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8Dio have finally released the first stage of their “Adagio” products – Adagio Violins. Its part 1 of their string releases, to be followed by Cellos, Violas and Basses later in 2012.  The core specifications are:

First off, the sound is incredibly raw compared to other sample libraries. I think with something as dark and weird as a music box, a raw sound really works well – its creepy, beautiful and lyrical all in one. I recorded a quick clip with the library to give an idea of the sound you get out of the box (NB. I used QL Spaces for reverb):

As you can hear above, this raw sound provides a realism which I find lacking in many libraries today. Granted, raw sounding libraries don’t work for all instruments, but it really comes into its own here. The above cue was made using the main patch in the library but it also includes 10 extra patches ranging from “Eerie” – the main patch with some delay/reverb added to give a proper creepy sound – to “Haunted Ice Palace”, an delightfully dark and subdued “synthy” sound. The patches are great fun to play around with and I can definitely see a couple of them being useful in compositions, but the main patch is where its at – its bright, eerie, disturbing and most importantly incredibly realistic.

Also included in the library are wind up/wind down/crank/scrape sounds, which you can hear at the start of the cue above and at 0:09. They are a great addition to the instrument, giving it another layer of realism.

The library has at least 6 velocity layers on each instrument (some with over 40!) with over 750 samples and you can hear from the demos that a lot of effort has gone into recording this library. It’s really at home in horror scores, but I can see it being useful in a number of other applications too from film scores, to adverts etc. In short, this is an awesome little library and I can see it being an excellent addition to a number of composer’s arsenals (including mine!).

Its available from the 1st May from the Bad Cat Media Group store for a price of $19.99 (ex VAT).

Congradulations Oliver!

Keep your eyes out for more competitions soon!

Budget

Before we get started, how much is your budget? I set out not caring how much I spent.  I could have spent anything up to $5000 realisticly, but after careful consideration and research, I found that the more money you spend, the less value you get.

A really decent PC for music production can be created for less than $2,500.  The difference between that PC and a PC that costs $5,000 is not really that much – you can get a lot more RAM, better processor etc., but performance wise, you’re not missing out on that much.  This guide is based on a budget of approximately $2,500 or €2,000- that should work in the US or Europe in numerous retailers to get you what you need.

The Components

Lets pretend you know nothing about PCs (maybe you don’t).  If you buy a PC, it has the following parts in it:

• Processor (CPU)
• CPU Fan
• RAM
• Motherboard
• Soundcard
• Power Supply Unit (PSU)
• Hard drives
• Case
• DVD/Bluray Drive
• Operating sytem

Processor.  Firstly, AMD or Intel? These are the two guys to choose from – AMD is less powerful but cheaper, and Intel is pretty much the industry standard.  I would always advise Intel as they’re winning the race in power and value for money at the moment. AMD are cheaper, but their processors lack the power required to push your machine to the limits.

Next, which model? Intel currently have the i5 and i7 core processors. These are the top of the range processors – the i7 being a lot better than i5.

Options

i7 2600, 670, 870, 875 – all around the same range. Awesome processors for the money.

i7 980x, 990x – top of the line extreme i7 processors. These give more punch than the rest, but at around €600 / $800 more than the rest, you’re loosing out on value.

CPU Fan. If you’re looking for a silent PC, you’ll need to go for a really quiet CPU fan.  The CPU fan cools your processor while the PC is on and can sometimes be loud.  Every processor comes with a “stock” fan to keep it cool – some of these are loud or not very good at keeping it cool if you overclock the PC.

Options

There’s plenty of options available for CPU fans, and the big names are Corsair, Noctua, Scythe and Cooler Master.  When looking at fans, always check the socket type to ensure it will fit your processor and motherboard.

RAM. For audio production (especially heavy use of samples), the more RAM the better. DDR3 RAM is the latest and greatest.  Based on the motherboard you get, you get get more or less RAM. Some motherboards come with 4 RAM slots, some come with 6 RAM slots. With 6 RAM slots, you can get 24GB of RAM by using six sticks of 4GB.

Options

There’s so many options to choose from. Things to remember – DDR3 is the best, the timings must all be the same, always keep the same sized sticks – don’t get a 2GB one and 768MB stick, don’t forget how many RAM slots are on your motherboard.

Motherboard: The motherboard is generally where you can find a bottleneck in your entire PC, if you go for a sub-par option.  Some of the big names in motherboards currently are Asus, MSI and Gigabyte. When you look at motherboards, the important things to look at are:

- How many RAM slots does it have? Most motherboards have 4 “DIMM” slots, meaning you can put in 4 sticks of RAM. Certain motherboards now have 6 DIMM slots allowing you to put in 6 slots of RAM.

- ATX or mATX? – ATX motherboards are the normal sized ones. mATX is micro sized which means its really small and can fit into a small “media” PC. Avoid mATX boards for audio production.

- Processor Socket – the socket name of the motherboard needs to fit the processor you have chosen. For example,  the i7 990x processor has an LGA 1366 socket – you need to get a motherboard that also uses this socket.  This means the processor will fit and work on it.

- SATA ports – does the motherboard have enough SATA ports? Things that use these are DVD/Bluray drives, hard drives etc. If you have 6 SATA ports, you can have 2 DVD drives and 4 hard drives. If you want lots of internal hard drives, get a motherboard with plenty of SATA ports.

- USB/Firewire ports – do you use a firewire or USB audio interface? All motherboards come with USB ports, but firewire ports don’t come as standard – if you use firewire hardware, make sure and get a motherboard with firewire on it.

Case.  Theres hundreds, if not thousands of cases currently available for PCs.  They come in all sorts of sizes and shapes and in some ways, can make or break your entire PC.  Your PC case plays two important roles in the audio production field – it keeps air flowing throughout all the parts, ensuring everything is kept cool, and it reduces the overall noise of the components.

When looking for a PC case, you want to get one that is sound proofed as much as possible, and that has good air flow.  You could get a case with 5 huge fans on the side of it, but this will probably:

1. Be very loud

2. Blow hot air from one side of the case to the other, causing everything to overheat, rather than blowing cold air in, and hot air out

3. Both of the above

Options

Two great cases two consider that have nice air flow and are quiet, are:

Fractal Design Refine R3 – I own this case and its superb. It has foam insulation to reduce internal noise, and great airflow

Antec performance line – All these cases are based on quiet computing and offer some great options.

PSU. Your power supply unit (PSU), is a very important part of your PC – if you skimp on it, you could either not have enough power to run everything smoothly (or even at all), or at worst, it could blow up and damage the rest of your PC.  The two most important things to look at when buying a PSU are the power (watts) and noise levels.

Power – You need a PSU that can power all of your components – if you for some reason have 3 graphics cards, 12 hard drives etc., you’ll need a lot of power. However, if you have a “normal” setup with say 1 graphics card, 4-5 hard drives etc. you will probably be ok with something around 700 watts – however, this is by no means technical advise. Seek professional advice before buying your PSU to make sure it can power and work properly with your components.

Noise level – some lower end and indeed a few higher end PSUs can be quite noisy.  For an audio PC, you really want to get a PSU that is as silent as possible.

Options

There are plenty of PSU options out there, the biggest names being Thermaltake, Corsair, Coolermaster, be Quiet!, Superflower etc. Again, I can’t advise you on your options here as it depends totally on other components you choose. Just make sure its quiet, has enough power, and has enough connections on it to power all the parts in your PC.

Hard Drives – For sample based music production, you’re going to want to go all out on these.  The main things to look for in hard drives are the following:

• Size – The majority of hard drives currently go up to 3tb in size per disk. One thing to bare in mind is that the bigger the size, the more you might loose. If you have a two 3tb hard drives in your PC with everything on them, and one of them crashes, you’ve just lost 3tb of data. Get four 1.5tb hard drives, and you’re going to lose less data if one of them crashes. Also, in some cases, larger hard drives are more prone to breaking down.
• Cache – This basically translates as how fast you can transfer data from drives and how fast your pc can read data from that drive.  A lot of this depends on your processor and the motherboard you choose, but choose a hard drive with a high cache, and it should work well for you.
• SSD or HDD – There are basically two options right now for hard drives – HDD or SSD. HDD (Hard disk drive) is a normal hard drive and SSD (Solid State Drive) is a super fast drive.  If you have bucket loads of money to spend, you could load your PC up with SSD’s and get super fast loading speeds. However, SSDs are still very expensive and the $/€ to space ratio on them is pretty bad compared to normal HDDs. For example, the OCZ SSD Agility 2 is 240GB and €366. A 250GB WD Caviar (HDD) is approximately €30. Value for money goes out the window with SSDS – having said that, if you can afford them, I’d highly suggest getting as many as possible.  Software like Hollywood Strings and the upcoming Hollywood Brass advise SSD drives if possible to ensure smooth running.

Options

The big names in hard drives manufacturers like Samsung, Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi and OCZ. I chose an SSD drive to install windows on and use for some of my most demanding samples – the rest of my drvies were all normal 1.5tb hard drives.  Your options here are all based on your budget – if you are on a tight budget, you might be best getting normal HDDs for now, and upgrading to SSDs at a later date when they’ve come down in price a little more.

Soundcard – The large majority of motherboards now come with a built in soundcard.  For this reason, if you are using your PC only for audio production, I would suggest just using the onboard soundcard on your motherboard for normal PC usage (windows sounds, looking at a video now and again), and using an external souncard for all audio production work.  The soundcard is arguably the most important part of your PC for audio production, and you should focus on getting a high quality external soundcard for any work you are doing.

Operating System – Again there’s a couple of options for your operating system (OS). The last 3 created by Microsoft are XP, Vista and Windows 7. XP is stable, Vista is now fairly stable and Windows 7 is good too.  The most important thing to remember when choosing your operating system is that if you want to use more than 3.2GB of RAM, you need to choose a 64bit OS. The 64 bit versions are sometmies a bit more expensive, but you need to have a 64bit OS if you want to use more than 3.2GB or your RAM. 

What I Chose in the End

Here is the PC I decided to go with in the end.  I bought it from Hardwareversand - a German company who build the PC for you using the parts you have chosen. I’d suggest you do this also if possible – I built my first PC myself using components I bought online, and it was a nightmare!

RAM 2 x 12GB Kit Corsair PC1600 CL9 Dominator

Motherboard ASUS P6X58-E

DVD Drive ASUS DRW-24B3ST

Graphics Card Club 3D Radeon HD 6450 Noiseless Edition

Case FRACTAL DESIGN DEFINE R3 Titanium Grey

CPU Intel Core i7-960 Box 8192Kb, LGA1366

Operating System MS Windows 7 Pro 64bit

PSU Super-Flower SF550P14PE Golden King Modular 80plus Platinum 550W

Hard Drive OCZ SSD Vertex 2 120GB

Hard Drive WD Caviar Green 1,5TB

Hard Drive WD Caviar Green 1,5TB

Hard Drive WD Caviar Green 1,5TB

Hard Drive WD Caviar Green 1,5TB

Total Price – €1780 (including shipping)