any of you cats ever build a form fit recording machine?

I'm about maxing out my laptop's potential, so i'm thinking of building a machine.

initial plan is as such:

i like reaper.. so figure i'll stick with what i know.
an intel i5 motherboard/processor.
run xp pro.
use as much RAM as i can address (which MAY be just 3 gigs!)
a dualie monitor vid card
a firewire 800 card.. just in case... the 400'll still work.
some boring old case.

i can pull all that off if i build it myself for around 650 bux.

question: CAN an intel i5 with xp on it muster enough grunt to run a ton of plugins on upwards of 24 channels concurrently? Or would the bottleneck be my firewire interface?

bro in law is an IT dude, and he swears up and down 64 bit OS are a much bigger pain in the ass-- not to mention that probably some of my plugins won't work.

on the right track? and all the apple cats... i hear you... i know. i just know xp..

just starting this hyar process... any input appreciated!

Hmm. I would just run Windows 7. The RAM limitation is a huge minus for XP, even though there are certainly some things i do like about that OS even still.

Hell, i am running the much maligned Windows Vista in its 64 bit flavor, and i have had absolutely zero complaints with it since i got this laptop, a little more than a year and a half now. I think that a lot of the shit that people run into might have to do with trying to run the newer OSs on older hardware. My laptop isn't even all that new(Core2Duo@2.0Ghz) but it has been swell as can be.

I dig that some of your plugs won't work. That is: if you are positive that they are not compatible. I use a bunch of 32bit VSTs in Reaper with no problems. Maybe certain commercial ones would give you guff with authorization shit? But 64bit Reaper is certainly capable of running x86 VSTs innit.

Anyhoo, Snaxo just built himseff a beastbox. I am sure he will pop in with infos. He went i7 though. Also: Hackintosh.

What roughly, is your build pricepoint? Is $650 like a hard ceiling, or just what it happened to come out to how you figured? Rough math here and it seems that for $700ish you could even build an i7 machine, if already have a good monitor...

i KNOW, right? that's kinda what i said to my brother in law-- the OS is pretty much only there to boot the system and act as a foil for the recording program. we run 7 at work.. and i haven't had a lick of problems! he tends to be even more technologically curmudgeonly than me.. which is pretty horrifying.. but he runs a LOT of cranky computers as an IT man.. so he's gonna err on the 'never ever goes down' side of things.. so that's smart in his neck o' the woods.

the VSTs aren't a BIG deal-- i think most of them probably will. i haven't spent tons of cash on anything, 'cause half the commercial ones'd probably blow my machine up . minor ish at best.

i DO not have a good monitor-- and you kinda hit me where's i live on that one. the i7 isn't that much more, for sure.. but i'm taking the middle road 'cause i need a big monitor, not to mention i'd LOVE to get a new pair of speaker monitors to get me where i'd like to be, and i know it's all adding up. not that an extry $50-100 will make a big dif in the grander scheme of things. i'm being stupidly thrifty right there where it won't make a difference in the big pic.. if i'm doing it, may's well go all in. plus.. i have 2 recording jobs paying this summer.. so i oughta be able to put that into it, and right now, i don't need more mics, really- so i may just go against myself and take money to put towards it... it's not real money if it goes into hardware

'course-- yer right.. why NOT spend a little more for a more beastly machine. all the garda stuff getting worked to the extent it has with that machine would blast my current cpu to atoms if a machine is capable of handling THAT... i oughta be able to do my worst and not even get the thing beyond idle .

thanks as usual chris!

I too am an IT d00d. I am running XP with Reaper but 32 bit version. I would say to go with Win7 64bit. The 64 bit is so much more efficient and RAM is what you will really want boosted here.

thanks torgeot! yeah-- i kinda figured.

I just priced out an i7 2600, and it's looking like it adds about 20%-30% to the cost. meh.. hardly worth complaining about, and a headroom insurance policy i was really looking for that price/value ratio. sometimes it just pays to overkill it.

the advice i got was-- go intel processor, intel motherboard, don't sweat some sexy box, and ram is ram- just put as much in as fits. i'm thinking if i CAN, i'll use a motherboard that'll TAKE 32 gigs of ram, and start with 8. the z68 motherboard seems like a good start-- and the 3.4 chip and the MB is $429.. so for a hunnert bux more than the i5, i get some serious juice WITH room to move forward.

The motherboard itself doesn't necessarily have to be Intel. But the motherboard chipset should be!

Asus, Abit, or Gigabyte, would all be good choices for motherboards. Just go for one that has an authentic Intel chipset, not VIA or whoever else is doing budget workalike chipsets these days. The Intel chipset will save you headaches for compatibility and will generally just be more reliable.

Also: get a motherboard that has USB 3.0 on it if you can. Right now, your interface is Firewire(and you will most likely need a card to bring 1394 into your new computer, as lots of manufacturers seem to be abandoning it on their motherboards these days) but at the moment it looks to me like interface tech of the future is going to lean more towards USB. Already a few companies have phased out firewire version for new USB tech. It isn't a big deal really, if tech goes that way and your build doesn't have it, you can always add it in a card like you do now with firewire.

RAM: If you are going quad core, get at least 8GB. The more the merrier, but two GB per core is solid.

Hard dives. There are shitloads out there, i would stick to Western Digital, and maybe Seagate. Do NOT buy anything that calls itself "energy saving" or "green" or whatever. Those green drives will fuck up a recoarding like nobodies business. You will probably want to get two drives. One 200gb-ish one for a system drive(SSD drives are also an option for that, as they are slowly returning to earth with pricing) and one bigger one for recording to. I would probably go with a medium large sized recording drive, like 500GB to 1TB. Do not buy anything with a speed of less than 7200rpm, for any drives in your system.

PSU. Get something solid like Antec. Check your power needs for the motherboard and whatever video card you use, and get something sufficient. Stay away from most "Rosewill" or similar superbudget power supplies. They will rarely provide the correct amount of power with any consistency, which can really destroy other expensive components.

Even if you don't buy from Newegg, shopping there can be helpful. If you see something that looks like it will work, check the number of customers who have bought it, and the quality of the reviews; it can either change your mind, or reinforce the decision easily. Stuff that lots have people have bought and most of them have reviewed well, is generally a solid choice. Newegg is easy to skim through, because they list the shorthand for the review next to the products in the listings. Look for as many golden eggs as possible, generally.

Also, i would probably buy from newegg anyhow, as i have generally not been disappointed. I will often check other places like tigerdirect for general pricing, but it often works out that newegg is a better deal for full builds. Meaning, other places might have better deals on one component or something, but make sure you add it all up and see if they are going to try to hose you somewhere else. Both tigerdirect and newegg ship quickly in my experience and don't overcharge too much for the shipping.

updated: WELL.. as it turns out, a gamer compadre of mine gave me a sexified ATX box chock fulla fans, a honkin water cooled cpu cooler, and a fast cdr! hot cha. save some scratch there.

so i priced an i7 2600.. so far--- with 8gig of ram and an actual intel MB with an integrated vid card, win 7 license, and a TI firewire card, it's about $800 bux. all i'll need is a big ass monitor to start. my old one has a VGA plug.. will that work with a new motherboard? pinout looks different.

DVI output on the video maybe? Then by all mean that's fine, just gets a nice big monitaur. Prices on monitaur are excellent now and they mostly all come with DVI now.

Does it lkook like this?

i think so.. tough sayin' seeing it on a teeny jpg-- but i think so.

oh shit! i just realized you can get adapters for like 3 bux! nice.. so i have at least one option while i recover from the rest of the cost!

Solid advice all up in this thread. Chris from Garda and myself both went with Gigabyte boards for our Hackintoshes as they seem solid for that, and have no complaints there. Re: VGA i/o, the graphics cards on our machines support VGA, DVI and HDMI, and they're cheap. Mobo integrated graphics ≠ Hackinbox friendly. But yeah, adapters are cheap. I have a couple kicking around.

The sexybox with the fans and the CPU cooler is a plus, 's why, in part, I went rackserver with mine. I'd stay with the i7 for future expandability, and the more RAM the better. You can always add more after the fact if you don't have the scratch to max it out off the bat. I realize future-proofing a computer is futile, but a powerful enough system and a recording rig can stay current for a good long time. An i7 beast stuffed full of RAM is a major upgrade, especially as I figure you're running at 24/88.2 (as am I). The impossible becomes practical, even useful.

Good call on the TI Firewire chipset, by the by. It seems they play the nicest with recording gear from what I've picked up in various places.

heck yes-- thanks to ever-body!

i have a ton of plugins i've never gotten to use, cause they're just destroyers.. the idea of actually using multiple iterations of them? holy crap..

hey snax-- what're you using for a power supply? i was thinking of going for like a 500 watter or so just to make sure i'm overbuilt.. not like i'll need to expand or anything-- but wonder what other people built in? and what you running for RAM?

650w; I forget the actual make/model off the top of my head and the box is buried in the attic. I can check later if you'd like? It's quite large physically and would make a decent blunt weapon if it came to it.

I'm "only" running 8GB at the moment simply because that's what I'd bought when I ordered the parts and haven't bothered adding more. You can do a lot with that.

It's funny re: plugins; my worst non-softsynths are things like Decapitator and Master Tape (that I have the unfortunate tendency to want to throw on a lot of stuff); I suppose it's 'cause they're trying as hard as they can to emulate non-linear processes. For me, I'm not driving them hard as effects, I'm using them to emulate tape or blend in the sound of a driven classy mic pre or something of that nature. These I've taken lately to printing via a bounce-in-place/Export All Tracks As Audio Files from my edit sessions just in case- they'll never be changed, I'm deciding "this didn't go to tape" or "this didn't go through a Neve" and just adding "that sound" and calling it a day. And everything is still getting mixed down on a faux-SSL for the coloration of it... Even if I'm not using the dynamics section or the EQ and patching in an 1176 or API 550B model or... A serious new native system makes one appreciate what PTHD is for.

Devil = details; Devil = best tunes. There's a bunch of stuff I adore that you'd probably never have occasion to use. But there's a bunch of stuff I use constantly you'd probably like, and I have to say the tape/console emulations show their true worth when strapped across massive tracts o' sonic land, vs. just being glorified fuzzboxes or EQs. One of this driven hard is a cool effect, forty-some-odd of this left on in default across my whole mix changes the whole game. CPU needs iron codpiece though.

alright.. it be done.

i didn't go for the i7-- but i did manage to git me an i5 with 8gb o'ram, a basic 320 gig harddrive (i figure i'll just use that as my boot and add another for storage later-- there's 3 slots!), my firewire card, and an h67 mobo for $700 on the nose. i s'pect it'll put me in good stead for a while-- and as time goes by, i'll throw another 8 gigs o' ram in it as well and a vid card sooner than later for like $40.

seems like a decent platform-- should have it in about 10 days and then it's gonna be VST load o' rama!

anybody tried reaper 64 yet? man am i stoked!

Sweet! The i5 is the same socket as the i7 anyhow, isn't it? I.e. even that could some day be upgraded. Though, you might not find it necessary for what you need to do.

I suspect that it might be tons of firepower as it is. I am curious to see what you find once you get it onto the battlefield though.

Also yeah, i have been running Reaper 64 bit for the last year and a half or so. As it should be between software's different platforms' versions, i haven't noticed any difference at all in how the thing functions, except that it floats 32bit VST windows a little differently when you open them.

Also, have you been running the latest version, 4 or whatever it is? I know they changed stuff, but once again, i was happy to learn that it is nothing that i can see! (Because usually, the only time i tend to notice a software 'update' when it breaks something else. IMO, software should just quietly get better with updates. if i wanted something wildly different from a program, i would probably be using a different program in the first place, no?)

All of that is, aside from the very obviously different-looking shiny new visual theme, which again i was happy to learn could be replaced directly with the 3.xx style themes. I had gotten used to the dark grey one i have been using, and the new one was painfully bright.

OH-- that's right! hell yeah.. i'd totally forgotten that! good thing the Mobo's got 4 RAM sockets too, 'cause when they get 8gb ram chips out of theoretical world into reality-- i'll buy those AND an i7 chip if i need 'em, that is..

I DID upgrade to reaper 4, which is great. my favorite part is the easy access to split panning-- which totally rules. It's a glorious thing to have access to without plugins! I like the way it looks as well-- but it functions pretty much the same for my day to day. The envelopes window looks a bit different-- but otherwise-- it's hitchless! i can't WAIT to get it running on the new beast... holy crap. i feel like i just walked into abbey road..

As well you should. Makes a big difference.

A pity this never got released fer Reaper:


Not officially, at any rate; apparently one can hack it and brute-force it to kinda work, but you need a massive screen to do so, etc.

I always like the idea of those shiny ones more than i like the actual using of them. I don't really get along with the pseudo LED glare and faux 3D button style. I find that instead of making the thing 'feel like a real console', it just makes Reaper feel sloppy and blurry to me. Buttons moving around when pressed, and sprite 'LED haze' obscuring the edges of things that find themselves to close to ersatz LED indicators, that sort of thing.

I really like the Origin theme though: http://stash.reaper.fm/theme/522/lf_origin_1.00.zip

The "Khaki" flavor is the best.



I also like how it works with color coding, and the fact that the whole thing is darker. I find it easier to use, and it doesn't get painful to look at after ten hours, when you find yourself arrived at 3AM in a dark room.

Wait, what am I looking at? The newest Reaper has fancy skins? The one Snaxie posted looks charming?!

That one doesn't really exist. The dude poasted some conceptual experiments for it, but then kind of abandoned it. There are lots of others similar to it released though.

There are a metric fuck tonne of themes on the Cockos site: http://stash.reaper.fm/

It has been that way for a long time now. The one i use has been out for more than a year i think?

The newest Reaper version (v4) has a different/new default GUI than v3 also.

hey chris-

you had any problems going back and working on reaper 32 masters in reaper 64?

i could REALLY use the headroom this new thang'll give me with the new processor-- i'd be bummed if the program didn't want to deal with the old masters! i would think there'd be no issues, 'cause a .wav is a .wav... but is an .rpp and .rpp?