Where to buy a PC designed specifically for professional audio engineering

[Jean-Marc Boulier]

Hi all,

What are good places to buy a desktop computer designed specifically for professional audio engineering (very reliable, fast, silent, low latency, no wireless connection or any other useless feature for audio engineering)? Ideally I would like to find a shop with people who are experts in audio processing and latency issues, and can assemble a computer with the best combination of parts for this specific use.

 

[amosteobird]

1 - Funan Center

2 - Sin Lin Square

 

[blueprintstudios]

I have been buying from fuwell.com.sg (simlim square) since year 2000. You’re not going to easily find a shop who specialises audio and PC (im sure youve heard the line “just buy mac if you can easily afford it”). Their usual clients are gamers

Dont just focus on pc parts. The trick to a great setup is all about compatibility / reliability. Pointless if you got the best newest thunderbolt AIF (audio interface) and latest windows 10 update (that creates more problems) but due to driver incompatibility between them that causes problems in recording/mixing etc you gotta hit the forums to watch out for incompatible issues of the item you intend to buy or own. See if it clashes.

I recommend you look in reverse starting from your OS > DAW > your AIF (audio interface) > the connectivity (usb/firewire/thunderbolt/pcie) > your mainboard / cpu / ram / ssd or nvme.
Generally the popular low latency AIF brand is RME, and the additional DSP mixing side is UAD.

Personally I use an old 2011 3930k cpu / asus x79 board with focusrite ls56 firewire ti chipset card (the onboard firewire is via not ideal) for recording and uad + rme hammerfall for mixing, and a cheap fanless old vga card gt610 and some padded silent pc casing from fractal and liquid cooling. Windows 7 64 bit. Cubase 10 pro. Outdated, old but never failed on me (except for my house power trips during extreme bad weather).
It still takes maintenance habits to clear out the dust in your computer via a blower approximately every 3 to 6 months. But best isolation is to put the cpu outside the room or something or in a iso cabinet if you really need that quiet. Depending on your room setup.

Hope this is of help. Best wishes of health to everyone here during covid.

 

[stlee2015]

if you want the rolls royce, get an AMD 3rd generation threadripper 3990x processor witih the trx40 motherboard with 128g ram preferable those 4000 plus hz rams should have e,nough juice to run your daw etc software to do any audio rendering and enough to spare. customised build is what you need.
good luck.

 

[Jean-Marc Boulier]

Thanks for your replies. I have already bought my new PC from PCKaki (https://www.facebook.com/pckaki/), which I highly recommend because the prices are great and the guy is super helpful and accommodating. Got an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-core with 64 GB of RAM and 2 SSDs.

Now it looks like my AI is failing on me (Focusrite Clarett 8Pre) so I might have to replace that soon, too...

 

[blueprintstudios]

Good stuff, surprising to hear a decently recent focusrite AIF failing considering mine is almost a decade and runs fine. No point for me to make any overhaul now due to covid.

What DAW are you on? Im assuming youre on win10

 

[Jean-Marc Boulier]

Yes I am surprised as well but that is what the Focusrite support told me so... It's still very much usable though, the only thing is that I need to switch the speakers off when changing the sample rate. I have to do this quite often but for someone whose workflow doesn't involve frequent sample rate changes, hey wouldn't even know there is a problem. I guess it's a good reason to activate the GAS as well... I'm looking into the recent Antelope Discrete 8 that would be great for my setup.

And yes I am on Windows 10, and my DAW is Reaper.

 

[blueprintstudios]

Yes, but if you’re recording for a client the last thing you want is it to screw up the session. Time wasted. (Thats why i got like 4 different branded spare audio interfaces and multiple units of everything as backup). Reaper is good, theyve come a long way. So what samplerate do you record at? Got a soundcloud or a site to check out your stuff?

 

[Jean-Marc Boulier]

You are right! I do have spares too, you never know... I'm mainly doing mixing and mastering though, so I usually have some time to adjust in case of a breakdown.

If I record myself, I will do it at 96 kHz because it gives me more latitude for audio editing/stretching. Otherwise I am working both with audio and video so I often switch between 44,1 and 48.

I do have a SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/swmusicprod and a website: http://www.swmusicprod.com/