Open Mic: Tell Us Whether You Use Your Production Computer For Other Purposes
Computers are used for almost anything these days. Do you see music production as just one more thing your computer does, or do you have a special studio computer that is tweaked just the way you like it and isn’t used for anything else?
Each Tuesday we open our mic to readers and lurkers alike to come out of the woodwork and tell us your thoughts and opinion, your experiences and mistakes, what you love and what you hate. We want to hear from you, and here’s your chance.
Do you have one main computer that you use for everything—email, chatting, surfing, games and music production? Do you find that an effective solution, or is it mainly to save money? Is is it a space issue—you don’t have room for more than one computer? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach?
Or do you have a dedicated computer just for music production? How have you tweaked it to make it a more effective musical tool? Are you using special hardware or peripherals? Do you ever use it for anything else? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach?
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By Adrian Try
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For music production, I run Logic Studio (Logic
on a 1.8GHz Mac Dual G5 with 4GB RAM. The only other activity I use this machine for is watching tutorial videos and connecting to the net. Though I am sure there are other resources, I pretty stripped down the machines apps, etc for optimal use, as explained in this April 2007 Mac Life article
http://www.maclife.com/article/feature_revitalize_restore_and_renew_your_mac
I find the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages simply by having far less non-music production apps amd their related files clogging up the machine and drawing on CPU power. In my case, I have two other Macs in the studio so that helps
If anyone would like to point me toward similar procedures to keep a Mac lean for music production, please send them my way – groove7 at gmail dot com
Good question, Adrian
I’m on an Intel iMac 2.4 Ghz with 4 GB RAM. I use Logic 9. For now, I do everything on one machine. Music production, iWork, Internet, listening to music etc. It works, but I can definitely see the advantages of having one computer dedicated to music, and having a secondary computer for everything else. As soon as I have the cash for it, I’m on a Mac Pro with 16 GB RAM.
I use my 8CORE 2.26 GHz Mac Pro for Logic Pro and also Cinema 4D and Aodbe Premium Suite for Visual effects on a 23″ monitor. I do use the Internet on it too. I also have a Dell PC 2.79 GHz Intel with 4GB RAM on 2 x 19″ screens. This is used for FL Studio and other work. But I am mainly on the mac Pro. Everything creative is now done on my MAC. Sometimes I use my PC for creativity but not always.
I have a 2.4 ghz quad-core PC set up with a dual boot. One is an XP partition running Reaper, Record, and Live which is optimized for music with very little else running on it. It does have an internet connection for those occasions I need to look something up.
The other is a Vista part I use for everything else. The decision to run one machine is mainly financial but having a dual boot is a pretty good workaround.
I also have a laptop for gigging which is mostly just used for music but other things have sneaked on there over time
I’ve got an Intel Core i7 920, 6Gb RAM, Raid0 SSD drive for OS, 1.5Tb Raid1 for storage, running Windows 7 with Cubase 5, Reason, etc. Quad screen setup and Genelec 8030a’s + 6050b.
I pretty much use this machine for everything. I run a web design company during the day so all my development is done on this system. My studio is also my office.
Not ideal, but I just can’t afford to setup two systems and have a totally separate studio.
Some day I’d like to, but can’t see it happening any time soon.
I use a 1.83ghz macbook running ableton/reason and a load of plugins,
I get up in the morning do a few hours emails, myspace-ing,facebooking,
seeing whats new in the world,get to work composing for tv(real job)or remixes
and my original stuff,work till about 9/10 then wtch a film or dvd on it,
It is on from the moment i get up til I fall asleep.I favour the portable way of working but the disasters ive had DJing and playing live with it were not fun.
I would like a more stable system for live playing but i love my beat up macbook,
ive payed hundreds fixing it but its paid for itself a few times over.I even blew it up once whilst drunken sleepwalking and urinating on the plugsocket (for real)new adaptor and it works fine.
Pretty much everything on one system – 8 core 2.8 GHz Intel MacPro. This includes Adobe Creative Suite 4, MS Office, Email, FTP, Internet, Strata 3d, etc. The computer is in my design/music studio so I don’t need to reconfigure to do music. Recording with Logic Studio 8, EWQLSO, and a number of other plug in instruments. I have a majority of the samples stored on an external FW drive.
My 17″ MacBook Pro runs Logic studio 9, as well as the full adobe CS4 and XCode. It’s both my music machine and my work machine which I use for web and mobile development. I’ve got it as stuffed with ram as it will get, and I don’t think there’s any drawback in using the computer for other tasks besides music. I keep my work on a FW drive and my music on a separate FW drive.
I got such a top-of-the-line system that I *can* use it for everything. I’d like to have a machine just for music production, but I’m not an international music star… yet.
Lenovo Thinkpad t500, 2.53ghz Intel Core 2 duo, 3gb DDR 3 Ram, XP Pro sp3, 1.5 Tb esata RAID.
I run Ableton Live 8 and Renoise 2.
Though i do get on the internet w/this system its usualy for music purposes. My gf does use it from time to time for light internet browsing but thats usualy it. Suffice to say I try to limit my use to music production.
One machine for everything. A iMac 2,8GHz 24″ with a extra 24″ screen.
I use one machine for everything—a pc that I put together myself.
I’m using a Powercore mkII PCI card for extra plugin power—it rocks. I do use three hard drives—one for system+program files, one for audio, and one for everything else. This way it’s not that big a deal if the system crashes because it would only affect the system drive, which I could format with a fresh install.
For better stability I would like to have second one for just for production and connect them using a KVM switch, but then I think I’d want a network drive for swapping files.
lol @ me…. macbook 2.2ghz, 2GB/RAM 160GB HD, Garageband 08′ for messing around
Old dell 2.0GHZ AMD 64bit w/ sonar 7 Producer for more important stuff.
I’m using a 3.6 ghz Core 2 Duo hand built PC that I use for everyday AND music utilizing Ableton Live and Sonar 7…. BUT, I dual boot. The first boot is my everyday driver and the 2nd boot on another partition is my optimized audio boot.
Throw all those Macs in the trash, get real with Alienware, ha.
Quad core, WIN7, RME/Powercore/UAD, 4GB RAM, 2 TB storage.. works like a charm
I mainly use it for music production (Cubase, NI, Spectrasonics, Powercore/UAD…) but also for graphic and web design, sketching with tablet and motion graphics.
My computer isn’t the best, but it does it’s job. It’s a Duo Core 6000+ 3.0 GHZ, 3GB Ram, a 500GB Data Hard Drive and a 320 GB System drive. I divided my 320 GB into 3 systems. 1 System for regular basis activities like: Web Browsing, Music listening, Playing games, etc… 2nd system is for Graphics only, meaning for Photo and Video Editing. And of course I dedicated a 3rd system only for music. I run only programs that are dealing with audio on the 3rd system nothing else. No internet , and no games.
I use cakewalk 6. Yes I know it’s kind of old, but I’ve noticed that it’s far more stable than Cakewalk 8. cakewalk 8 crashed on me like the minute I started composing. For instruments I use: Symphobia, NI FM8, Rob Papen Blue, Albino 3, and Addictive Drums. Got many 3rd party effect plugins like, URS Compressor Pack, Waves 5 Bundle, Wave Arts, and Autotune.
Somewhere in my mid 20’s or 30’s, I’d like to buy myself a Rain Recording rack machine with 32 Gigs, 4 Tera Hard Drives, 8 Core Zeon Processors, and of course have my own studio. But for now, I’m pretty satisfied with what I have.
So hit me up, or email me, if you have any questions, and check out my music on http://www.soundclick.com/djwilliam