Question about new PC build and music hardware vs software.

[Bejack]

So i am going to combine 2 topics in one here and i would like your opinion on a couple of things. First off i want to get myself a new custom built pc for everyday use but also for music making. I want something that will last me a good 6 to 8 years just like my current pc (2.01 GHz single core, 2 gig ram, 256 meg video card) has lasted me for way longer than i have expected (close to 11 years). So i was thinking of buying an amd 8 cores pc @ 4 GHz with 24 gigs of ram and a 1 gig nvidia video card.

Question 1 : how do you feel about this being a long lasting pc and a good choice for amateur music making?

Question 2 : should i get at least a 2 gig video card even though i don't plan on playing many games and no new games? Let's say i would probably play a little bit of minecraft every now and then.

For the second part i need advice on music software/hardware. When i first came to OCR i had an objective in mind and that was to buy a yamaha motif keyboard. Currently i am aiming for the moxf6. The main reason why i wanted to buy the keyboard was because of the quality samples (well to me anyway they sound awesome compared to my soundfonts). But a few days ago i was watching some FL Studio videos on Youtube and i stumbled upon something called Nexus 2 by reFX and i was thinking to myself that this sounds as good if not better than the sounds from the moxf6. The price of the mofx (in canadian dollars) is 1250$ while the basic nexus patch (offering 1100 samples) is like 300$. This money saved could be used for other music related things or not. I would like to mention that i already own a midi keyboard at this point (a cheap one but still i think it fulfills my beginner's needs).

Question 3: Does buying the Nexus 2 vst or something similar like Zebra2 is better than getting a synth/workstation if i dont do any live music?

Question 4: Does buying the Nexus 2 gives me all the samples that i need to make full songs, including drums? Because i've been listening to the 20 minute long nexus demo on soundcloud and the majority of what i heard were synths, basses, guitars, pianos and other instruments but not much on the drums part...

Question 5: If it doesn't come with drums can you recommend another software that would cover pretty much all types of drums?

If you have any other advice that you think might be important or if you need more details please don't hesitate to ask me. I would really hate to make a very costly mistake if a synthesizer is not the way to go.

Thank you

[timaeus222]

i want to get myself a new custom built pc for everyday use but also for music making. I want something that will last me a good 6 to 8 years just like my current pc (2.01 GHz single core, 2 gig ram, 256 meg video card) has lasted me for way longer than i have expected (close to 11 years). So i was thinking of buying an amd 8 cores pc @ 4 GHz with 24 gigs of ram and a 1 gig nvidia video card.

Question 1 : how do you feel about this being a long lasting pc and a good choice for amateur music making?

Sounds like a substantial upgrade. 4 GHz is much faster than 2.01 GHz and 24 GB RAM is fantastic. I felt a significant difference going from 1.7 to 2.2 GHz, so I'd say go for an upgrade, but I think Flexstyle would know more about the specifics.

For the second part i need advice on music software/hardware. When i first came to OCR i had an objective in mind and that was to buy a yamaha motif keyboard. Currently i am aiming for the moxf6. The main reason why i wanted to buy the keyboard was because of the quality samples (well to me anyway they sound awesome compared to my soundfonts). But a few days ago i was watching some FL Studio videos on Youtube and i stumbled upon something called Nexus 2 by reFX and i was thinking to myself that this sounds as good if not better than the sounds from the moxf6. The price of the mofx (in canadian dollars) is 1250$ while the basic nexus patch (offering 1100 samples) is like 300$. This money saved could be used for other music related things or not. I would like to mention that i already own a midi keyboard at this point (a cheap one but still i think it fulfills my beginner's needs).

Question 3: Does buying the Nexus 2 vst or something similar like Zebra2 is better than getting a synth/workstation if i dont do any live music?

Yes. In fact, putting aside the bias I have for Zebra2 being awesome, I strongly believe it's one of the most flexible modular synthesizers out there, and honestly, it's capable of so many things. FM E. Pianos, many types of synth basses, atonal bells, many types of synth leads, arps, sound effects (pretty nitty gritty detail-based though), drums (difficult), pads, etc.

Regardless, I've found that sometimes synthesizers were made even better than their hardware counterparts, and Zebra was one example. Not only does that save room for your studio, but it's much less complicated to "wire up" to your computer (because there are no wires!).

Question 4: Does buying the Nexus 2 gives me all the samples that i need to make full songs, including drums? Because i've been listening to the 20 minute long nexus demo on soundcloud and the majority of what i heard were synths, basses, guitars, pianos and other instruments but not much on the drums part...

Question 5: If it doesn't come with drums can you recommend another software that would cover pretty much all types of drums?

Ultimately it's more effective to just have actual drum samples rather than try to download someone's synthesized drums from a soundbank. You can import samples into your DAW and write with those, and it's more RAM-conservative than having a synthesizer open with synthesized drum patches. I'm fairly certain drum samples are close to a few hundred KB each or smaller, even though they're WAVs. Edited March 3, 2014 by timaeus222

[Moseph]

Unless you're going to perform live or just really, really prefer the workflow that a hardware synth gives you, you'll get more for your money by doing everything in software. Maybe check out NI's Komplete 9.

24 gigs of RAM is probably overkill unless you're doing heavy-duty sampled orchestra stuff, but do at least get a motherboard that supports that much even if you're not going to use that much right now. The video card isn't important at all as far as music goes, and since you're not trying to run new games, I'd say spend as little money on the video card as possible. I have a 512MB Nvidia GT 240 that I got in 2010 (which was low-end even at the time) and can still run games well enough that I haven't seen any point in upgrading from it.

Edited March 3, 2014 by Moseph

[Nase]

While Zebra supposedly is very awesome, it sounds to me like you're looking for a rompler to cover all your needs.

(Rompler means more focus on good and diverse sounds out of the box, rather than deep editing options)

Kontakt is an ok choice for that (it's way more than a rompler but most people use it like one)

I'd keep an eye out for Sampletank 3 which is to be released this year.

If all goes well, it should offer the broad palette of sounds that made ST2 so good, while getting it up to date with features like round robin and more velocity layers and all that.

And yeah 24 gigs is A LOT. Probably cheap enough these days, but 12 are plenty.

[Flexstyle]

Re: your planned specs. That 8-core AMD processor will probably do a good job for you. If you're able to spend more, an Ivy Bridge-series Intel processor will probably be even better, and they tend to be incredibly long-lived, but your current plan should be plenty sufficient.

Video card-wise, I'd recommend something along the lines of this (AMD R7 260X) or this (nVidia GTX 750 Ti). Both will run you between $150-170, and should last you for several years, as long as you don't expect too much after a few years. As far as AMD vs. nVidia: expect to pay a little more for nVidia cards at the same horsepower level as AMD cards go for. AMD cards are usually faster for the money, but have been historically less stable than an equivalent nVidia card. If your rig is mainly used for audio, I'd recommend you spend a few dollars more and get an nVidia card, as it'll most likely save you some headaches during the setup process.

RAM-wise, 12 gigs is probably plenty, unless you're going hardcore with some gigantic libraries. Nexus 2 is a solid purchase any day of the week, especially since there are so many expansion packs for it. Komplete 9 is also a solid choice, as well, though, especially since it's going to be much more solid in terms of the diversity of sounds you get. If you asked me, I'd recommend Komplete over Nexus, for what it sounds like you want. Keep in mind that Kontakt (only one of the many included plugins) is nearly worth the asking price alone, let alone the included Guitar Rig, Massive, FM8, and others. Also, Native Instruments (the maker of Komplete) is an incredibly ubiquitous brand, so you'll have no trouble at all finding free sound and preset banks, whereas Nexus banks tend to be a bit more pricey.

Hope that helps!

[Meteo Xavier]

I'd keep an eye out for Sampletank 3 which is to be released this year.

If all goes well, it should offer the broad palette of sounds that made ST2 so good, while getting it up to date with features like round robin and more velocity layers and all that.

WHOA - they're finally bringing Sampletank 3 out?

I thought I'd be giving that to my grandchild at his high school graduation.

[Bejack]

I have checked Sampletank 2 and i didn`t really liked what i have heard compared to nexus 2 or komplete 9. Maybe Sampletank 3 will be awesome, who knows? If everything goes according to plan i should be able to buy my new computer during the month of May and buy whatever software i will have chosen a few weeks after that. So until then i will be keeping an eye on the "software deals thread" and if anything else comes to mind feel free to let me know.

Thanks everyone for your input

[Nase]

ST2 has zero wow factor these days, it's just very old.

It's very usable though, has very economic sounds, and you can still make excellent music with it.

Stuff like Nexus is just more in your face. It's clearly the better choice if you want a rompler for mainly EDM, but the insta-OMG-phat-preset factor can be deceptive.

I have relatively high hopes for ST3 because ST2 was simply a good rompler, precisely because of its unassuming nature.

It wasn't super impressive but super usable.

[SnappleMan]

Question 1 : how do you feel about this being a long lasting pc and a good choice for amateur music making?

You generally want to be careful with AMD CPUs. They have much higher clock speeds in order to come close to intel performance (which they still do not). This means they run much hotter, and when running a DAW for 8-12 hours a day you'll be subjecting your machine to constant 100% CPU throttle and max temps for long periods of time. This definitely degrades the life of your CPU and motherboard (if only a tiny little amount, but it can add up over a couple years). For DAWs I prefer Intel CPUs, they're just better suited to these types of workloads (and are much more powerful overall), but AMD can definitely give you great performance too.

As for memory I always max out my motherboard. Neither 24, 32 nor 64gb is overkill for anything. You have a 4, 6 or 8 core machine that can handle tons of tasks at once, so you'll need ample ram to keep up. Maybe someday you'll want to start recording audio into your projects, and loading up 24 or more tracks of 48khz 24bit audio into a your DAW will definitely start eating up your memory (unless you want to be brave and stream all your audio from disk).

And regardless of if you plan on doing 100% electronic music or not, eventually you WILL be curious about big drum and orchestral libraries, and those can easily add 2-6gb or memory load per instance into a project.

As for the hardware workstation VS software, that really comes down to how prepared you are to perform live and how interested you are in learning a hard synths patch structure. The value in a hardware workstation really comes from devoting time to learning it, and they are VERY complex. My suggestion to you would be to go for the VST and use some of the money you save to get a MIDI controller keyboard.

[Bejack]

So i was thinking of adding a solid state drive to my build and i was wondering what was the best thing to put on it, is it better to put the OS on the SSD or is it better to put FL Studio/Natvie Instruments software or the vst/libraries of sound? I will also have a 1TB drive that i will fraction into 2 or 3 partitions depending on what i put on the SSD.

Also just wanted to tell you that i have decided against buying nexus 2 and going for komplete 9 instead. I know that i am ahead of time because i am planning this for the month of May but i guess i'm just really looking forward to it

[Flexstyle]

Your first SSD should always be your boot drive. That'll make a big difference in how your system "feels."

Here's how I've done my rig:

- 250 GB SSD for boot drive and general programs.

- 500 GB SSD for Kontakt and EWQLSO libraries.

- 2 TB RAID0 array for loops, samples, stems, and Steam games.

- 500 GB HD for my cloud programs (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.)

My laptop runs with a 256GB SSD and I have most of the samples and libraries on a 1 TB external 7200RPM USB drive. It's definitely slower to load up projects than my desktop, but it's livable, so if you're short on money, just go for an SSD boot and see what you have left for storage stuff. I do recommend going RAID0 as a low-budget option if you can, since you get effectively double the speed of those hard drives.

Also, BACK UP EVERYTHING RELIGIOUSLY! At this point in time, I have at least three separate backups of everything that's important, so if a drive fails (and if it's a drive in the RAID array, it'll take down the data on the other one as well), I'm not screwed.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Flexstyle