Recipes for Sonar Success

Anderton
2. Treat your computer like a multitrack tape recorder. Use a different computer, like the aforementioned $399 box from Office Depot (or what used to be your music computer), to do your taxes, write notes, crop photos, and all that other personal stuff. Separate church and state, and both will be happier.

Kev999

Anderton
2. Treat your computer like a multitrack tape recorder. Use a different computer, like the aforementioned $399 box from Office Depot (or what used to be your music computer), to do your taxes, write notes, crop photos, and all that other personal stuff. Separate church and state, and both will be happier.

 
Or, if you can't afford a separate PC or don't have the space to put it, then dual-boot is a good alternative.

brundlefly
 If music were my living, I might not be quite so cavalier about all the web surfing and other things I do on it. But if you exercise a moderate level of caution in what you download and execute with some basic firewall and anti-virus/spyware protection in place, it's quite possible to use your all-purpose PC as a DAW without ever suffering any significant consequences.

Anderton

Mystic38
Cant agree with this..
 
a) A low end graphics card relies on the CPU for processing and system ram for memory, hence that IS bad for Sonar performance.
b) High end graphics cards present the smallest possible overhead to the system. They do as much of the work as is possible.
c) The amount of video processing required is determined by the monitor number, color depth, resolution, refresh rate but most importantly, the demands of the application. Having a powerful video card simply gives increased processing speed and capability to enable the application to run at its optimum rate.

I think these days, even low-end video cards have their own CPU and a decent amount of RAM. And I agree that it's most certainly possible to have a high-end gaming system that works extremely well for audio, especially if you're a savvy user. But it's not just about video; there are some major differences compared to computers integrated for audio.
 
Noise level. This is a very big deal for me. Gaming computers often have lots of fans, and high-end gaming cards invariably have one (some of the higher-end machines have two graphics cards so there are two fans). I use an ATI video card that doesn't need a fan, and before that I used a fanless Matrox, which really helps with the S/N ratio in the studio itself. Also, good music computers typically have some kind of acoustical treatment inside the case. The boxes don't look as cool as gaming computers, but they're quieter.
 
High-resolution mice. These have been documented to have negative effects in many audio setups.
 
Form factor. Rack-mount gaming computers may exist, but I haven't seen any. Although many music computers are towers, serveer-type rack-mount models are available if that's what you need.
 
Lack of RAM. Typical gaming computers have 8GB of RAM, which is fine for what most gamers need because the high-end graphics card(s) offload to their own RAM. Of course there are more costly models with extra RAM, but with music computers, the idea of having lots of RAM is standard. For heavy-duty audio where you're loading virtual instruments into RAM, 16GB is pretty much the minimum you need, and 32GB will make for a much better user experience. Of course you can expand RAM, but a lot of users don't want to have to get overly technical with a machine.
 
Storage. Doing audio work requires lots of storage. It can be difficult for an end user to add additional internal hard drives with some gaming machines, and many ship with only 1TB or 2TB of storage in a single drive. For audio work you really need three internal drives - a system drive, a drive for audio data, and a drive for sound library storage. You can always add USB or FireWire hard drive storage, but I have four internal drives in my machine AND two external USB drives as a matter of course, not including separate backup drives.
 
As to graphics cards, I think it depends somewhat on the usage. I have talked with people who use devices that put major trafifc on the PCI bus, like "DSP farm" boards. They tell me that some graphics cards really hog the bus. I don't know enough to verify whether that's true or not, but they seemed quite certain that can be an issue and they changed graphics cards as a result.
 
Granted you can build your own machine, or modify a gaming machine to have the extras needed for audio work. But it's clear from some of the posts here that many users are musicians, not computer experts, and they just want to be able to pull out a credit card or write a check and get a machine. The thread title is "recipes for success," and I still believe that if they write a check to the company that makes computers specifically for music, by and large they will have a more successful experience than spending the same amount of money on a computer optimized for gaming.
 
 
 

Anderton
Lack of RAM. ...For heavy-duty audio where you're loading virtual instruments into RAM, 16GB is pretty much the minimum you need, and 32GB will make for a much better user experience...

Kev999
I have projects with countless numbers of virtual instruments and lots of different multisamples loaded into SampleTank, SampleTron, multiple instances of Miroslav and DimPro, plus large kits in Battery 3, and more besides. And yet I have never even come close to maxing out my meagre 6GB of RAM.