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What do You Like for a Home Recording Workstation

BigBadBen67

BigBadBen67

Mar 10, 2018
559
853
Memphis, TN
www.bassmanbenny.com
#1
Hi All,

I'm trying to get into more home recording. I'm quickly realizing that I simply don't have the horsepower in terms of a base workstation to do tracking effectively. I've tried using StudioOne with my laptop and a Presonus interface. But the latency was horrible. Now I'm trying going through my iPad but I suspect that's not going to have the horsepower either. (It's a gen 3 iPad Air.)

I guess first, am I right that the horsepower of the hardware you are running your DAW software on matters? The latency I was seeing basically made my bass track out of sync. It would either sound like I was rushing or be far enough behind that it was like I was playing drunk. It definitely wasn't a fair representation of my playing.

So what's a good workstation for doing some tracking? I'm not talking about full on professional stuff. Just something that would be on the good side for home recording.

Thanks!

Ben
 
#2
The latency you had may not be a result of not enough power.

Just about any properly-configured PC will have the capability for DAW. We were doing the DAW thing over 20 years ago with 32-bit Pentium 4s and Windows 98 - before USB! It worked.

Properly configured? Two hard drives, preferably solid state. 64-bit OS and a couple of USB 3 ports (if only for forward compatibility) with 16 meg RAM. Disconnect the ethernet and/or WiFi when using. Get rid of all the suckware running in the background. Desktops will be better than laptops.

I like to get cheap refurbished desktop PCs. They're a commodity.
 
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#3
AGCurry said:
The latency you had may not be a result of not enough power.

Just about any properly-configured PC will have the capability for DAW. We were doing the DAW thing over 20 years ago with 32-bit Pentium 4s and Windows 98 - before USB! It worked.

Properly configured? Two hard drives, preferably solid state. 64-bit OS and a couple of USB 3 ports (if only for forward compatibility) with 16 meg RAM. Disconnect the ethernet and/or WiFi when using. Get rid of all the suckware running in the background. Desktops will be better than laptops.

I like to get cheap refurbished desktop PCs. They're a commodity.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it might not be my laptop. I just looked at the specs. It's an IBM T480 with an i7-8650U CPU and 16GB of memory. The drive is SSD so that should be fine.

Maybe I just need better DAW software? I'm using the free version of StudioOne. Are different software platforms better/worse for latency?
 
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#4
How are you monitoring? Have you tried to optimize the buffer size(s)?

Most DAWs automatically adjust for the latency. As in, it knows your playing will be x milliseconds behind the the track, so it automatically moves the track being recorded x milliseconds to the left.
 
#5
Audacity is a pretty decent free interface face, and then Reaper offers a free 60 day trial. And I think the full version of Reaper is only $60 or so, which seems super reasonable for a fully functional DAW. Maybe one of those is worth a crack?

I've also just started getting into the home recording, and I really enjoy it! I fear that I'm likely to clog up these threads with too many posts, and wear out the welcome, such is my enthusiasm at the minute....
 
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#7
BigBadBen67 said:
Yeah, it might not be my laptop. I just looked at the specs. It's an IBM T480 with an i7-8650U CPU and 16GB of memory. The drive is SSD so that should be fine.

Maybe I just need better DAW software? I'm using the free version of StudioOne. Are different software platforms better/worse for latency?
Click to expand...
I was using a Lenovo T490s, which is quite similar to your T480. Mine has the i7-8565U which is marginally faster than your, but not by any significant amount. It has 16GB and onboard Intel graphics. [Home - UserBenchmark]

I used it with Pro Tools 12 and Focusrite Scarlett for a year. I had some glitches when running a lot of plugins and had to increase the buffering. It was usable, but I was pushing it to it's limits.

After doing a lot of homework, I recently bought a "gaming" laptop, a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro, 32GB, GEFORCE card, and an i7-10750U, which is significantly more powerful than the i7-85xx class. I am now running Pro Tools 2020 and tons of processing at the lowest buffer setting with no problems.

The Lenovo T480/90's are ok, but if you really want to push limits, you might enjoy something faster with more memory. 16GB is not too great - usable, but limiting.
 
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#8
AGCurry said:
The latency you had may not be a result of not enough power.

Just about any properly-configured PC will have the capability for DAW. We were doing the DAW thing over 20 years ago with 32-bit Pentium 4s and Windows 98 - before USB! It worked.

Properly configured? Two hard drives, preferably solid state. 64-bit OS and a couple of USB 3 ports (if only for forward compatibility) with 16 meg GB RAM.
Click to expand...
Agreed, although your RAM suggestion was a little off. ;)
AGCurry said:
Disconnect the ethernet and/or WiFi when using. Get rid of all the suckware running in the background. Desktops will be better than laptops.

I like to get cheap refurbished desktop PCs. They're a commodity.
Click to expand...
Good suggestions, although I have my desktop connected to the wireless router via ethernet and have not had any issues. But then my desktop is a gaming PC (tons of horsepower).
Basslice said:
...you might enjoy something faster with more memory. 16GB is not too great - usable, but limiting.
Click to expand...
Mine has 16 GB of RAM and it works great. What helps is having a 1 GB video card and recording to the secondary (data) drive instead of the primary (OS) drive.
 
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#9
I believe one advantage to a gaming laptop system is having a dedicated gaming graphic card instead of on-board, motherboard graphics. DAWs are not hugely graphics intensive, but anything you can offload to a dedicated piece of hardware is going to free up resources for processing.

Now if you are only doing simple tracking of only a few things, this is not a big deal. If you start having more than 5-10 tracks, all being processed (compressors, reverb, melodyne, midi plugins, etc) in real time, you will experience issues on a minimally configured system.
 
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#10
I'm using a 7 year old iMac bumped up to 16GB RAM (I think it's got a 2.4GHz chip). Works well. I also have an external 4TB SSD for storing files. Critical for me is a good interface. I've had a bunch over the years and the one that works for me in terms of form factor, inputs, workflow and software support is Presonus 1824c. I use Logic almost exclusively.

If anything, I could stand to upgrade my computer. I have a newer MacBookPro - have yet to run DAW and do any tracking on this machine. I use it more for "live off the floor" multitrack audio capture (using Presonus 16R and Presonus Capture). That works really well.
 
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#11
I use a mixed approach that works perfectly for me. I do all my tracking on a Zoom L-12. It's a simple device that's nothing more than a glorified tape recorder. Once I've tracked everything I can transfer the wave files to my cheap laptop and I use Cakewalk to polish up the tracks. Let's me avoid recording on the computer but also the Zoom's small footprint is great to just grab and record without any real setup when the mood strikes.
 
#12
Not hijacking the thread as this might be helpful.

AGCurry said:
Properly configured? Two hard drives, preferably solid state. 64-bit OS and a couple of USB 3 ports (if only for forward compatibility) with 16 meg RAM. Disconnect the ethernet and/or WiFi when using. Get rid of all the suckware running in the background. Desktops will be better than laptops.

I like to get cheap refurbished desktop PCs. They're a commodity.
Click to expand...

Fairly late model Win10 Refurbs on Amazon run under $150 with OS. Pretty hard to beat.

AG,
I bought a refurb Dell Optiplex 3010 with a 3.1Ghz Intel I3 CPU, it has 32GB memory, I'm running Band lab Cakewalk and if I run through a plug in it seems to generate latency. It's great for direct recording and mixing. Primary drive is not digital (C), but I figured this should be pretty decent platform (I back up to a portable drive). It's pretty stripped down just the base WIN10 install Cakewalk, iTunes, and Spybot AV. That's interesting about disconnecting the I-Net and Wifi.
Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
 
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#15
tothemax said:
... I'm running Band lab Cakewalk and if I run through a plug in it seems to generate latency. It's great for direct recording and mixing. Primary drive is not digital (C), but I figured this should be pretty decent platform (I back up to a portable drive). It's pretty stripped down just the base WIN10 install Cakewalk, iTunes, and Spybot AV. That's interesting about disconnecting the I-Net and Wifi.
Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Yes, your system should be plenty adequate. I would use an SSD for the system drive, just because I'm impatient about booting and loading programs.

Avoid recording through plugins - there's no getting around the fact that a plugin places software (which uses clock cycles) between the source and destination. If you want to apply processing, do it as part of mixing. And if you really *need* that processing in recording, use outboard hardware.
 
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#16
brianrost said:
It's the USB audio drivers that make all the difference. What is your interface? That's way more important than the software when it comes to latency.
Click to expand...

I'm using the Presonus AudioBox iOne.

It may have just been that I was having issues with the free version of Studio One that came with it. I've been testing out Reaper today and so far am really impressed with it. I'm doing some basic stuff where I record a backing track from iReal Pro on track 1 and do my bass line on track 2 (only one track recorded at a time). That's exactly what I was struggling with on the free Studio One version but now on Reaper it's working great.

The more bare bones style of Reaper appeals to me. I'm the kind of guy where if I want a chorus effect I'm just going to reach for my chorus pedal. For now at least (until I learn more) I don't need my DAW doing that for me.

B
 
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#17
AGCurry said:
Avoid recording through plugins - there's no getting around the fact that a plugin places software (which uses clock cycles) between the source and destination. If you want to apply processing, do it as part of mixing. And if you really *need* that processing in recording, use outboard hardware.
Click to expand...
This is excellent and highly valuable advice.
 
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#20
AGCurry said:
Avoid recording through plugins - there's no getting around the fact that a plugin places software (which uses clock cycles) between the source and destination. If you want to apply processing, do it as part of mixing. And if you really *need* that processing in recording, use outboard hardware.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I found, I was playing around with amp sim's and added so much latency it wasn't worth it. So to use amp plugin's you need to do the track with a clean signal and then apply the effect during mixing (or just mic my amp). I think I saw that a number of folks do both, getting a live track mic'd and a direct track for use in the mix. So much to learn even when you try to keep it simple.

Great stuff
 
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