# How many computers do you use in your Music Lab?



## jononotbono (Aug 3, 2019)

Just for a bit of fun I’m wondering how many computers everyone is using in their Music Labs?

Currently I have 2 x 12 core Mac Pro’s (might be getting a 3rd off a friend when their studio upgrades), a PC (old 2600k) and a Mac Mini for video footage.

How reserved are you?


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## chillbot (Aug 3, 2019)

So happy to be down to 2 now (master/slave). Not counting a couple assistant computers and a laptop for travel. At one point my main rig consisted of a master, 5 slaves (2 for giga), and a muse receptor (THAT COUNTS AS A COMPUTER YES IT DOES TOO).


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## Henu (Aug 3, 2019)

Only one self-built audio PC (with two monitors) here. No slaves, no video things. I try keep my workflow as simple as possible, having tried about everything during the years, hah! 

_(That being said, I do have two racks of preamps/compressors, two sets of nearfields, guitar amps, mics, tons of othe studio gear etc. but those don't count, right? :D )_


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (Aug 3, 2019)

Only one 2014 laptop with 24gb of RAM. But freezing tracks is some kind of hobby for me.


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## jononotbono (Aug 3, 2019)

whitewasteland said:


> Only one 2014 laptop with 24gb of RAM. But freezing tracks is some kind of hobby for me.



I just did a short film and decided to use Omnisphere 2 for a great deal of it (Spy music) and had About 100 different O2 patches. Needless to say, the Freeze track feature in Cubase was abused. It’s amazing how one synth can cripple a whole system. Completely worth it though. O2 is amazing!


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## Alex Fraser (Aug 3, 2019)

Just a solitary 2011 imac with an SSD hanging out the back. Disabled tracks workflow in Logic doing the business for now, but it’s on borrowed time.


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## BlackDorito (Aug 3, 2019)

Two PCs - master/slave. Previously I would always crank up the slave, which did nothing but run a large VE Pro template of VSL and/or Spitfire. Then I would run Sibelius on the master. It was a bit of a hassle always establishing the Remote Desktop from the master to the slave, toggling my KVM switch back and forth so I could be talking to one PC or the other, and once Sibelius is started, half the time I needed to reconnect the Instances in VE Pro server, one after another. Once everything was set up it ran flawlessly.

These days I am operating a bit lighter-weight. I am still Sibelius-based, but have 3-6 Kontakts hanging off it, chock full of instruments. No slave. Setup is much faster. As long as not too many instruments are playing at once, there are no glitches. I render each instrument staff from Sibelius to WAV (using a nifty free plug-in from Bob Zawalich) and import all the WAVs into Reaper tracks in one operation, for final mixing and mastering. Some day I will do all of this in Dorico version 3.


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## synthetic (Aug 3, 2019)

Mac for Cubase, Windows box for VEP, another Windows box for Pro Tools stem mix + video


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## Crowe (Aug 3, 2019)

Single Pc with i7 processor, 16 gigs of ram (which desperately needs to be doubled now my template is done) and three 21 - 23 inch monitors of which one is a Ugee drawing screen.


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## jneebz (Aug 3, 2019)

jononotbono said:


> It’s amazing how one synth can cripple a whole system.


Omni’s granular processing is brutal on CPU usage...lowering voices can help but 99% of the time I freeze due to a granular patch.


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## jononotbono (Aug 3, 2019)

Anyone using a computer with min of 256gb of RAM (in one machine) and if so how many cores are needed to utilise that much RAM?


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Aug 3, 2019)

Single computer for everything in the studio. Laptop for travel, testing gear, and recording rig. Mac mini as backup in recording rig and for when I'm doing Mastered for iTunes masters.

I do regularly max out my i7-5820K with mastering work (but rarely with mixing work) so I should probably get something faster at some point. Haven't opened my orchestral template in a long time and probably won't need to (probably won't use a template for whatever sample projects I do) so I don't really need 64GB. If I build a new computer with only 4 ram slots I'll probably just move over 8GBx4 instead of getting new 16GB sticks.


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## Jdiggity1 (Aug 3, 2019)

1


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## Hywel (Aug 3, 2019)

Jdiggity1 said:


> 1


+1


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## BassClef (Aug 3, 2019)

just one 4yr old iMac, but Hey... I'm a rookie!


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## BlackDorito (Aug 3, 2019)

BassClef said:


> just one 4yr old iMac, but Hey... I'm a rookie!


Extremely neat setup without a lot of tangled cables. Your mother looks happy with the doggie.


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## BlackDorito (Aug 3, 2019)

BlackDorito said:


> Your mother looks happy with the doggie.


If it's your wife ... go ahead and slam me. I deserve it.


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## BassClef (Aug 3, 2019)

BlackDorito said:


> If it's your wife ... go ahead and slam me. I deserve it.



Too funny... I’m 68... that is a pic of my Mother from about 30 years ago.


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## JohnG (Aug 3, 2019)

I use a bunch but if I were starting today from scratch could probably do it all with fewer.


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## JamieLang (Aug 3, 2019)

I can't NOT use 2. Virtual instruments and DAWs running in HD don't mix well. Technically, if you count the KRonos (Linux?) as one...and the iPad that I occasionally plug into the Kronos for sound supplementation...that's 4. But, the reality is the Kronos is an expensive controllers 95% of the time and most days I only turn on the new tower --not the MacBook. 

Still, I've been considering trading the Kronos for a VPC1 (-2 since then the iPad is also of no use)…and I still use LPX for a single function. The Tempo mapping robot AI Drummer. I'd install OSX on my tower expect, there's not a REALLY good way to export it (and fully retain timing info). So, it's actually EASIER to plug the midi cable into the big tower and record BOTH audio and MIDI simultaneously in the Cubase timeline. If I did a dual boot--couldn't do it...I couldn't record live from one to the other.

#firstWorldProblems


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## Leon Portelance (Aug 3, 2019)

2


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## CT (Aug 3, 2019)

Barely one at this point.


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## holywilly (Aug 4, 2019)

One Mac Pro with tons of external ssd’s and hard drives.


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## novaburst (Aug 4, 2019)

jononotbono said:


> Just for a bit of fun I’m wondering how many computers everyone is using in their Music Labs?



I use two PC i7 identical machines both 32 gib ram identical MB Windows 7 Ultimate, master and server. 
My thoughts are even if you have a very powerful machine you should not max it out but share the load with a server to bring more stability to your machines, also if one breaks down you can use the other machine until you sort out another.

Using most plugins and library's through VEpro server and not in your DAW limits a lot of fuss and contributes to more stability.


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## Manaberry (Aug 4, 2019)

2 computers:
One with everything on it.
The other one with my touchscreen connected, running the server to send midi over the network.


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## robgb (Aug 4, 2019)

One. Two, if you count the iPad controller.


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## BGvanRens (Aug 4, 2019)

Went from 2 to 1, now about to go back to 2 systems. I guess 3 if the Korg Kronos X counts as a computer (intel Atom cpu, Linux)


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## muk (Aug 4, 2019)

One, from 2013 I built a silent pc myself back then, and I am still using it. The only things I changed was adding more ram (32gb now), and ssds. The processor is a Xeon E3-1230 v3. Apart from a Dimension Strings template with crazy reverb settings (two convolution reverbs on each individual player, plus a lot of other processing) it handles everything I use just fine. But then I don't use huge templates. For the Dimension Strings template I made a second one without any processing, and carefully level-matched it to the one with processing. That way i could use the one without processing for writing and mock-upping, and then switch on all the processing for the rendering only. Worked well for me.


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## wst3 (Aug 4, 2019)

four - which I would happily exchange for one if I could - all Windows:

Master - Win10, 32GB - Sonar, Sound Forge, Finale, Studio One, Wavelab, DP, some softsynths
Sample Host - Win10,64GB - VEPro hosting Kontakt and VIPro
Giga Host - WinXP, running GigaStudio (and we know where this came from<G>), trying G-Player one more time, hope to retire this one.
Bizarre Host - Win7, 16GB - I use this to host a handful of x86 plugins, in VEPro, but more important, it is my main audio I/O box. It is an older motherboard that has PCI slots for my Frontier Design Dakota/Montana - 32 inputs from my hardware synthesizers, and 32 outputs that will, one of these days, control my analog synths via Expert Sleepers Silent Way. Even if I can retire the other two servers this one will probably always be in the mix. Part of the reason is that I am not ready to retire a handful of plugins that require an older version of Windows (e.g. Pro-53, Vokator, etc).
While I don't enjoy maintaining multiple computers, it is (mostly) working well for me. Getting Silent Way working has proven to be a larger challenge than I'd like, but I would love to integrate the Arp 2600 and the Korg MS-20 into the system.

And if you think this is odd (and you should) wait till yet get a load of MIDI routing<G>! I am using the Frontier Designs Sierra 8x8 Midi Interface to drive some of the synthesizers, a CopperLAN based Alyseum AL-88c to drive others, and an iCOnnectivity iConnectAUDIO4+ to connect my various controllers. If I could I'd prefer an entirely CopplerLAN based system, but that doesn't seem likely right now.

Truthfully it is far more complex than I'd like, and requires more time dealing with tech than I'd like, but (knock wood) it works, so I should just shut up! To give you an idea, al but the master are installed in a rack that is as isolated as possible (for now), and one of the fans in the Giga machine has gone rogue, jet engine at 10 feet loud! And while it is of minimal consequence, the DAW is three feet from me, and the power supply is growing increasingly noisy, and needs to be replaced. That sort of thing is annoying, but still better than aligning a 2" tape deck before every session!


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## Saxer (Aug 4, 2019)

MacPro 2013 8 Core dust bin (64 GIG RAM) and a slave PC.

But I didn't start the PC for month. I just don't have fun working with big templates and I really hate working on Windows machines. I use VEPro for some stacked sounds on the same machine but most of the time I'm fine with Logic only.

I have another MacMini for office/vi-control/wetransfer etc. and a MacBookPro 2012 for some external work.

I'd like to have a faster MacPro some day.


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## chimuelo (Aug 4, 2019)

I never sell or toss mine. I use anything I build for two years, then it becomes a spare.
Then I use different ones for rehearsal, they also have a spare.
So 6 in total. 2 x 4Us, one is still Gigastudio w/ P4, the other one an i7 960.
The other 4 are 1Us, 3 x i7 4790k and an i7 5775C.

I use to have 10 and had to give the rest away to neighborhood kids wanting to do their own productions. These rackmount chassis are easy to keep and use over and over.
This stuff is pretty reliable too. One PSU and one Seagate HDD over a 20 year period.


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## Helen McMillin (Aug 4, 2019)

holywilly said:


> One Mac Pro with tons of external ssd’s and hard drives.


Ditto here.


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## jmauz (Aug 4, 2019)

About 15 slaves running Windows 95 and my master computer running IBM OS/2. 

Also a laptop running MS-DOS.


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## jononotbono (Aug 4, 2019)

jmauz said:


> About 15 slaves running Windows 95 and my master computer running IBM OS/2.
> 
> Also a laptop running MS-DOS.



Not Windows ME?


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## WindcryMusic (Aug 4, 2019)

Basically one computer, sort of ... a 10-core iMac Pro with several external SSDs. But it is also dependent upon an iPad Pro (which is sort of a computer, really) for control of articulations and other stuff, and upon a Mac Mini server in the next room that I’m networked to, which stores most of my technical documentation as well as being the official residence for most of my bounces (because from there it is easy for me to access them in a number of different locations to check how the mixes are translating).

There’s also a MacBook Pro that I occasionally use for busking new ideas, but that’s entirely separate from the Big Studio (which is how I refer, with tongue firmly in cheek, to the ever-more-cramped 12’x12’ room where the iMac Pro and my other music gear lives).


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## Jaap (Aug 4, 2019)

One main computer and one slave, but the slave is hardly used nowadays tbh.


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## AdamKmusic (Aug 4, 2019)

Single PC, toyed with the idea of using a slave & Vienne Ensemble but I much prefer just having numerous instances of Kontakt etc & being able to edit them individually !


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## rgames (Aug 4, 2019)

One master, two slaves and a laptop for travel. The slaves host my orchestral libraries and only get turned on when I'm working an orchestral project. I use the slaves a lot more for photo/video processing these days.

My kids have my old laptop with an Ableton Live setup that I go in and jam on every now and then, so I guess that counts too. Come to think of it, they have my Novation 61 SL MKIII in there. I really like that keyboard...

rgames


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## JohnG (Aug 4, 2019)

jmauz said:


> Also a laptop running MS-DOS.



I mean, obviously.


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## rgames (Aug 4, 2019)

JohnG said:


> I mean, obviously.


Commodore 64 FTW.


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## jononotbono (Aug 4, 2019)

rgames said:


> Come to think of it, they have my Novation 61 SL MKIII in there. I really like that keyboard...



Get it back off them. Kids are always taking liberties 😂

I’m currently at a hotel waiting for a flight in the morning and I just treated myself to this little baby keyboard. Lusting after my next computer which will be an 8 core Mac Book Pro just for these mobile moments!






Also had a bit of trouble fitting the Raven into my baggage so had to do some impromptu DIY...






Left the saw at home though 😂


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## AndyP (Aug 4, 2019)

VEP running on all machines.
2 x 12 core MacPro Slaves
1 iMac i9 DAW 
1 MacBook Pro as mobile device

I hate bouncing and the loading from disk feature. 

I am also a bit lazy to always pay attention to which tracks are active or inactive.

I'm always amazed at how effectively I work on the MacBook. It has the advantage that I work more concentrated and carry less garbage in the tracks.
Sometimes less is more.


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## TomislavEP (Aug 5, 2019)

For studio work I was always using a single desktop PC system built by myself as the central hub. I'm striving toward simplicity and compactness. Unfortunately, as a musician and composer, my budget is always limited so when I'm building a new system, typically I am able to put together one that is approx. 75% of what would be optimal and in accordance to the current tech trends. The PC that I'm using right now gets the work done from day to day, but it's already showing the signs of age. When I get in a position to build a new one, I will undoubtedly be in a similar position as many times before. I will do what I'm always doing in this situation: buy the best set of components that I can afford and with enough options for the future upgrades. I try not to let the technical limitations get in a way of creativity and productivity, but there is no doubt that this is easier to achieve and maintain with the more powerful tools available.


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## stigc56 (Aug 5, 2019)

I use one Mac Pro 6.1 for Cubase or any other main app. and 2 Mac Pro 5.1 for my libraries.


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## Jacob Cadmus (Aug 5, 2019)

Hackintosh as my main machine, MacBook Pro 15" as my portable rig.


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## vicontrolu (Aug 5, 2019)

1 with 64gb, windows 

C'mon guys..you don't need much more nowadays


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## Jeremy Spencer (Aug 7, 2019)

I use a 2013 a MacBook Pro (16GB), and an i7 slave PC. However, the slave has not been used for nearly a year. I placed all of my libraries on a couple of Samsung T5's, and it's amazing what I've been able to pull off with just the Mac. Long gone are my days of loading up massive templates on the slave.


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## AndyP (Aug 7, 2019)

vicontrolu said:


> 1 with 64gb, windows
> 
> C'mon guys..you don't need much more nowadays


Not much, but more ....


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## Gwyn (Aug 31, 2019)

2 . an old desktop and Acer Predator 15 G9-593-780Q with 32gb ram but 3.7 kg weight!!


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## Minko (Sep 3, 2019)

I'm only using one. An old tricked out 2011 iMac (SSD etc) and have an extra slave Mac Mini that I do not need. I bounce a lot and run VePro which seems to unload the sequencer a bit.


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## jononotbono (Sep 3, 2019)

Funnily enough, since starting this thread, I’ve gone down to 1 computer. A Mac Mini dual core with 8gb of RAM 😂 

Living in freeze track world at the minute!


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## JohnG (Sep 3, 2019)

jononotbono said:


> A Mac Mini dual core with 8gb of RAM 😂



Yikes! Hard to make The Most Epic Track Ever with that!


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## jononotbono (Sep 3, 2019)

JohnG said:


> Yikes! Hard to make The Most Epic Track Ever with that!



Yeah. Just a temporary setback at the minute. Travel equipment but better than nothing!


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## Loïc D (Sep 3, 2019)

Only one MBP 15 late 2013 + 2TB SSD.

My wife already yells at the mess in my studio, I can’t imagine if I had more than one machine.

Works very well, still I’m curious about that new MBP 16...


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## JEPA (Sep 3, 2019)

1 for Music
1 for VI-Control


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## Chornobyl (Apr 26, 2021)

JamieLang said:


> I can't NOT use 2. Virtual instruments and DAWs running in HD don't mix well. Technically, if you count the KRonos (Linux?) as one...and the iPad that I occasionally plug into the Kronos for sound supplementation...that's 4. But, the reality is the Kronos is an expensive controllers 95% of the time and most days I only turn on the new tower --not the MacBook.
> 
> Still, I've been considering trading the Kronos for a VPC1 (-2 since then the iPad is also of no use)…and I still use LPX for a single function. The Tempo mapping robot AI Drummer. I'd install OSX on my tower expect, there's not a REALLY good way to export it (and fully retain timing info). So, it's actually EASIER to plug the midi cable into the big tower and record BOTH audio and MIDI simultaneously in the Cubase timeline. If I did a dual boot--couldn't do it...I couldn't record live from one to the other.
> 
> #firstWorldProblems


Kronos ? Korg Kronos ?


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## LamaRose (Apr 26, 2021)

Currently working on old skool hip-hop loops... Tascam 4-track... this is like a no-fap diet that I am really digging except for the no-fap access.


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## JamieLang (Apr 27, 2021)

Chornobyl said:


> Kronos ? Korg Kronos ?


Yes. Kronos 88 key is my digital board in the studio.


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## Studio E (Apr 27, 2021)

I'm currently using two, both PC's. One of them is a laptop. Each has 64 gigs of ram, and in my current template, I'm trying to just get all of my Spitfire orchestra loaded on the laptop which is the VEP slave machine, and the PC runs Cubase, VE Pro, and whatever other instruments I need to add as the composition goes. The hard part is knowing where to stop, to keep overhead low enough to add other instruments as things unfold in the process. I think I'm really close to being finished with this current one in terms of instruments, and I have all main sections loaded, but with samples unloaded in all instances of Kontakt.


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## el-bo (Apr 27, 2021)

Mike T said:


> Barely one at this point.


This! Although, sometimes i've been known to use a very old Macbook Pro, an even older iPad and a much, much older brain


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## quickbrownf0x (Apr 27, 2021)

4;

- 1 master DAW pc (running Cubase)
- 2 VEPro slave pc's
- 1 Mac Mini just for VideoSlave

All pc's have the same specs; overclocked Intel 8700k's, 64gb, yada yada. Runs like clockwork, BUT;



> ...It’s amazing how one synth can cripple a whole system


So I think we're in the same position here. I'm trying to find a smart way to tell my wife that I'm going to need a bigger boat just for Omnisphere, without having to sleep out on the lawn for a month. OR I could just wait until she's on holiday with her sister next week. When she comes back, I'll just pretend that my new slave pc is old news. She does the same thing with shoes and bags, so...


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## Loïc D (Apr 27, 2021)




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