Carillon and other turnkey PC recording systems

I'm considering purchasing a Carillon turnkey system with the PC, Sonar and the M-audio 2496 PCI soundcard. Does anyone have any experience with Carillon and/or one of their systems? If so, what was your experience?

What does everyone think about the idea of purchasing from these folks, as opposed to having a local computer guy build one according to the same type of specs as Carillon uses? I'm in the southern US; they're up north. I've been unable to find a local computer guy who is familiar with the specific issues posed by music recording PCs.

Carillon presumably sells systems which they've already troubleshot. If I encounter problems, I can go to one company, and that company should be accountable for problems, regardless of whether the fault is with the PC, software, or soundcard. The local computer guy may be tempted to blame the problem on the software or the soundcard, when he really doesn't have the answer.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Jerrye,

I have a Carillon system, and I really like it. Alot!

I've used and built many systems over the years while continuosly on a perpetual search for the perfect "quiet" PC for use in the studio recording environment.

I use my Carillon with Sonar3,, as well using it as the primary office system for running business with MS Office Pro 2003. I have tested it with Cubase SX, and there is even a picture of Mr. Steiburg sitting at his desk in his studio/office with the Carillon PC mounted directly underneath his desk, smiling and endorsing the Carillon PC for it's quietness and other qualities.

What I like about my Carillon:

1. IT's SO QUIET!!!! The quietest computer (that has motors inside) that I've ever used.
2. Standard of standards - Intel 845 motherboard, processor and chipset, controller, etc, These are the components I would have selected if I had built the system myself. It really is basically an OEM clone with standard components, but assembled in a uniquely quiet platform.
3. Form factor very physically expandable - for adding extra drives, RAM, etc.
4. Solid, heavy well built iron-clad case design. It's heavy compared to other PC of it's size. Not a problem for me.
5. Rack mountable, without purchase of optional rack mounting kits.
6. Massive heat sink on CPU, for conductive thermal dissipation without a CPU fan.
7. Power supply fan blades and cowling are "tuned" as to cancel resonant noise of air flow.
7. Power supply fan blades have larger petals, so they can move more air volume with lower motor RPM as the motor turns more slowly than other power supply fans.
8. Special quiet motors in fans with special brushes, bushings, and armatures.
9. Oh and did I mention, ... the system is very very quiet overall.
10. USB 2.0 - 4 independant USB busses (hubs) all on back of system, none on front.


Other comments:

1. System came with ATI Radeon 7000 AGP video card. Can use as dual head (dvi+vga), but I later replaced with Matrox 650AGP (vga + vga) due to superior drivers and richer software utility for dual monitor use. Make sure your video card is fanless, as are both the Radeon 7000 and Matrox 650.
1. My drive zero (C) "System" drive is Ultra DMA - 40 Gig
2. My drive one (D) "Data" drive is also Ultra DMA 120 Gig
3. My external drive is a Maxtor 200 Gig drive, firewire/USB2, very quiet, and I prefer using firewire interface rather than USB. Firewire card not procurred from Carillon.
4. Carillon did not come with firewire interface, I added it to the PCI bus, cheap at about $35, - Adaptec 4300
5. Rack form factor is 4U of rack space, I wish it were half that size. Carillon told me they have a 2U system in the works. When they release it, I'll likely be getting a few of those, as long as they are as quiet or quieter than this unit.
6. I use a M-Audio Delta 1010 Interface and the M-Audio 8x8 MIDI rack peice. Happy with the equipment and the drivers. (well-written WDM drivers are more important than the hardware feature set)

I use Windows XP Pro sp2 on this system along with many other programs and plugins. System is fast. I'm getting 1.5 ms recording in Sonar3 with WDM drivers on the Delta 1010.
7. I am using Sony LCD 19" and LCD 15" monitors on this system ... now addicted to spanning my Windows desktop across multiple monitors, I'll never go back to a single monitor.
8. My system has 1 Gig of RAM inside, and is expandable.

Note, once you get a quiet computer, you will then begin to notice other noises such as mouse clicks in your mikes, and can lower the threshold ony any noise gates previously required in the studio to silence the PC equipment.

If you do decide to have someone build a system for you, check out PC Power and Cooling, - premium supplier of quiet power supplies and OEM PC cases.

Although I'm technically comfortable with building OEM systems as I have so many times in the past, I just don't want to anymore. So I'm very happy to have found a vendor, Carillon that can build the system for me, with the components of my choosing, even better than I can, with standard parts, while accomplishing the quiet computer goal.

As for Carillon providing unified support, I've heard they do a good job, although I would probably not require that type of support. I bought a PC with standard components, so that I could be independant of the company that built it for me, and do repairs myself. When you recieve the machine, it is kinda tweaked up for pro audio and there is a program built into it that allows Carillon to umbilically connect to your computer online and do diagnostics and configurations if that's what you need. I formatted the hard drive and installed WinXP Pro (System comes with MS WinXP Install CD, not just a recovery CD) myself, they're good about that if you want to work that way. I was able to install the Delta 1010 PCI card with no problems. System came with a PCI Intel modem, which I quickly removed too, system has embedded Intel ethernet network interface built in.

Carillon was a little slow in getting the machine to me after I ordered it from their US location, don't know why. Apparently, to speed up my custom order, they had their Canadian office build it for me, it actually says "Canada" on the front of it.

So, I wish I could get a 2U rack version of this machine, Also, a 2 CPU version would be nice too, unless the added CPU heat would mean that more cooling were required resulting in more fan noise. I wish it had firewire built in, although adding it was so easy and cheap. And it would be nice to have at least one USB and firewire ports on the front of the system.

It has a nutrix connector, which I don't use.

Other than that, I would liberally recommend the Carillon to anybody using any Windowsw based DAW system. If somebody else has found something as good or better, I'd be interested, but Carillon systems gets 2 thumbs up from me.

I hope my experience dump is of some help to you.

Good luck,

-- Roger

Also look into In Tune Productions http://www.n2nproductions.com/ e-mail sam@n2nproductions.com he also does turnkey DAW's and sells all related items. I do business with him frequently, and have been satisfied every time.

I, BTW, built my own DAW and feel I have benefited from the experience. But the benefit comes at a price.

what's the "price"? time? frustration? (just curious, 'cause I'm about to build my first DAW myself.)

ORIGINAL: Roger Bowers

there is even a picture of Mr. Steiburg sitting at his desk in his studio/office with the Carillon PC mounted directly underneath his desk, smiling and endorsing the Carillon PC for it's quietness and other qualities.

Kind of ironic when most Cubase users complain that Steinberg VSTi's&Plugs cause more denormal problems with P4's than most,and Carrilion only sells P4 based systems.Anyway,I see on their site that their starter system w/Audiophile starts at $1739.00(yikes!),and that sytem consists of a 2ghz P4,a single 40 gig HD(thats it?),and only 256 RAM(they don't mention DDR).To build the same system yourself would cost around $400.00 or less,so their charging around $1,300 for the nice case and assembly.To even use that system w/Sonar realistically,you'll have to upgrade the ram and extra HD immediatley or at some point,which means youll be under the hood anyway in no time(might as well start right away).These days since all new mobo's are jumperless and default bios settings are usually just fine(except maybe FSB settings,and disabling perephials you don't need),building a DAW is basically assembly,and basic assembly at that.For $1739.00 you could build an AMD based FX-51 w/DDR sytem and get change fer christ sakes.If your too intimidated to build yourself at least check out your options,there are other companies out there.Consider another thing about being dependant on a company,if something goes wrong you'll suffer days if not weeks downtime(shipping back and forth alone),to fix something you could do yourself in minutes.My opinion is to build an AMD based machine yout self,cut to the chase.

I've had a Carillon AC-1 for about a year and a half, and it's been a rock. Not the cheapest out there,but hey, who can't use another big tax deduction !

Mine came with the Intel850 board, P4 2.0gHz, 500 MB RDRAM (I've since upped it to a gig of RAM) a 40-gig system drive and an 80-gig audio drive (which died and was replaced with a 120-gig WD 8MB cache), Matrox G550 and a TI firewire card. I popped two UAD-1's in it and it's been a super quiet, super stable system. I'd buy another.

Mod Bod,
Excellent point about the molded parts and the degree of investment that indicates. Thank you. Indicators of a company's stability are very important to me. With that in mind, are there any other turnkey companies that have apparently made a similar level of investment and that you recommend?
Thanks again,
Jerry

Jerrye,

About the video subsystems ...

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the ATI video systems. They are very standard and solid, good drivers support, and great for high performance game systems. In fact, Microsoft will be switching from nVidia video chipset to the ATI chipset in the new XBox 2.

ATI is actually a very standard video system and very popular. But when you start getting into the realm of multiple monitor support, Matrox wrote the book on it, and they are considered a more popular platform for that application. You will see them on stock trading floors, medical monitoring systems in hospitals, and other multimonitor enhanced systems. Sure, other vendors, including nVidia and ATI offer some dual-head features, but not yet matured or as well supported as any of the Matrox stuff. Matrox has, in my opinion the very best dual and triple monitor support, and will also support connections to televisions for doing video work, etc. The tools and utilities are more solid, and offer more configurability. If you plan to never use multi monitors, I'd stick with the other vendors, like ATI. Careful though, the higher end Matrox cards, due to their powerful processing, have a big fan on them - noise - the ultimate enemy to all members of this forum.

Carillon will substitute the Matrox card in place of the ATI for you if you ask them to for a few more bucks. I just forgot to ask them to do it. I used the ATI Radeon 7000 for awhile with great results, even started to use it as dual video, which it supports, but later switched to the Matrox card for better support. Also, the ATI indeed has 2 video out ports, but one is DVI (digital video) while the other is VGA (analog) That's not what I wanted. I wanted dual symetric VGA analog out ports (both my Sony LCD monitors are only analog), which is what the Matrox 650 and 550 feature. For gaming and flight simulator performance however, you'd be better with the ATI, or even better video systems.

You will undoubtedly read unanimous comments on this forumn and in the Cubase forum testifiying to the productivity benefits of doing DAW work on multiple monitors. It really makes a difference in workflow. LCD monitors fortunately are coming down in price these days too, which definatly helps.

Also, make sure you specify AGP rather than PCI for your video bus, as many video cards manufacturers make models for one bus or the other. You want AGP, not PCI for video.

Hope this helps,

-- Roger

Actually I believe Appian was the first multiple monitor card company, and they developed the primary software ATI licensed for the Radeon: Hyravision. Their cards were spendy when they were the only game in town, and now, I think they are using ATI's tech in their own cards. Mostly they use the Radeon VE as their primary chip.

They make a 4 monitor PCI card... but you can get a dual monitor AGP and a dual PCI card and get the same thing.

ORIGINAL: Roger Bowers

there is even a picture of Mr. Steinburg sitting at his desk in his studio/office with the Carillon PC mounted directly underneath his desk, smiling and endorsing the Carillon PC for it's quietness and other qualities.

He is probably running Sonar!

... "how about calling Cakewalk and ask who they would recommend :-)
and where they buy their computers.. "

Scott, from the suggestive tone of your post, it seems you may already know who Cakewalk would recommend, and where they procure their computers.

So I'm curious, who and where?

And would you know if Cakewalk has any experience with Carillon, the vendor that Jerrye originally asked about when he started the post that originated this forum thread?

-- Roger

musicxpc

have no idea how good they are... but they're small!

No, I don't have any recomendations. My breadwinning job involves molding and fabrication of plastic parts and I know from past experience that people who risk large sums of their own money are usually serious about it and don't load up their gear at the end of the month and move into a new mini warehouse.

I do not mean to imply anything negative about anyone recommended in this thread by this statement. They're some good folks mentioned. I just have my preferences.

HI Roger,
an Intel board will perform as much as 20% less, than name brand such as Asus or Gigabyte. no tweaking options and generally less features.
i wont use them.

Scott
ADK

Hey Mellow,
i didnt mean OCing maid it faster, board against board same chip Asus and Gigabyte or Abit or MSI and others all perform better than an Intel board.
but hey dont believe me

www.tomshardware.com
www.anandtech.com
http://www.hardocp.com

just to name a few websites.. in fact i challenge you to find one where an intel board actually beat a name brand...
while intel is fine and works great i am just saying there is better options.
sometimes much better options..

Scott
ADK