Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How to Build an Audio PC: Part 1 – What’s it all about?”.
Hello, I’m dr. Vincent and welcome to not a music technology. Today, we’re gon na build an audio PC. Oh yes, a computer, a Windows, computer, a computer for a running audio for running music production software instruments, effects huge great big, sound libraries, mixing all your processing mastering capturing live performance and post-production and sound to video and scoring that sort of thing and at the end Of this video, what you should hopefully have is an audio PC that can sit at the very heart of your studio.
I’M going to show you what specs to look for what your shopping list should look like and how you go about choosing those parts and then we’re going to build the thing, and I put the whole thing together and I’ll. Take you through every single step, and while we do that I’ll, be sharing all those little nuggets of advice that I’ve picked up through all my years of making audio pcs professionally and don’t worry. This is all far easier than you would think. All you really need is a screwdriver and a bit of spare time, but first, let’s get some of those obvious questions out. The way well simply put an audio PC.
Is a computer that’s been designed installed and configured expressly for music reduction. That means running digital audio workstations, running virtual instruments, sound library effects, processing, mixing all of that stuff being an entire virtual studio or being the recording and mixing part of the larger hardware studio doesn’t matter. The audio PC is the heart of your setup, where everything ultimately ends up for mixing down to whatever platform it is you’re going to send it off to you can of course, run music software or any old computer. Any old bit of crap you got knocking around you can run stuff on, but if you’re serious about your music making, then you should be serious about the tools that you use that allow you to accomplish that and so you’re gon na want a computer. That’S going to offer you high performance masses of tracks, no real limits on how many plugins you want to run, and you want to do all of that at the lowest possible latency and with a workflow, that’s uninterrupted by facebook, notifications and other bits and shenanigans going On you can save all that sort of stuff for your laptop and many many people have found that really to get music done to make and finish your music. You need a dedicated place to do it and a dedicated computer to do that on.
Hence the audio PC, also, historically, a lot of computers are just not up to the task. Many many people have found trying to install audio interfaces or MIDI keyboards on to laptops or little crappy. Computers just ends up in kind of this cycle of nightmare, not going anywhere too many problems in storing things, difficulties glitches noise in the audio it just goes on and on, because computers are not built to do this. They’Re not designed to do real-time audio.
To do real-time, mixing to process audio to run virtual instruments to generate sounds out of thin air to do it all, while recording an entire orchestra in the other end and playing back other stuff. While live mixing this and doing this all to video while running enormous reverbs, you know when you think about it, making music on a computer is one of the hardest things your computer will ever do I mean most of the time you’re just surfing the internet right, Maybe a little bit of Instagram, perhaps the odd game I mean gracious, but for making music the list of things it’s using. Every single part of the computer.
The processor is flat out trying to create virtual analog sounds at the same time as processing audio and routing everything in and out, your hard drives are abuzz with pulling samples on putting tracks on putting tracks off in both directions. At the same time, the screen is trying to keep everything updated and in sync, and showing you all. What’S going on in very, very fine detail and you’re, then throwing in a load of MIDI data for MIDI controllers and got all that automating code on it’s just an immense job and most computers are just really designed to surf the internet and what you’ll find at The end of the day with your audio PC is that it’ll be the most powerful machine that you’ve ever seen. You know the most powerful thing in your house and, of course it will run games brilliantly. They all run video editing software, brilliantly Photoshop, any kind of content creation.
Software will run fantastically on your audio PC because it will be a well-made, wellspect, stripped-down, tweaked and configured little powerhouse of computing. Wonder that’s what we’re, after with an audio PC, not messing about trying to do this thing. Properly. Mak hyeo mak buy a Mac.
An Apple Mac go buy, one, stop now, rest stop go, buy a Mac go, buy a mac, it’s simple gone by! Okay, all in Apple Mac is, is a well made PC, which is what we’re going to do now. We’Re going to build a well made well designed well thought out, PC! That’S all an Apple Mac is so if you want one of those just go and buy an Apple Mac. What’S stopping you what I would suggest what I would put forward is that for the same money they’d spend on Apple Mac, you can build just. I can’t even put into words how Super Sonic your computer could be because apples are expensive. You pay because it’s a decent computer, now we’re going to build a decent computer and we’ll build it for about half the price, and it will be every bit as functional can run. Every bit of software can provide all the services that an apple mate can, and I know what you’re thinking you’re thinking, it’s always run better yeah. They do when compared to your crappy computer, that you’ve got in your kitchen that all your kids use yeah. Absolutely because the problem with this equation is that we are so used to using pretty crappy computers, cheap ones, ones that came from Tesco’s.
They cost a couple of hundred quid and then you’re expecting it to run like a 2,000 pound Apple Mac, no PC. It does not, it just doesn’t equate. So if you join with me and build an audio PC made from good parts, high-quality bits and pieces and it’s put together and configured correctly, it can be every bit as stable every bit as reliable, every bit as awesome as an Apple Mac. But if you’re in any doubt at all, then just go and buy just go and buy a Mac, no problem go, do it the Intel and AMD question is one that’s been with us for decades now and really probably it doesn’t matter. What I will say is this: I have nearly always and exclusively built on Intel. The reason being is because it’s the just always been the stuff that has worked, AMD have done impressive stuff and every now and again they pop up and go wow. Look at all this stuff and you go wow, that’s great, but you come back to Intel because you know that it continues to work. It’S not a flash in the pan, it’s not a sudden thing and then it goes away.
It’S just consistent and it’s there. The other thing is that every manufacturer who releases software who releases audio interfaces will test it on an Intel system, because that’s the most prevalent system around and they’re not likely to test it on an AMD system. Necessarily so you don’t have the perhaps underlying assurance that everything is going to work like it. Probably will absolutely you can argue in the comments down here. They absolutely will work brilliantly on AMD. That’S fine! My expertise is in Intel sist, and so I will stick with that and I will recommend that if you want to build an AMD system, that’s fine fill your boots.
Well, I don’t mind, but in this article I’m gon na be looking and sticking with Intel all right. Well, my quick resume is that I’ve been building computers for about 20 years, but not just building computers, computer computers for studios, no, no computers for musicians, building audio pcs! I was part of the team that created the carillon ac1, the original designed for audio computer, and that was back roundabout in the year 2000 and I ran the carillon operation, the technical side of that. For about five years, we supply pcs to people like Chuck, Amy David Arnold, I built personally built a PC for Sir George Martin and since then I’ve run rain computers in the UK and, more recently, in the last four or five years, I’ve been doing my own Thing with Morton music technology and I’ve supplied computers to studios and to individuals, sometimes they’re, just people making music at home.
Sometimes it’s an entire suite of computers for a school or college or a university, all of them running professional software in professional spaces and all the time I’ve been doing that with the absolute minimum amount of technical support, because they’re well-made machines we build them correctly. We build them well, we install them well and because of that they are completely capable of running whatever software or audio interfaces you want to throw into them. So I have hundreds and hundreds of computers out there doing the job and doing the job every day, and so it’s that expertise that I would like to bring and to offer to you – and I hope you find this helpful .