Professional Audio work - Sample Libraries and SSD

[Claudius-07]

Hi Folks. I hope I am in the right area for this. A good friend of mine is a professional music composer, editor etc. He mainly does work for commercials, TV Shows etc. When not using the gear at his work studio, at home he uses an older 2005ish Power Mac G5 with 2 dual cores and 18 GB of RAM (this is as of his specs). When he works with his "music sample libraries", from what he told me, these libraries are 200GB or more, like for wind, or percussion. Now most of this is Greek to me. I build systems for gaming for me and my friends.

Now he went to a local computer store here (and they are quite good and knowledgeable), and he explained that every time he needs to load in one of these massive libraries, the computer takes 5+ minutes. If he then wants to swap one one, again more time. They are set to build him a new Intel 3960x with 64 GB of ram but where the BULK of the coin is going to go is with massive SSD technology. Essentially HUGE SSD drives which cost a fortune pushing the cost up to over $4K.

From what I understand, he needs to have these libraries on really fast drives. Would he not be better served with a RAID array of smaller, lower cost SSD drives? ORRRR should he find another solution, one that has him get a server board that he can load with massive amounts of RAM. Anyone else out there that has experience in this? Are there any other options? I am just curious now, I am not involved, but it put me to shame when all these years of building gaming systems really was of help to him.

Cheers.

 

[Coup27]

What would be useful is if you could obtain an itemized spec from the shop building him the computer, then we can see what they are putting in it and how much they are charging.

Large SSD's are very expensive. It all depends on how much "fast" space he actually needs.

 

[razel]

They are clearly ripping him off just because he can afford it. I'd get a 2nd opinion. From the sound of things it sounds like badly programmed software. He really just needs someone to diagnose the slowest part of that chain... someone who can diagnose the primary condition of exactly what's taking 5 minutes. I'm sure it's not putting it all on an SSD.

The most successful professionals I've encountered will use their experience to find another way... not rely on hardware to solve their problems.

 

[groberts101]

5 minute "loads" would surely be pointing to disk related bottlenecks even if the software were less than efficient though.

Get 2 x 480/512GB SSD's and run them seperately.. one as an OS volume matched to the other as storage of comparible speed. No way to make a ramdisk work with that sized data "loads". Both similarly fast volumes working together in that type of workflow will make things much faster.

and 4k ain't gonna cut it for that level of build/workstation performance. I would guess it would be a bit higher dependant on what SSD's he chose.

 

[Zap]

They are clearly ripping him off just because he can afford it.

You don't know what SSDs are going into that build so how can you say they are ripping him off? From what I can see so far, $4k is getting 64GB RAM and an extreme edition chip as part of a complete computer with an SSD. Also, the place needs to turn a profit. Would be nice if everyone offered to do work for free, but YOU like getting paid to work, don't you?

If building/spec'ing myself, I'd start with these parts. All prices are rough ESTIMATES and I pulled everything out of my arse. :sneaky: However, can do worse.
SB-E hex core but not extreme edition $650
socket 2011 motherboard with 8 RAM slots $350
four sticks of 8GB DDR3 $250 (already double previous RAM, leaves room for upgrades)
cooler for CPU ??? (these don't come with a cooler, right?)
cheap graphics card $40
DVD writer for software installation $20
"quiet" case like Antec Solo II or Fractal Design Define R3 $100
4TB HDD for storage $400
128GB Marvel controller SSD for Windows/apps $180
256GB Marvel controller SSD for work-in-progress files $330
512GB Marvel controller SSD for all samples $750
good quality lower wattage PSU like XFX Core 450W $40 AR
This would total just over $3000.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Would he not be better served with a RAID array of smaller, lower cost SSD drives?

Without TRIM support, SSDs degrade in performance very fast (well, some of them do).

I would definitely suggest a single larger SSD if he can afford it, over a RAID array of smaller ones.

 

[Claudius-07]

Thanks for the info guys. Yah I believe he got quoted for 2, 480 GB drives but also a PCI-E SSD variant that he said was insanely expensive. However saving on the slightly cheaper Intel CPU makes sense.

 

[Cerb]

If it's a real workstation, it should have ECC RAM. However, going with SSDs, I would not fall back on the normal, "get a Dell/HP/Whatever," since every last major vendor's SSD options are garbage. IMO, they aren't steering him wrong, but it should really be a Xeon workstation box. The more expensive SSDs would be a matter of them going a little overkill to keep from the customer being disappointed. Been, there, done that, still got the wasted Quadro and SCSI drives in a drawer somewhere .

P.S. Relevant article, with link to the study.

$4K is right in the ballpark, maybe even a bit low (partly due to the consumer desktop CPU and RAM). 64GB RAM might be overkill, but RAM costs are nothing compared to the CPU and SSDs, so meh.

Those PCI-e SSDs really are speed demons, some being capable of 2+ GB/s transfers (in synthetic testing, anyway). Whether they are needed is a good question, though. Personally, I'd spec it out, after swapping to Xeons w/ ECC RAM, with an OS SSD and a data SSD (not unlike Zap), and see how things go. If disk seeking is the real bottleneck, a good 6Gb/s SSD will be, at worst, tens of times faster than a regular HDD, and at best 100x or more faster.

Finally, being used to a Power Mac, make a point that he get it spec'd out for noise, too. They weren't super quiet, but a nice Antec, NXZT, etc., would be a welcome improvement over a typical Foxconn, Coolermaster, etc..

 

[tweakboy]

Dont go cheap route for PSU. PSU is one of the most important things when upgrading.


If you upgrade your video card in the future chances are its going to blow up,, cuz that happened to us,,, me and my cousin. He had a Antec 450w once we put the 460 in and pressed power, the PSU blew up,, the video card was ok,, smell was from PSU only, I told him you need 120 dollar PSU,, but he got a 50 dollar PSU,, cheap korean companies make with 18amp x 2 ,,,, He got a good PSU from Frys and it boots up fine.......

For you the OP, He needs lots of cores and lots of RAM , and some expensive SSDs sounds will load instanty, instead of a thrashing hd.. gl

 

[Coup27]

I'm sure the only threads you reply in are the ones you can add a story of you + family member + hardware which has been mentioned in the thread = waffle in thread about irrelevant story nobody is interested in.

PSU issues or selecting a cheap PSU was not even brought into this topic.

 

[groberts101]

lol.. I'm leaving before Coup tries to start picking on me now.