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DAW building companies, is it worth it?

I’m a big believer in using PC builders. They have years of experience building machines on a day to day basis, and can customize to your specific needs. After going back and forth to define specs that were ideal for my use, I just had Fundamental Audio build a killer x299 machine that doesn’t even blink at 128 buffer in Pro Tools with Spitfire strings, Superior drums, UVI Falcon synths, and multiple reverbs. I probably could have cobbled together and eventually configured a system like that myself, but having an experienced builder do it for me was a much more efficient use of my time and resources.

Also, the post delivery support alluded to above is such a big deal. In the Mac Pro thread on Gearslutz, someone recently pointed out (well, maybe speculated) that one of the reasons Hans Zimmer uses PCs is that he has dedicated people who manage those PCs to make sure they work the way they’re supposed to. In my case, having Fundamental Audio available for support is essentially the equivalent, since Chris has extensive background not only with pro audio PCs, but also with the major DAWs and the popular interface/conversion hardware people use for this stuff. With my previous ADK quad core build, Chris and team provided support for the entire (9 year) life of the machine, as I upgraded drives, memory, and OS. If you don’t want to expend the effort of getting under the hood to do your own PC management and interface troubleshooting, that kind of long term support is invaluable.
 
In terms of picking out the best parts and whatnot, that's not really a thing nowadays. As long as the parts are compatible, it'll be fine. Those companies don't buy 20 different motherboards and then test them to see which one will perform best because it's not necessary. Just put together a system that works and you'll be fine. Just know that you can avoid most gaming related features that make components like motherboards more expensive. The most stripped down basic versions should have all you need and work flawlessly.

In terms of optimizing OS, there's not really anything to be done anymore. The few things you can do, many companies like NI and Steinberg have guides. These companies aren't doing anything more than that. There's nothing special going on.

Yes, the support from these companies tend to be really great. My first PC was from Rain Computers (US division no longer exists and owner of UK started Molten Music Technology) and I had to deal with support many times. They were very attentive but ultimately never solved the issues I had. I still had to figure things out on my own. The only time they were actually helpful was when they sent me a replacement ram stick and guided me through figuring out which one was bad.

My second computer I had built at a computer shop here. That was a terrible experience as it took 2 months for them to get the computer working. All ram wouldn't show up, motherboard died, they blamed my graphics card, new mobo died with a new graphics card, eventually rebuilt the computer with entirely new parts and it worked. That computer had performance issues which I was never able to solve and no one else was able to help with. As far as I can tell, something was seriously wrong with that motherboard (2 of them died within a week of use...).

My third and current studio computer I put together in an afternoon. I had some difficulties overclocking but once I restored it to the default OC settings, it worked flawlessly. Hasn't had a single issue. Out of the box the other systems already had issues to solve.

My point is that building it yourself is easy and the support that you get from other services might be helpful if something dies (which is unlikely during the warranty period) but other than that, they won't solve any complicated issues with performance or strange behavior.

The most difficult part is figuring out what processor you should go with but that'll happen regardless of if it's DIY or from some company. Ya, they can give you some advice but it's still down to you to make a decision about what you think might work best for your needs. You'll get just as good advice by posting on here.
 
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DaveBCC said:
I’m a big believer in using PC builders. They have years of experience building machines on a day to day basis, and can customize to your specific needs. After going back and forth to define specs that were ideal for my use, I just had Fundamental Audio build a killer x299 machine that doesn’t even blink at 128 buffer in Pro Tools with Spitfire strings, Superior drums, UVI Falcon synths, and multiple reverbs. I probably could have cobbled together and eventually configured a system like that myself, but having an experienced builder do it for me was a much more efficient use of my time and resources.

Also, the post delivery support alluded to above is such a big deal. In the Mac Pro thread on Gearslutz, someone recently pointed out (well, maybe speculated) that one of the reasons Hans Zimmer uses PCs is that he has dedicated people who manage those PCs to make sure they work the way they’re supposed to. In my case, having Fundamental Audio available for support is essentially the equivalent, since Chris has extensive background not only with pro audio PCs, but also with the major DAWs and the popular interface/conversion hardware people use for this stuff. With my previous ADK quad core build, Chris and team provided support for the entire (9 year) life of the machine, as I upgraded drives, memory, and OS. If you don’t want to expend the effort of getting under the hood to do your own PC management and interface troubleshooting, that kind of long term support is invaluable.
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:emoji_blush:
 
Gerhard Westphalen said:
In terms of picking out the best parts and whatnot, that's not really a thing nowadays. As long as the parts are compatible, it'll be fine. Those companies don't buy 20 different motherboards and then test them to see which one will perform best because it's not necessary. Just put together a system that works and you'll be fine. Just know that you can avoid most gaming related features that make components like motherboards more expensive. The most stripped down basic versions should have all you need and work flawlessly.

In terms of optimizing OS, there's not really anything to be done anymore. The few things you can do, many companies like NI and Steinberg have guides. These companies aren't doing anything more than that. There's nothing special going on.

Yes, the support from these companies tend to be really great. My first PC was from Rain Computers (US division no longer exists and owner of UK started Molten Music Technology) and I had to deal with support many times. They were very attentive but ultimately never solved the issues I had. I still had to figure things out on my own. The only time they were actually helpful was when they sent me a replacement ram stick and guided me through figuring out which one was bad.

My second computer I had built at a computer shop here. That was a terrible experience as it took 2 months for them to get the computer working. All ram wouldn't show up, motherboard died, they blamed my graphics card, new mobo died with a new graphics card, eventually rebuilt the computer with entirely new parts and it worked. That computer had performance issues which I was never able to solve and no one else was able to help with. As far as I can tell, something was seriously wrong with that motherboard (2 of them died within a week of use...).

My third and current studio computer I put together in an afternoon. I had some difficulties overclocking but once I restored it to the default OC settings, it worked flawlessly. Hasn't had a single issue. Out of the box the other systems already had issues to solve.

My point is that building it yourself is easy and the support that you get from other services might be helpful if something dies (which is unlikely during the warranty period) but other than that, they won't solve any complicated issues with performance or strange behavior.

The most difficult part is figuring out what processor you should go with but that'll happen regardless of if it's DIY or from some company. Ya, they can give you some advice but it's still down to you to make a decision about what you think might work best for your needs. You'll get just as good advice by posting on here.
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Did you switch from Mac to PC? I just built a PC workstation using a intel 10980xe after my entire career on Mac.
 
Fitz said:
Any tips for optimizing cubase on PC or does it work just fine, like you mentioned.
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If you run into problems then there are the usual asio guard settings to experiment with but other than that, no. Pretty much everyone I know who has switched says that Cubase runs better on PC's. PT is the opposite but I've never had issues with it on PC.
 
So some of you might want to know how the story ended :D. I went with the AMD 3960x with 128 GB of RAM (an upgrade to 256GB is still possible). I wanted it to be future proof so I put in 2x2TB Nvme for samples, a 1TB project drive and a 512 GB Nvme boot drive. Price: around €5k, you can build one on your own for around €4k (maybe even €3k at the moment) but I was done with all the hassle and wanted support from a "professional". So I thought this thing would be rock solid with little to no issues the upcoming 5-10 years.

In hindsight maybe not the best CPU: https://www.scanproaudio.info/2020/02/27/2020-q1-cpus-in-the-studio-overview/ The only thing my DAW builder showed was a CPU benchmark score (which is kind of irrelevent in the stuff we do). Aside from that:

The first thing I noticed was how loud this beast was. So I called my DAW builder. He said: yes I've optimised the fans, but this is normal for a CPU that eats power like this one does. Later on he admitted he used 2 smaller fans instead of 1 larger one (which would have been less noisy), because it didn't fit in the 19" rack case. It would have been wise to call me and ask: "hey, you might want a tower instead, because I have to use 2 smaller fans which will be a bit more noisy". I'd have done it immediately. I even asked how much it would cost to put all the components in a tower case, but he never got back to me about that. My solution: I bought a couple of long cables and put the computer in a room next to my workspace.

Second thing was this PC is locked, like literally. So if I want a bigger or extra drive for projects, I have to call this DAW builder, drive for 1 hour and pay a premium price to put in a larger drive. Not exactly what I want when I'm in the PC world.

And then, Cubase started to freeze. It seems to be a ucrtbase.dll problem. It freezes completely at random moments and killed my creativity. DAW builder had no idea what it could be and suggested to check how many cores Windows was using and turn of some cores one by one. I Googled it and found no real solution, Cubase help centre suggested some stuff that didn't help. In the end I started using Reaper. It seems to be a waaaaay lighter program which uses the power of my computer waaay more efficient than Cubase ever did. So bye bye Cubase. Strange thing is, a friend of mine has a completely different PC but the same issue. The only similarity was it was build by the same DAW builder.

There was also a Kontakt "problem". Non Kontakt Player libraries took ages to load. Turned out to be that Windows Defender was turned on on all sample drives. Something a DAW builder should disable I gues...

Another "issue" was my girlfriend coincidentally pulled the power plug out of my computer while it was on. After being mad I started to try and boot my computer, which failed so many times I started to get nervous. In the end it worked... I can imagine it's not really nice to lose power completely while turned on, but isn't there a safety feature in the power supply? Against power loss?

While midst in a project I decided to turn off Windows Updates. An update was waiting to be installed and I didn't want anything to break after an update so I decided to turn it off. I did this in the Group Policy > https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-automatically-windows-10 But it turned out to be a bad mistake. After rebooting I got a boot failure. I had to load some "optimized bios settings" and after that my computer booted like normal. I wasn't able to find the bios settings my DAW builder made, so it was lost somehow. It turned out to be my DAW builder approved safety updates, but disabled other major Windows updates. I guess the combination of events made my computer do this. Every now and then I still get this boot failure. So I guess I'm stuck with the DAW builder to find a solution.

Anyway, in almost one year time I had too many issues to feel comfortable with this machine. Next PC won't be build by this DAW builder, and I might even consider going back to $Apple again. But the upcoming 5-10 years will be with this machine, so hopefully everything will run smooth.
 
AudioLoco said:
For anyone in the UK...
What builders would you recommend?
Thanks!
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I have a system built by SCAN that is 10 years old and still working away without issue. But I'll be upgrading components soon. And have asked them to quote me. It was little things like set up, cable management, overall quality of build. That I found assuring enough for me to go back to them. And they have a record of audio PC building.
https://www.scan.co.uk/
 
AudioLoco said:
For anyone in the UK...
What builders would you recommend?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
I've had a great experience with Scan pro audio, and I chose them after seeing good feedback online. I also became aware that a regular, very informed, helpful and nerdy (in a good way!) guy on the Sound in Sound forums was their main man.

Cheers,
Alasdair.
 
Bemused said:
I have a system built by SCAN that is 10 years old and still working away without issue. But I'll be upgrading components soon. And have asked them to quote me. It was little things like set up, cable management, overall quality of build. That I found assuring enough for me to go back to them. And they have a record of audio PC building.
https://www.scan.co.uk/
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Aha, Bemused, you can type faster than me! 😃 Happy you've had the same experience as I have.
 
Thanks, Scan looks serious (although not 100% specialized like Carillon for example) I am checking them out.
 
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I have been building my own computers for neigh on 30 years now. My oldest son knows how to do it, and the other day, I helped my younger son build one of his own. A pc build takes me about 5 hours. There is taking the parts out of the old one for things I re-use, putting into the new one, and a couple of hours getting the C drive copied over. Considering the value of my time in my day job as a system administrator, I might be money ahead to hire this out, but this is an enjoyable ritual over the years, and I wish I had the excuse to do it more often. So.... I think home building is a surprisingly personal decision. I spend a lot of time getting the cabling just how I like it in terms of air flow and vibration resistance--probably ups my time.

I like to pay extra for really nice power supplies and other parts, so an off the shelf retail system would never do for me.

To have a pro do it, it may be better to think of it in terms not so much of simply paying someone to assemble it so much as ongoing support if things go wrong. I can imagine if one does music things for a living, down time is pretty expensive, and does a music pro want to take the time to learn the technology in addition to their work duties? Very much depends in the individual.

I think the difficulty of building a pc is the same over the years, its the same parts, they are just 1,000 times more powerful than 30 years ago. One nice thing is pcpartpicker which ensures the parts are compatible. Before we had that, I would normally have the guy at the computer store tell me which parts were compatible--cpu, mobo, ram, and power supply. They also know which things get returned more often, and sometimes are super gaming nerds who really know the pc internals. In the past maybe 20 years used Microcenter, a usa based chain. They are competitive to internet for cpu mobo and ram, making up the difference with expensive cables and other peripherals. The beauty of them is I can return without penalty if my build does not work for some reason.

There was another store in town that would actually put together the mobo, cpu, ram and fan and post the system right before your eyes. But they are out of business for maybe 20 years now. Microcenter is the last man standing in terms of a good computer store, but they do a good job of it, so no complaints.

If you want to do an AMD based build, Pictus is extremely helpful in terms of opining on a proposed build.

And to the original poster, when a previously working system starts failing in a non-software sort of way, I look to the power supply--some sort of heating up issue. If one has blown the dust from the cpu heat sink, my thought is the power supply is the device most likely to flake in and out. I blow the dust out of those as well. I have also seen mobos fail, but those are typically a total failure, not intermittent--never seen a cpu or ram to fail. Just my personal experience, I don't have knowledge of larger trends.
 
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