[neilried]

Well your noise could be due to other things mate..

Get an ultra quiet power supply (Antec makes good ones). A nice tight case... (again Antec makes great ones)... quiet case fans (those are usually the culprits)... and quiet cpu fans.

Also the Seagate Barracudas are some of the quietest drives you can get.

There are some great articles around on making super-low-noise machines..

I was trying to build it as quiet as poss but then the budget ran out....

Got Barracuda Drives for that very reason and managed to get an ex demo rack case out of carillon (do you sell cases, no, do you have an ex demo one, yes, can I have it, yes, sweet!!!) but used the PSU out my old PC for now and think thats causing most of my noise.....

Theres many people claiming to have near silent PSUs from £30 upwards but I do not believe these work. Can anyone recommend a top end silent PSU (whos the best) and one which is also very good but affordable (£75-100)???

Obviously adding more fans means more noise but are any of these aftermarket cooling devices worth checking out in order to create a through draft in the box to cool the hard disks as wondering if heat from these would raise the tempreture and get the CPU fan and PSU fan working overtime already thus creating the noise probs I have..

[tocsin]

When you have the cash, think about investing in a water cooling unit for your CPU if you want it to be quiet. Your CPU fan will generate a lot of noise. The Antec PSU are pretty quiet as well. It is also possible to add cooling block for your hard drives to the water cooling unit as well. Pretty much, if you go that route, you could have a machine where the only fan you'd need running would be the in your PSU and a small silent fan that blows the heat off the radiator for your water cooling unit which doesn't spin very hard at all. When I ran my machine with a water cooling system and an AMD 2200+ XP, it was much more silent than the setup I have now using a fan cooled P4 2.3. I would have continued using the water cooling unit but my model wasn't rated to cool a P4 3.2E so I didn't want to risk burning the chip out for silence.

[dan the acid man]

try these shops aswell http://www.overclockers.co.uk/
http://www.tekheads.co.uk/s/index iv'e always had good experiences with them.

I agree on the seagate drives, i occasionally hear mine when it first spins up, and then thats it, totally quiet