Speaking of computers, what are you using - desktop, laptop, or tablet?

[Beck]

I run a hybrid analog/digital studio, but my DAW is built around a PC tower. Once I find a good motherboard I stick with it for a long time... longer than most people I'm sure.

[MrJoshua]

Originally Posted by Phil O'Keefe

Sounds like quite a cool setup. Is that mobo still available? Have you had any issues with it?



Interesting. What was your reason for doing so? Don't you miss the ability to run TDM plugins?

I notice you have the UAD-2 Duo too. I'd love to add one to my HD rig, but I'm not so sure I'd want to switch from one to the other exclusively. Besides, I suspect that it would cost me a fortune in plugins to reach parity with what I already have.

How are you getting along with the UAD? Do you like it?

I'm not sure if that particular model is still available or not. I used it because my HD system uses the old PCI cards, and the Jetway motherboard has four PCI slots with native chipset support.

As far as why I switched to Native, it's mainly just for future support and compatibility. I only switched to HD in the first place because I put in a lowball bid on an HD|2 setup on eBay and won it, much to my surprise. Before that I was using an LE rig with a 002 Rack. I'm mostly a home project studio, with a limited amount of commercial work with local bands. Honestly I probably have a lot more rig than I really need.

Since switching to HD|Native, there are a few things that I miss. I had forgotten how annoying it is to worry about buffer size and stuff while tracking. It isn't usually an issue because I've successfully recorded 24 tracks at a time at a buffer size of 32 at 48kHz (I haven't had an opportunity to record that many tracks at once at 88.1kHz yet) without straining the system. I haven't needed to overdub anything after having a lot of plugins in the mix yet, so how well low-latency monitoring works remains to be seen.

I also miss Heat, but that was the only TDM-only plugin I really used a lot. And the Studer plugin on the UAD is doing a lot to alleviate my desire for Heat.

As far as the UAD, it's sort of a mixed bag I guess. I love the plugs but it does introduce another element into the system where you're sending data back and forth between another PCIe card, and there are occasional issues. I find it's happiest when I keep the system at a sample buffer of 512 or 1024, which means you can't really track with them. If I'm completely done tracking and have just moved on to mixing, it's great. I love the Neve 88RS channel strip plugin. The Little Labs VOG plugin is a go-to for me on kick and snare, and the Fatso Jr. plugin is very useful on guitars.

[CME]

Originally Posted by gubu

I thought the g5s were Intel?

Actually scratch that - I'm now the highest bidder, at

[Lee Flier]

Actually the poll only lets you choose one thing! I mostly use a home built desktop PC, but I also sometimes use a laptop, a tablet, an iPhone, or an analog tape deck. I'm not picky.

[gubu]

Originally Posted by CME

G5's are not Intel. Mac Pro's are. Some times people try to pass off G5 PowerMac's as Mac Pro, but they aren't. Not that PowerMac's aren't great machines. Just want you to be aware of what you're buying.

Thanks!

Yes, I've been checking specs, and considering that I don't have the $$$ to do any serious software upgrades, a G5 PPC Mac is exactly what I'm looking for.

My current machine has a 1GHz CPU and 1G of memory, so one of these dual 2GHz G5s, with 3 or 4G of memory would be a huge improvement to my setup. Imagine not having to print the most CPU intensive processing, and/or groups on every mix!

And, you should see the ridiculously low prices that some of those G5 machines are going for..

[Adacto]

Mainly desktop... can't really beat it for the 'power-tasks'. I do occasional recording on an Asus Netbook and it's usually a bloody nightmare! I use Reaper on the Netbook (low overheads) but PT8 on desktop (PC).

Jon

Edit: just seen Phil's second post. Oops. Skewed the poll. My bad.

[EJ_Boy]

Originally Posted by gubu

I thought the g5s were Intel?

Actually scratch that - I'm now the highest bidder, at

[gubu]

 

Originally Posted by EJ_Boy

Just wondering, what ever came of this?

 

Still looking. The ones that have the spec I need are all going for slightly outside my budget. I missed a 2x2GHz with 4G ram a few days ago that went for

[ambient]

I built PC a few months ago for use as a DAW and general internet/media stuff.

CPU: Intel i5 ivybridge
RAM: 2x4gb corsair
Motherboard: Asus H77 micro-ATX
Storage: 1x500Gb Western Digital Caviar Blue
Graphics: Intel on-chip
OS: Windows 7 home premium, Ubuntu 12.10 (dual-boot)
DAW: Reaper

I had planned to add more ram, storage (including a SSD) and a GPU card, but so far it's had no problem with anything I've thrown at it. I will probably add some stuff eventually, but it isn't needed at the moment.

[Lee Knight]

I've built a PC, I've bought and used a Dell Professional Workstation, I've used early Macs... but I have to say, my most trouble free experience with audio has been the iMac. Hook up ext. drives, setup a firewire 800 interface, and I've recorded numerous albums without a hitch. Full band tracking, lots of tracks in mixdown with lots of plugins. Soft samplers, soft synths, etc.

Yes, there are limitations but I'm very happy with the results, workflow and reliability for so little cash outlay.

I keep the Dell Workstation as my "mastering machine" with HarBal, Sound Forge, Waves etc mastering plugs.

[Majoria]

Desktop

I have Pro Tools 8 on both my Macbook Pro and my Mac Pro but any serious projects are only done on the Mac Pro. Sometimes I will track with the laptop on location and bring it back to the tower that has more toys available.

[The dman]

Desktop. I built a machine around an 2600k i7 overclocked to 4.7 and I honestly can't imagine needing more power for the kind of recording I do which is mostly audio with limited Vsti's

[WRGKMC]

Originally Posted by Beck

I run a hybrid analog/digital studio, but my DAW is built around a PC tower. Once I find a good motherboard I stick with it for a long time... longer than most people I'm sure.

I'm kind of the same deal. Its like I never seem to give up on a functioning unit while It can still do the job
I'm on my 4th desktop and still have two other working DAW's.
I thought of using more than one in the studio and really cant think
of an application where I could use it.

Bout the only thing I could use it for is to mix down from onr daw to another through hardware effects units
like you used to do with analog tape decks but even there its just as easy to loop back to new tracks in the same DAW.

So I have one in storage, and the other sits in the living room next to my recliner.
I use it istead of a notebook for throwing down ideas. I have a drum machine and practice amp
plugged in and when I come up with an original song I dont want to forget, I just boot it and hit record.

[ArcadiaDivine]

Right now I only use my Mac Book Pro late 2011 edition. Before that I only used an old Windows Desktop (which I still have) running Vista.

[CME]

Originally Posted by The dman

Desktop. I built a machine around an 2600k i7 overclocked to 4.7 and I honestly can't imagine needing more power for the kind of recording I do which is mostly audio with limited Vsti's

That's what I thought when I built my 17-930 based rig. And don't get me wrong it does more than I really need it to. But I can push it pretty hard already. At least with Slate's VCC (w/oversampling maxed at 8x) and VTM on every channel and their FG-X on the master fader. However dropping the oversampling to 4x or removing FG-X gets me some headroom. And really FG-X is the biggest culprit. It is designed as a mastering plug-in. Anywho seems as the more power I have the more I use.

Now if I could just come up with the $$ to build a rig based on this. Add a pair of 8-core procs and have 32-virtual cores of power. Should make even Tim "the toolman" Taylor happy. lol

[nat whilk II]

I built my last two computers. The DAW one is now 3 years old, but still pretty powerful i7 based. I loaded it up to be able to run big piano sample sets. Which is does effortlessly.

I use the Universal Audio cards, so a tower is the only way to go for me at least for now.

Really, "building" a computer makes it sound like it's more difficult maybe than it actually is. The real work is in selecting the components, making sure it's what you need and it all works together. The "build" part is pretty lego-like for the most part, the parts being so modular and ready to go except for a few switches or tweaks to mess with.

I've always liked putting stuff together, and I learn a lot about the guts of the box that runs my life, so I'll keep building them until they figure out how to make the big boxes obsolete. Won't be all that long now probably. I guess progress means "know less, buy more".

nat whilk ii

[Phil O'Keefe]

Originally Posted by nat whilk II

Really, "building" a computer makes it sound like it's more difficult maybe than it actually is. The real work is in selecting the components, making sure it's what you need and it all works together. The "build" part is pretty lego-like for the most part, the parts being so modular and ready to go except for a few switches or tweaks to mess with.

Very true. Plus, if / when something breaks, you know how to replace it yourself and don't have to wait two weeks for Apple to get around to it.

I really need to upgrade my PC...

[Phil O'Keefe]

Originally Posted by MrJoshua

MB: Jetway JNAF92-Q67
CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz
RAM: Corsair 4x4GB (16GB total) DDR3-1333 memory
VIDEO: Onboard video from i7
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Pro Tools HD 9.0
HD|3 PCI-x Accel
UAD-2 Duo

I have switched from HD|3 PCI-x Accel to HD|Native, though.

What prompted the move to HD Native?

Looks like your motherboard is still available at Newegg - for about $200. Does that sound about right? I too, am using a PCI based HD Accel setup, and it would be nice to have a faster CPU, more RAM, and a better motherboard with more PCI slots. Maybe that's the way I should go... stay native on my MacBook Pro, and upgrade the PC computer and add two more PCI-x cards to my HD|2 Accel setup - they're dirt cheap these days. Maybe consider adding a couple of UA PCI-E cards on top of it...

I wonder if we'll hear anything new from Avid regarding either a Thunderbolt interface with DSP (I see no reason why they couldn't build one) and / or Pro Tools 11 at NAMM.

[MrJoshua]

Hey, Phil.  I thought I replied to you a while back but now I don't see it.  Maybe it got lost in the forum changeover.

 

The swap from the HD|3 Accel move to native was purely about future compatibility.  That said, I recently moved the HD|Native card over to another computer as a side project, and the studio rig I listed is back to the HD|3 setup along with a clean install of HD 10.3.3 and I must say I had forgotten how nice it was not to have to worry about buffer settings or anything like that.  I'm kind of torn at the moment.  On the one hand I'm sure that when PT11 comes out I'll see something about it that I want.  On the other hand, the HD|3 rig runs nice and stable, never runs out of power, runs HEAT, there's no buffer settings to worry about EVER...  I might just freeze this setup as it is.  Maybe I'll build a remote recording setup with the Native card and a couple of old blue boxes, or pick up another Lynx Aurora 16 for it.

 

Either way, trying to decide whether to stick with HD or going with HD Native is a pretty nice problem to have. 

 

As far as adding the UAD-2 cards, I have to say I'm a fan.  That said, they're for mixing, not tracking.  They work best with higher buffer settings (512 or 1024 samples - another nice thing about using HD is that I can just keep the buffer settings that high and not worry about it during tracking) and definitely aren't zero latency.  But they sound freaking awesome, and that's the point as far as I'm concerned.  I'm sure you have plenty of local places to check out the UAD-2 cards and such, but if you're ever in north Alabama (or Nashville, which is about two hours away) and want to check out some UAD plugs or test drive the HD|3 setup on recent PC hardware, let me know.

[Todzilla]

I had a very reliable Mac G5 (PPC) for about ten years.

I finally upgraded to a tricked out 15" MacBook Pro (quad core 2.2GHz i7, 16G RAM, 256SSD) and it screams in 64 bit mode.  The portability of the MBP trumps the power of a desktop any day for my work processes.

Since my DAW of choice (MOTU's Digiral Performer) is now multi-platform, I'll have a few years to decide if I want to stick with Apple or go Windows (if either platform exists then).

I can't imagine a tablet having anywhere near the power I need for dense mixes with lots of virtual processors and virtual instruments.