Just Got Reminded Why I Use Computers Integrated for Music

I wish you would tell all the others that seem bent on buying the cheapest bargain they can and then come here with problem after problem. 

Anderton
 
I solemnly swear I will never buy a $399 computer from Office Depot for doing music

Yep, I would never try to use a store bought machine for audio or video editing.  That's why I build my own machines.  They have none of the excess garbage that comes on a store bought machine...and I can pick and choose the components that I want to use.
 
One thing that I would advise anyone to do is add a cooling fan to EACH hard drive in your system.  Even the cheap ones made in China on Ebay for $3 each work OK (although you sometimes have to replace them more frequently).  A hard drive without a cooler will be so hot within 3 minutes of turning it on that it will burn your finger if you touch it.  But a hard drive with a cheap cooler will be cool to the touch even after an hour.  I know this for a fact because I have tried it.

I concur - having a dedicated DAW from one of the audio pros is a great investment.
Building your own is a great idea and you end up with a much_better_than_stock PC, but these guys DO have it down, specifically for audio/video.
They build hundreds if not thousands of these things.

I keep up with the tech for the most part, but these guys do it at a much higher level.
Jim, Scott, the PCAL folks (and others) spend a lot of time getting the right recipe for a stable DAW/DVW - so their expertise is something to factor in.

Audio interfaces/sound cards have a lot to do with stability is as well.
If you're running 60-160+ audio/MIDI tracks with gobs of plugs & synths, the laptop on sale at Best Buy and the $120 sound card may not cut it.
 
Due to my consistent lack of issues, a pro DAW + great sound card is/was at the top of the best music investments I've made.
Didn't come cheap, but it was worth it.
Note: I only have Sonar, Sound Forge and purchased 3rd party plugs (ok, and reputable freebies like SPAN & Podolski).
Also, I'm off the grid unless I need to reg or d/l updates ...and the off-line reg is too wonky to make it worth the effort.  

+1 on the right tools for the job!
 
I was trying to prove this point to a friend while standing in front of a bunch of "generic low-end laptops" and was trying to pull up the "Windows Experience Index" on a Win8 machine and couldn't find it! Sort of shot myself in the foot there, but was trying to make the point of "Never even consider one of these things for something important."
 
LOL... on that note... does Win8 still have the "Experience Index" in it??

+1 for a home built box.  I have been building boxes since 1986 using a new 386 chip and 2 Mb of RAM.  Plus DOS 3. I have never had major problems for music or video outside of equipment development.

Hello Anderton...I wish I knew more about those tweaks....so I could say for sure to some others here giving me advise not to tweak...a lesson....which I am following their calls...But it is not going well....and I have pissed them off...cause I do not want to go in circles with suggestions that will cause my system more woe than has been experienced in past...which my tweaks helped solve for some cpu spiking with Protools 9.3 and this system back in 2011 or so...and with sonar x1, x2, and now x3c....the tweaks were re aplied  for x2...and left to keep things noiseless on recordings and no dropouts with play back...but it was shotty work done in tweaking, but it reduced the cpu spikes a lot so no noise would be recorded...drop outs persisted , then X3 came out, and I thought maybe some fixes will stop this.
So I upgraded...and got x3c...I installed it wrong in the rush for bliss..along side 1x?...2xa...and then the fun began with project corruption ...most likely due to the bad install...which went unnoticed...some crashing of sonar x3c and then x2a opening projects...and the drop outs continued on....some more tips to do this or turn off 64bit engine or delete Aud,ini...resulted in more odd project crashes....and same old drop outs, clicks and pops, no matter the buffer used or maxed out kHz set or bit rate of the waves being created....till it ended up that so much corruption of win 7, brought about a new install of win 7....So all my tweaks are now gone....win 7 fresh, and sonar x3c installed as admin....and some eye candy and adobe reader,, and quick time, and engine 2 library player ...all drivers and my mixing desk Allen and Heath r16 installed...internet onboard nic has issues with the audio desk..and has to be turned off in bios...if it is turned off in win 7 it still seems to cause issues with the desk running.
 
also background apps are running as requested to not tweak em....so they can see the problems.....But this is serious, and I hate going round in circles,....Sonar x3c is now showing spikes of the cpu to max levels...this is not good.
 
And they are frustrated with me and my supposed compulsion to tweak those services using "BLACK VIPERS" SUGGESTION FOR AUDIO SYSTEMS.
 
 
Could You check that out for us?...and help the formies here and myself know if they even come close to your secret tweaks please....SO I can move forward with this build.
 
Thanks if you can...Just google Black viper...and post your opinion in a new thread if you can....
 
 
thanks for letting me know tweaks are needed.
Sir Les

FCCfirstclass
+1 for a home built box.  I have been building boxes since 1986 using a new 386 chip and 2 Mb of RAM.  Plus DOS 3. I have never had major problems for music or video outside of equipment development.

Same here FCC.  My first audio PC was a 386 (before I upgraded to the massive 486DX).  Those were the days when one MEG of ram was $100.

sharke
I'm not dissing audio specific builds and indeed I will be calling Jim very soon for a new rig because I'd quite like to try my hand with an orchestral library and I definitely need more power for that. But it should be said that you can get very good results from a decent quality mass produced machine. When I bought that Dell I didn't even have audio production in mind (that came a couple of years later) but I'm very pleased with the performance it's given me for the price (just over a grand).

If you want more power and reliability, you can still go with Dell.  Check out their Precision tower workstations.  I spent time weighing those against building my own but ended up doing it myself.
 

Yup I go with Dell and I love it, especially in the evenings alone:
http://youtu.be/rqqK-f2QcUM
 

I am mourning the passing of Rain Computers. I bought an Ion Studio a couple of years ago and it has been a great machine. Their customer support was excellent. I still had a years support left on my Raincare agreement. Quality is a hard principle to maintain in a world run by hedge fund managers.

sharke
In defense of the store bought computers, My 3 year old Dell has never given me a single problem since I've had it and has run all my audio stuff amazingly well considering the now dated specs.

DELL does have one of the better business models out, which is why they survived the late 90's. Essentially, to do business with them you have to be one of the top vendors in your area or expertise. Vendors who fall from that ranking then lose business, and DELL continues to stay out in front without spending a dime for R&D (they throw that overhead back onto their vendors). Because of this, DELL is one of the few COTS (customer off-the-shelf) items I would recommend.
 
That said, when this machine was built (6/2011), it exceeded all of the $4000+ "Alienware" builds for 1/2 the price. Also during that period, Intel had shot themselves in the foot by updating "Sandy Bridge" cores with the introduction of the 6-core "Extreme" CPUs (X1 was used in this "audio benchmarking"), and ASUS was the first MB vendor to openly adopt USB 3.0. Because of this, the ASUS MB/i7-2600K option was the ideal choice at that time. For audio applications, this machine is still "excessive overkill."
 
 Edit: Bottom line is to research anything you build/purchase.

I have a purpose-built music PC and agree that is the way to go.
 
Although there is way more to it than this, disabling all the crap that Windows wants to run at Start-Up by default and setting up the BIOS correctly make a big difference. 

A lot of the tweaks Brian made were hardware ones that related to reducing noise and heat. He also uses Vegas Pro, so he knows how much that can exercise a machine during a long and complex render. 
 
He didn't do much with the software, other than get rid of temp files and uncheck some msconfig stuff that had worked its way in since last time I did a mass uncheck. Also, regarding the comments of people here who build their own machines - I should have mentioned that is indeed a great alternative to getting cheapo office supply computers, as long as you know which motherboards etc. have a good track record in music applications.

Msconfig...on my system ...does not terminate the services...if you do end task...and check the services turned off in Msconfig...You may see them still running in End task viewer.
 
And that means the app is still running in the background!!!!....the right way to terminate apps is in services and set to manual or disable.
And that stop em dead!
 
But we are told not to do this by Microsoft and other techs here....from my  knowledge so far!

I have a Jim Roseberry built machine and it has been great. Very fast and quiet. It's almost 4 years old now and still going strong. Jim is a great guy to work for getting the best performance vs price point. Highly recommend.