Dynamite digital audio workstation; unlimited budget

Status
Not open for further replies.
did you not see my page one post? :p

highlights:
32 2.5GHZ Opteron cores
128GB of RAM in 16 channels
27 DSPs dedicated to audio for up to 192 independent tracks of audio
if we need more storage we'll just grab a pair of Magma boxes, one for the PT setup (yeah you could buy the Digidesign branded ones I guess), and one for a slew of RAID controllers to connect to a few backplane boxes (with whatever, 20TB a piece in them)


can I ask, why FX 5800? it'll be idling 99% of the time

just grab an NVS and use that for your multi-head

I guess I did miss that in your post, and when I selected those parts, for some reason I kept thinking this was for a video workstation, not audio. Honestly with no budget I'd just go with a Pro Tools setup and be done.
 
I guess I did miss that in your post, and when I selected those parts, for some reason I kept thinking this was for a video workstation, not audio. Honestly with no budget I'd just go with a Pro Tools setup and be done.

with absolutely no budget restraints a Pro Tools setup wouldn't even be the start...(what? so I might need to mix over 600 tracks of audio in 192khz some day, at once, in real time, into 7.1 or greater)

and hey, theres nothing wrong if you've got some video with your audio
those talkie pictures are becoming quite popular

*sigh* there really should be a thread for like "design the most expensive yet realistic systems"

on a serious note, to the OP:
Dan's storage setup is very nice, scale it back into reality and it'd work nicely for what you're doing (I'd reduce the number of SSDs, switch those 15k's out for conventional 7.2k's and up the capacity to ~1TB a piece)
 
I guess I did miss that in your post, and when I selected those parts, for some reason I kept thinking this was for a video workstation, not audio. Honestly with no budget I'd just go with a Pro Tools setup and be done.
See, I posted that "unlimited budget" part so that people wouldn't be overly frugal in their recommendations. I see that worked! That said, I did add "within reason", and being that we were talking about a workstation, I figured we would be talking Mac Pro prices (roughly $5,000). I obviously had forgotten where I was posting! :D

So no, the budget is not truly unlimited, and while Pro Tools would be nice, $15,000 - $30,000 is out of our range. So let's stick to the workstations, please!
 
How much disk are you going to need for everything you've worked with so far, and everything you expect to add to your setup?
Well, for our software instrument libraries, I'd say we are probably using about 1TB right now. With new yearly releases, we will probably add another 500GB or so per year. Our completed projects are probably taking up another 50GB, and our in-progress projects another 250GB currently.
 
See, I posted that "unlimited budget" part so that people wouldn't be overly frugal in their recommendations. I see that worked! That said, I did add "within reason", and being that we were talking about a workstation, I figured we would be talking Mac Pro prices (roughly $5,000). I obviously had forgotten where I was posting! :D

So no, the budget is not truly unlimited, and while Pro Tools would be nice, $15,000 - $30,000 is out of our range. So let's stick to the workstations, please!

something else to take a look at, what plug-ins are you using specifically? (Dan got me thinking about h/w accelerators in all this...)

http://www.uaudio.com/products/uad/index.html have a look at this, quite a bit cheaper than PT or similar (and it doesn't sound like you need a mountain of external I/O, just more processing power for plug-ins/effects, although it probably won't run your sampler (they're not very explicit what it can be re-tasked for outside of their software))

might be right up your alley, so to speak
 
Something else to take a look at, what plug-ins are you using specifically?
That looks great. I catch a glimpse of our effects plug-ins every now and again, but that is not really my department; you might say I focus on the art of production, while he focuses on the science. He's more the audio hardware/software junkie, I guess. I'm the "musician" and just a more general tech junkie. ;)

I know for a fact, though, that my partner loves UAD plug-ins. I will read up!
 
That looks great. I catch a glimpse of our effects plug-ins every now and again, but that is not really my department; you might say I focus on the art of production, while he focuses on the science. He's more the audio hardware/software junkie, I guess. I'm the "musician" and just a more general tech junkie. ;)

I know for a fact, though, that my partner loves UAD plug-ins. I will read up!

well, if he likes UAD, he can have up to SIXTEEN SHARC processors to handle them 'round the house

given that a single one of those is sufficient for my HD-DVD player I'd say thats probably more than enough (Sound on Sound said they could run something like 80 effects/plug-ins on the Quad before latency became a problem)
 
Updated 12/29/09

Hard|PC
765.98 Intel Xeon E5520 1366 Server Processor [X2]
509.98 6GB Patriot DDR3-1333 ECC Registered RAM [X2]
799.95 1TB Western Digital RE3 Hard Drive [X5]
289.99 Corsair Obsidian 800D Full Tower Case
449.99 SuperMicro Dual LGA 1366 EATX Server Motherboard
239.99 Corsair 1000HX Modular Power Supply
539.00 Intel X25-M 160GB Solid State Disk
31.99 Sony Optiarc 24X DVD/CD Rewritable Drive
109.99 Samsung Blu-ray Combo

169.99 XFX Radeon HD 5770 1GB

SUB 3904.85

Note: It was fun setting up the Mac equivalent on the Apple site. It would now run me a shade over $6000. No SSD, no Blu-ray.
 
Last edited:
If you're going to stick with 7200rpm drives for a RAID array, I'd go with WD RE3 drives instead of 'cudas. What RAID level did you decide on again?
 
If you're going to stick with 7200rpm drives for a RAID array, I'd go with WD RE3 drives instead of 'cudas. What RAID level did you decide on again?

this

plus, any word on UAD (I'm just curious about the hardware, never actually seen one in a production system, only demos)
 
If you're going to stick with 7200RPM drives for a RAID array, I'd go with WD RE3 drives instead of 'cudas.
I'm open to anything. I'll go check out the RE3's. I am taking it these are server/specialty drives? You make it sound like there are better options besides 7200RPM drives. What were you thinking, SSD's?

What RAID level did you decide on again?
I guess I haven't decided. Not sure if I should go RAID1 and avoid the dedicated controller, or embrace the controller and go RAID5 (or some other config).
 
I'm open to anything. I'll go check out the RE3's. I am taking it these are server/specialty drives? You make it sound like there are better options besides 7200RPM drives. What were you thinking, SSD's?

RE3 = this brand's "server-grade hard drive" designation. Typically this means a little bit better components, a lot better testing, a few database-centered features like NCQ, and a lot higher price - but recently some brands have started cutting the price premium to very little. I don't understand what exactly the difference is on the latest gen of these... but it can't hurt.
 
RE3 = this brand's "server-grade hard drive" designation. Typically this means a little bit better components, a lot better testing, a few database-centered features like NCQ, and a lot higher price - but recently some brands have started cutting the price premium to very little. I don't understand what exactly the difference is on the latest gen of these... but it can't hurt.

don't like all hard drives in the last few years have NCQ?

tom's says it doesn't do "tons" for a workstation:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/command-queuing-turbo-charge-sata,922-6.html

and WD's primary benefits for RE3 and RE4 are:
extended burn-in testing
RAID specific TLER (which only matters for RAID arrays and their performance, one of the big features of this series)
along with a bunch of marketing speak that basically says its designed for higher abuse environments than desktop drives, ever so slightly

basically, they're optimized for RAID environments and that leads to the better performance, and they usually have some fancy warranty behind them and claimed better failure rate #'s (no idea if that reflects reality, haven't ever bought a hundred of each and seen what lasts longer), normally you don't want RE's or equivs if you're not doing RAID, because of that TLER change, otherwise it should be more or less the same drive

and they usually aren't "much more expensive", at least in my experience, I remember buying RE2's for a customer a few years back, only cost a few dollars more per disk than the non-enterprise drives (and RE3's are somewhat cheaper than that, RE4-GP is looking nice, but that does get sorta...expensive), worked like a hitch for his RAID setup as well, but I guess perceptions of "is this more expensive" vary (for me, anything that costs more per GB than whatever I'm currently using is too much, other people may not feel the same)

-bob
 
Last edited:
Any new suggestions for Hac Pro/DAW 2011? Wondering if I should still go with my old build, or maybe go with Sandy Bridge.
 
Last edited:
if you are trying to build a top end box and it's not super urgent I would consider that LGA2011 will be coming fairly soon. This will combine the faster cores of sandy bridge with higher core counts, more memory channels, more PCIe and even multi-socket support.
 
if you are trying to build a top end box and it's not super urgent I would consider that LGA2011 will be coming fairly soon. This will combine the faster cores of sandy bridge with higher core counts, more memory channels, more PCIe and even multi-socket support.
Well, I am looking to go in the next two weeks. I am not really one to wait for new tech, usually, and I wouldn't really describe the immediate build as super-high-end. Probably around $1200 for this one.
 
I am looking to go in the next two weeks. I am not really one to wait for new tech, usually, and I wouldn't really describe the immediate build as super-high-end. Probably around $1200 for this one. I'd like to go a little nicer on the power supply, but I want to use the Silverstone cabling kit, and I don't want to go over $150 total, as a lower budget has been introduced. It has reviewed well, so I feel pretty safe with it.

Preliminary Build

I know I can go 12GB of RAM, and save a few hundred bucks, but the client wants to eventually max it out (32GB). Apparently, he's been given information that suggests his plugins and VST's are dragging because of a RAM shortage. I don't know much about that particular issue, so I'm just obliging.
 
All right, you know what? Since this is a new build altogether, please make a new thread about it. Please make sure to answer the stickeid questions as it appears that there is a difference between this new PC and the old one.

Locking this thread in the meantime.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top