# Back to window world...advice needed for DAW PC build



## greenpiano (Nov 3, 2016)

Hello,

I've been using 2008 macpro (8core, 3GHz, 24GB ram) as DAW master with several SSDs, 1 PC (i7-960, 24GB ram) and 2013 macbook pro (16GB ram) as slave. All are linked with VEPRO via Ethernet.

I need to extend my orchestral template for flawless film composing. Time to upgrade!

My first thought was buying a new cylinder mac pro but no news so far since 2013..I'm burned out to wait...

Finally I made up my mind to back to window and cubase.

(I've never used Cubase since window XP....Big challenge to me)

With budget for 12core macpro with 128gb memory, I can build 2 PCs.

So here is my plan.



-DAW master: i7-6950x, ASUS X99-DELUXE II, 128gb samsung ram
256g ssd + 2x 1TB ssd
(Effect plug-ins, VSL, Rhythm & Percussion, Omnisphere, Trilian etc)

-Slave1 PC: i7-6850x, Motherboard(?), 128gb samsung ram
256g ssd + 2x 1TB ssd
(String samples like EWHS, LASS, Berlin strings...)


-Slave2: PC or MAC?
If mac, used 12-core 2012 macpro or new i-Mac?
(Brass, Woodwinds, FX...)

-2013 macbook pro: Just for portable?



Things I'm concerned about window are

1. Virus
2. Blue screen
3. Time to getting used to Cubase


I've been very satisfied with Mac OS and hardware's reliability.
On the other hand, I have bad memories with Troy virus and blue screen when I was on window because I do internet surfing and word program a lot on main computer.
Moreover sometimes I'd need to open old Logic files.
So for the 2nd slave, I'm thinking to buy an used 2012 12-core macpro or new imac.

So it seems good I'm only on mac for doing internet and other program, and when I need to do composing, I turn DAW PC on and use mac as slave.

Actually because of budget, maybe I have to keep the 2008 macpro for a while.
I don't know if the way I'm thinking is good and right.
Also I'm curious about how to distribute sample libraries efficiently.

If you were me, what'd you do?
Any feedback would be very appreciated!


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## Jdiggity1 (Nov 3, 2016)

If I were you, I wouldn't want the hassle of needing a 2nd computer whenever I wanted to use the internet.
Out of your 3 listed concerns, I'd forget about 1 and 2. Under normal circumstances, neither of them are common and it's quite easy to go the whole life of your PC without experiencing either of them these days.
Point 3 is valid, but shouldn't deter you. There are many happy converts who have transitioned from Logic (and even DP!) over to Cubase.
I'd keep the Macbook as your portable and 'Logic' machine.
I'm also inclined to think that your Slave PC build is a bit overkill... but if you can afford it there's certainly nothing wrong with future-proofing!


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## FriFlo (Nov 3, 2016)

I would recommend to continue using the Mac Pro 2008 als a Master for a start and only build one slave PC for now: the reasoning is, I wouldn't say that Windows is necessarily worse than OS X, but it is different and if you have never used Windows, it will take some time to get used to it. 
I am not sure, if you really need 128 Gigs of ram on all slaves. 64 is way more cost effective and usually plenty. If you really need to load the whole Berlin series including all expansions with all(!!!) mic positions plus some more libraries, then you would probably need that much ram. But on the other hand, you would reach the limit of simultanious voices very quickly that way. I recommend 2 slaves for that reason (not hitting a voice limit) when you wrote complex orchestral stuff. But probably two 64 Gb machines will do.
About blue screens and virus you really have to worry as much as on a Mac. That is propaganda. The major difference between win and Mac IMO is that apple provides quite a lot of software and drivers for you, that you don't get with win (at least not in the same league). That is why you will have to look for some freeware or buy apps for this purpose. I am still on an older Mac Pro as the master PC for that reason. I got a 128 Gb Mac Pro 12 core for about 2000€ a year ago and I actually don't need all that power due to the slaves, but I can use a ton of stuff on it alone, if I wish to. Maybe, that is also an alternative for you. Get a more powerful pre 2013 Mac Pro in addition to one or two slaves. You will still be very much lower in price than with the 2013 Mac Pro and still be in you familiar OS.


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## Øivind (Nov 3, 2016)

Regarding vulnerability, here is a list of vulnerabilities on different OSes in 2015 (see attachment)
Bluescreens are 9 times out of 10 related to hardware faults.

If you prefer Mac workflow and Logic, perhaps a "cheap" mac for master and use PCs for slaves could an option to consider.


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## greenpiano (Nov 3, 2016)

FriFlo said:


> you would reach the limit of simultanious voices very quickly that way. I recommend 2 slaves for that reason (not hitting a voice limit) when you wrote complex orchestral stuff. But probably two 64 Gb machines will do.



Thanks a lot for your reply.

If I load too many samples on 1 machine with 128gb, you mean Kontakt alerts 'voice limit?' or cubase does?

That's what I just knew because I've never seen it so far. Can you explain more?

I'm not going to load every sample including expansions.

I need to load main articulations which I use a lot. Most of them are being loaded inside Kontakt except EWHS.


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## greenpiano (Nov 3, 2016)

oivind_rosvold said:


> Regarding vulnerability, here is a list of vulnerabilities on different OSes in 2015 (see attachment)
> Bluescreens are 9 times out of 10 related to hardware faults.
> 
> If you prefer Mac workflow and Logic, perhaps a "cheap" mac for master and use PCs for slaves could an option to consider.


Thanks for the information!
Yes...I'd be biased since I experienced window long ago. 
Do you think 'cheap' mac for master can hold probably 1000 midi tracks and 6 instances of altiverb for live midi recording? 
I'm seeing this on ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2012-Apple-...553812?hash=item3acd111c54:g:GeAAAOSw3xJVW3lR
Anyone bought macpro on ebay? Is it reliable? International shipping and paying tax would be needed. But looks quite attractive..


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## greenpiano (Nov 3, 2016)

Jdiggity1 said:


> Point 3 is valid, but shouldn't deter you. There are many happy converts who have transitioned from Logic (and even DP!) over to Cubase.
> !


Thanks a lot for your reply.
Yes. Cubase looks attractive! expecially expression mapping. I don't know if Logic has this functions. (Am I the only one who don't know?) 
Also midi sample routing looks better than Logic for me...


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## FriFlo (Nov 3, 2016)

greenpiano said:


> Thanks a lot for your reply.
> 
> If I load too many samples on 1 machine with 128gb, you mean Kontakt alerts 'voice limit?' or cubase does?
> 
> ...


Every PC has a limit of voices it can play in Kontakt. That does not go up significantly by a monster PC (and neither does the Mac Pro help here or 12 cores). I am by no means an expert at PC tech and never did extensive test like Rgames (look for his threads regarding this), but I have a 128 Gb slave with identical CPU as the Macpro 6core and and older 64Gb slave with 4 cores. Both are pretty similar in voice count. So, if you go with a multi PC setup, you will have more voice count even with less powerful machines. I have not needed more than 64 Gb on any of the machines. It does not hurt, but it is not as cost effective. And you have more options, if you don't go beyond 64 Gb. Just build one decent machine and test with VEpro. You will then see, if you need a second PC-slave. There will be some work, of course! But it is worth while to get into the PC world. You get way more performance for your money and who knows what is going to happen with the Mac Pro ...


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## khollister (Nov 3, 2016)

I am currently wrestling with the decision as to abandon Mac/Logic myself, and have been using a 4930K slave with my 2010 6 core Mac Pro. A few observations

Since you are going to potentially upend your workflow anyway with a transition to Cubase, consider ways to restructure your template to get it more reasonable than 1000 tracks. The only way I can conceive of having a template that large is if you are using a track for each articulation other than using key switching or loading everything you own "just in case".
Consider keeping your current MP as your master, build a single PC slave and offload more of the Kontakt/PLAY instances to the slave. That allows you to potentially save a huge amount of money and avoid learning Cubase & Windows at the same time.
While there _might _be an advantage to using a 6900 or 6950 for the DAW, the 8 and 10 core i7's are very expensive and you are trading cores for clock speed. I'm not convinced that the sweet spots aren't a 6700K (maybe overclocked a bit) for the DAW and either a 6700 or 6800 for the slave. The 6850 gets you 40 PCIe lanes vs 28 for the 6700 & 6800, but I don't think it matters much for a slave since you are not running dual high end graphics cards or anything.
A popular option for Logic users these days is the later i7 27" iMac with a large PC slave. Unlike the nMP, the 27 iMac is actually a pretty good value considering the 5K, wide color gamut screen and you can go to 64GB of ram with 3rd party stuff.

IMHO you are way over killing this, and may not need to go to Cubase at all unless you want to. I love some of the features of Cubase (expression maps rock!) but hate the GUI (exploding windows) and am concerned about it's scalability/performance compared to Logic. And then there is the learning curve too.

I just converted my slave to Windows 10 Pro and I have to say it's pretty nice. It no longer looks like something from the 90's. I can't recall a blue screen even on Windows 7 and malware is mostly an issue if you are surfing the internet and downloading stuff from dodgy sites.

Build a single 6800K 64GB slave and you may find you are done


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## azeteg (Nov 3, 2016)

Did you consider to go hackintosh? I'm using a hackintosh (4790k, 32GB RAM) for development and music, and I never have any hickups whatsoever, running on 32 samples buffer size in Logic.

Apple currently doesn't offer any practical machine for me, which is why I decided to go hack.


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## greenpiano (Nov 3, 2016)

khollister said:


> Build a single 6800K 64GB slave and you may find you are done



Thanks a lot for your answer. It really helps!
I mainly use keyswitch samples. The reason that I mention 1000 tracks is I'd like to load many FX tracks (e.g. from symphobia 1,2,3) which require low system resource relatively. Recently I composed for a horror movie. I thought there should be more and more FX tracks in my template for saving time.

So far, thanks to your guys' advice,
I think 2 x slave PC with 64gb would be good.

The thing is a main DAW machine.
Even though current 2008 macpro looks stable, when I use EWHS samples hooked with slave MBP, there was clicks and pops. Also I'm getting scared I don't know when it will did work out suddenly.

So I want a super power main machine which can stand about bunch of hundreds tracks, 7 instances of Altiverb (for only Reverb) and live midi performance. If needed, I disable samples which I do use a lot.

For a DAW machine,

1. iMAC i7, 4.0GHz : $3000 + Additional ram

2. i7-6950x, 3.0KHz with 128gb: over $4000 - Too much spec as you mentioned?
If I go to 6700k, 4.0KHz, I can save about $1500.

4core 4.0GHz >> 10core 3.0KHz??

I don't know if the iMAC can hold this large orchestral template flawlessly because I've thought macpro is the best as DAW machine in mac world.
Also I don't like windows' GUI. But on the other hand, a little bit..I'd like to experience Cubase world.
I'm wrestling with this..definitely difficult decision to me..


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## greenpiano (Nov 3, 2016)

azeteg said:


> Did you consider to go hackintosh? I'm using a hackintosh (4790k, 32GB RAM) for development and music, and I never have any hickups whatsoever, running on 32 samples buffer size in Logic.
> 
> Apple currently doesn't offer any practical machine for me, which is why I decided to go hack.



Yes. In my country, South Korea, some build hackintosh. But I heard it could be unstable when upgrading or something. I don't like to get headache..But I think it'd be a good choice if it's stable.


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## greenpiano (Nov 3, 2016)

FriFlo said:


> I have not needed more than 64 Gb on any of the machines. It does not hurt, but it is not as cost effective.



Can I ask what samples do you use in your 128gb slave pc?
I need to load all string main keyswitch samples (with not all expansions) including LASS, EWHS, Berlin, 8dio, Cinematic and Spitfire string samples on 1 slave pc.


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## FriFlo (Nov 3, 2016)

You cannot load all articulations of all of these libraries with multiple mic positions (even with 128 Gb it will probably be to much), but a selection of those will work. Note, that you can disable instruments both in Cubase as well as in VEpro. That means they will not use any memory, but with the press of a button it is available. Also note, the usage of Ram can be significantly influenced by Kontakts buffer settings. With a lower buffer, you can load much more instruments with the same amount of RAM. The faster your SSDs are, the lower the buffer size can be set.
But now, it is probably time to explore those topics on your own a bit. There is plenty of information in this forum, if you just use the search function. I cannot explain everything from ground up.  Best of luck!


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## greenpiano (Nov 3, 2016)

FriFlo said:


> Kontakts buffer settings. With a lower buffer, you can load much more instruments with the same amount of RAM. The faster your SSDs are, the lower the buffer size can be set.
> But now, it is probably time to explore those topics on your own a bit. There is plenty of information in this forum, if you just use the search function. I cannot explain everything from ground up.  Best of luck!



Isn't the Buffer size related to CPU besides SSD speed? I think I need to search more about CPU core, clock speed and ram etc. By the way thanks a lot for your kind reply!


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## ZeroZero (Nov 3, 2016)

I don't have experience of Macs have been with PC's since 1980's Cubase since 1993. I think PC's are usually much more powerful for the buck, one step ahead, slightly (only slightly) more unintuitive, stable nowadays and great for Cubase. Cubase is very very good these days, stable and very powerful. Expression mapping is great and should be a step forward. The Cubase score package is very useable and powerful. I would caution against Dorico in this incarnation (1.0) as it is unable to integrate with Cubase, and has big features missing - you can't use chord symbols or expression maps for example. However, it is definitely Steinbergs intention to make Dorico the most advanced score package on the planet and integrater it thoroughly with Cubase. I think that is version 3.00 though. 

I have an Asus X99a mobo USB3.1. Usb 3.1 is apparently twice as fast as usb3. If you update the BIOS these boards will take 128 gig of RAM in 16 gig slots. They don't support the 32 gig (single slot RAM). 
Another thing to think about is usage of the M2 slot. I am eyeing a *Samsung 960 Pro 960 1TB *which is just about to hit the streets (there is a 2tb too). This SSD is _amazingly _fast, whilst 7200 rpm hhds are in the 50-150MB/s range, the top SSDs are boasting about read and write speeds of about 500mb/ps, the Samsung has a peak sequential read and write speeds of _3,500MB/sec and 2,100MB/sec!_ That is frankly, a completely new ball game of speed. This is the fastest SSD on the planet by far. 
My plan is to keep my operating system on a conventional Samsung pro 850 SSD and use the M2 slot to house this beast for samples. Run an additional small (cheap) SSD for Cubase project writes. If you add to this 128 gig of RAM, and shorten the amount of the 'header' for each sample that loads into RAM (Kontakt Option), with a decent processor, (say an Intel 5820) this machine should be a killer! It would floor any MAC IMO and you should be able to run on one machine. 
The 960 Pro is only just hitting prime time, I do expect it's price to drop over Christmas period. There is a 500 gig version as well, which you can pick up for about 300 dollars, but I am waiting for the big one. 
I have a Samsung Evo 830 here too, which used to run my operating system, but got too small, when I changed up from the EVO 830 to the Pro 850 there was a significant increase in speed - very fast. The M2 slot with the 960 should be at least five times faster, you could put the operating system on one of those.

Such a system is not cheap, but it would be the best possible.


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## samphony (Nov 3, 2016)

And don't forget your current 2008 Mac Pro is a powerful Windows machine too. Thanks to boot camp.


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## khollister (Nov 3, 2016)

samphony said:


> And don't forget your current 2008 Mac Pro is a powerful Windows machine too. Thanks to boot camp.



No Boot Camp support for Windows 10 on the older MP's though


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## greenpiano (Nov 3, 2016)

ZeroZero said:


> I have an Asus X99a mobo USB3.1. Usb 3.1 is apparently twice as fast as usb3. If you update the BIOS these boards will take 128 gig of RAM in 16 gig slots. They don't support the 32 gig (single slot RAM).
> Another thing to think about is usage of the M2 slot. I am eyeing a *Samsung 960 Pro 960 1TB *which is just about to hit the streets (there is a 2tb too). This SSD is _amazingly _fast, whilst 7200 rpm hhds are in the 50-150MB/s range, the top SSDs are boasting about read and write speeds of about 500mb/ps, the Samsung has a peak sequential read and write speeds of _3,500MB/sec and 2,100MB/sec!_ That is frankly, a completely new ball game of speed. This is the fastest SSD on the planet by far.


I just checked it because of time difference.
Thanks a lot for giving me the informative and specific guideline. I'll look into it carefully!


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## greenpiano (Nov 3, 2016)

samphony said:


> And don't forget your current 2008 Mac Pro is a powerful Windows machine too. Thanks to boot camp.


I'm thinking to keep the 2008 macpro as 2nd slave with memory upgrade than abandoning in cheap price. Thanks.


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## ZeroZero (Nov 4, 2016)

Just found out there is a 960 evo which will be considerably cheaper and the second fastest thing on the planet. Read speeds are equalish to the pro, which is all you need for samples. http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/960evo.html


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## ZeroZero (Nov 4, 2016)

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/samsung-960-evo-960-pro-speeds-price-specs

Checking the 960 Evo out, a word of caution. What I have learnt is that when the cache is full the evo (not the pro) slows down. The cache buffer capacity is 13GB, 22GB and 42GB for the 250GB, 500GB and 1TB models respectively. If your loading very large sample dumps into RAM, the 1TB evo maxes out after 42gb, and then slows down. The pro does not do this. It's too early to say if this has a real impact, but I would think about it. The 950's the old range, were still about four times faster that your average SSDs, and might be had at bargain prices as they are phased out


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## greenpiano (Nov 10, 2016)

ZeroZero said:


> http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/samsung-960-evo-960-pro-speeds-price-specs
> 
> Checking the 960 Evo out, a word of caution. What I have learnt is that when the cache is full the evo (not the pro) slows down. The cache buffer capacity is 13GB, 22GB and 42GB for the 250GB, 500GB and 1TB models respectively. If your loading very large sample dumps into RAM, the 1TB evo maxes out after 42gb, and then slows down. The pro does not do this. It's too early to say if this has a real impact, but I would think about it. The 950's the old range, were still about four times faster that your average SSDs, and might be had at bargain prices as they are phased out



Thanks a lot for the information!


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