Three more weeks. 18 more days. If I get through them, I've secured my family's ability to eat through 2016 at least, by which point, according to the projections, the birth center will have been profitable for three months (and that includes my wife's salary as an expense). We've settled into a routine that involves very little work for me, which is fine. Things are still chaotic enough that I had to un-mic and re-mic and un-mic and re-mic and un-mic and re-mic four people in the space of ten minutes yesterday because those who decide can't decide worth a shit. None of our cast has left in an ambulance for about a week now so that's nice. I'm ready to start thinking beyond. Like, I'm bloody well decking out the garage. There will be pegboard. There will be better lighting. There will be a chipper, there will be a pressure washer, there will be a hedge trimmer. I have earned these things. I am eager to return my home to some semblance of presentable, having been rode hard and put away wet by seven years of tenants. Theoretically, I have also sold my last, great, thermonuclear Todd-Soundelux prize, the fully-loaded Lantana System 6000. I say theoretically because while I accepted the guy's offer and sent him an invoice, he has yet to cough up the cash. This is good as I need to build a new rig to mix a feature I have on deck for the new year. Right now, it's looking like I'm going back to PC for the first time since 2002. PC nerds, tell me how much of a premium I'm paying for one of these. They're built by someone I know from the Pro Tools beta and I'll probably go that way just to get my feet wet since I haven't much fucked with PC since XPSP3. I'm off this mountain the evening of the 22nd. The afternoon of the 23rd I have an hour and a half massage booked. Think I may also go for a salt scrub and a righteous dinner. I know that there will be a very nice bottle of scotch at the end of the rainbow.
We had a little debate in class today. What specifically happened was this: A group of students were teaching the class how to use objective criteria in a negotiation. For this presentation they dramatized a company trying to choose between two guys to be the next creative director. Both candidates came with a long list of personal and professional characteristics. ROB was nice and everyone liked him and had no client complaints, while TODD had some loyal followers, tended to have many complaints from HR, but few complaints from clients. Their styles of work were quite different. The presenters wanted to see how the criteria people use to make decisions is often not objective. At one point, I said, "Todd, there's a sign above your desk that says, "NEVER HALF-ASS ANYTHING." What does it mean to you? Rob said he disagreed and that it is okay to half-ass some things when creating digital products for clients. A debate ensued. Thanks kb.
I get around $2,400 to build something close to their default configuration. That 5960x alone is around $1000.Right now, it's looking like I'm going back to PC for the first time since 2002. PC nerds, tell me how much of a premium I'm paying for one of these.
Appreciate that. They've got a 14-core but that looks like about a $3000 chip. Stupid thing is I'm going to have to do most of my SoundMiner curation on Mac, then hit it via PC over network. By the time I'm up and running there will be a 24-port managed switch, an 8-port managed switch, two 8-port unmanaged switches and two Airports in my house. It's ridiculous.
I googled SoundMiner, and has to be the least informative marketing copy I've ever read.What is Soundminer? It is an advanced search engine for both Macintosh and Windows users, a highly advanced batch conversion engine, an integrated metadata management tool, an advanced sound design tool, a DSP processing host, a scalable server for multiple users, a web publishing vehicle, and a tracking and metrics system, and it is a companion product designed to work directly with the most popular production tools in the industry.
'k. So let's say you need to put a tire squeal in your video. Here's the cheap way: 1) Open iTunes 2) Type in "tire squeal" 3) Demo sounds until you find the one you like 4) "reveal in Finder" 5) Switch to Pro Tools 6) Import Audio 7) Drill down to finder window 8) Import file into bin 9) Find file in bin 10) Drag it to where you want it to be 11) Trim to fit 12) Perform gajillions of audiosuite edits Here's the Soundminer way: 1) Enter "tire squeal" into Soundminer 2) Fuck with the speed to get what you want, build a VST stack to process it the way you want, set in and out points 3) Switch to Pro Tools and highlight the slug you want on the track you want 4) Switch back to Soundminer and hit "S"
Ok now that I'm home I can look at the hardware. My ballpark is about $500 - $1000 overpriced (not bad if you're in the "just throw money at it" phase). My concern with this rig wouldn't be the cost, it would be the quality of the build. He doesn't mention any aftermarket cooling, for example, which if you're running long intensive rendering sessions you really need at least a few extra case fans and ideally a beast of a CPU cooler. I'm concerned about the RAM too - while I understand audio is CPU bound if you get too stingy with memory its going to quickly become your new bottleneck. I wouldn't be concerned with size of RAM, more just speed so it can feed that lovely CPU. It would be good to find out if he's leaving you room for upgrades, like free RAM slots and a PCI express slot if you decide to give your eyes a break from that graphics card. Do you need a fancy sound card? I assume sound people have fancy audio jack requirements I know nothing about. Last thing - Eh? Is that a VM, dual boot, or just antivirus? I don't like people installing stuff for me but YMMV.PC nerds, tell me how much of a premium I'm paying for one of these.
Safesurf. Specially created safe internet browsing zone to keep all junk, cookies, viruses, and malware-spyware off your main Pro Tools operating system.
The ad copy allays most of your fears. Besides, I know both of these guys. Water cooling is essential. They also go up to 64GB of RAM. It's also a mammer-jammer server board so expansion room doesn't worry me. My fancy sound cards speak formats you haven't even heard of. 
I made a decent rack mount box including ssd for the OS and raided 2TB performance hard drives for about 1850 and change. You'd need to add a sound card for about 200 bux extra. Mine would be better than what they offer, and with the 1K for the software you are looking close to what they are charging. let me know if you want the parts list. That is in the ballpark, not too much of a premium IMO.
Good move on the massage, I always forget to treat myself when I'm overworked. Makes a big difference. If you haven't checked it out I highly recommend little red day spa in the old Ranier brewery building. Grab the wife and a bottle of champagne, they do amazing couples massages and it's great for recharging together.
Comparing the spec sheet to Newegg, you're paying around a grand more if you buy that package. Is there a reason Pro Tools works good with an $1100 CPU and a $35 GPU? The processor is a beast but it is not 3 times as good as a $300 4790K, especially not if you overclock it.
Audio processing, according to an architect at Logic and an architect at Avid, is all about physical cores times clock speed. This is why my 8-year-old 3.2gHz 8-core is so much quicker than anything new. Unfortunately, the rest of the computing world is not so constrained. As such, architecture has shifted away from optimal from an audio standpoint.
If you didn't have the real time constraint you could benefit from using the GPU, but it would be really hard to do that and do the processing in real time because you'd have to send large buffers to the GPU and fetch them back to get any benefit. Not impossible, probably, but hard.