I'm considering purchasing a Carillon or other turnkey system with the PC, Sonar and the M-audio 2496 PCI soundcard. Does anyone have any experience with Carillon and/or one of their systems? If so, what was your experience?
What does everyone think about the idea of purchasing from these folks, as opposed to having a local computer guy build one according to the same type of specs as Carillon uses? I'm in the southern US; they're up north. I've been unable to find a local computer guy who is familiar with the specific issues posed by music recording PCs.
Carillon presumably sells systems which they've already troubleshot. If I encounter problems, I can go to one company, and that company should be accountable for problems, regardless of whether the fault is with the PC, software, or soundcard. The local computer guy may be tempted to blame the problem on the software or the soundcard, when he really doesn't have the answer.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Comments
I started with a Sony laptop and after adding no more than about
I started with a Sony laptop and after adding no more than about 6 plugins I started getting memory errors, so I looked online at the Digidesign recommended systems and I saw the specs for the Core 3 system from Carrillon starting at $2199. After investigating on the Internet I said to myself "I can build that for under $1000."
I went out and bought all the pieces and I had it assembled and had XP and PT installed in under 2 hours. Building computers is far easier than it used to be, because so much is integrated on the Motherboard and Plug&Play works so much better than it used to. The case I purchased had the MotherBoard installed already. I added the CD Rom, HD and Ram. I booted up Win XP on the CD, it formatted the hard-drive, I installed Protools and I was done.
Everything about this experience has gone without a hitch with computer and Protools hardware and software. It's been great.
Add to that the fact that I purchased my Digi002 on Ebay and did the firmware, Bomb Factory and Protools updates myself and I got a $2400 unit for $1575. So, for under $3000 I have what you would pay a turnkey system provider close to $5500 for.
It is essentially just like the Carrillion system architecture, (though I admit the fan is noisy, I have to move it out of earshot). It's got a 800 MHz front side bus running a P4 at 2.8 gHz with 1GB dual channel Ram. It also has 3 firewire ports + optical s/pdif in&out on the soundcard. It rocks. I was mixing tonight and I have not maxed it out yet. Cost was $940 w/o monitor and external firewire drive (I had both, for those add $600 to both systems).
Once I started to feel the power of DAW plug-ins where mixing is so easy, and I realized the only limitations I was going to have is with the equipment, I had to go all out on the computer system. It definitely rocks, and by building my own I have extra money to spend elsewhere.
cruisemates wrote: I started with a Sony laptop and after adding
cruisemates wrote: I started with a Sony laptop and after adding no more than about 6 plugins I started getting memory errors, so I looked online at the Digidesign recommended systems and I saw the specs for the Core 3 system from Carrillon starting at $2199. After investigating on the Internet I said to myself "I can build that for under $1000."
...
Once I started to feel the power of DAW plug-ins where mixing is so easy, and I realized the only limitations I was going to have is with the equipment, I had to go all out on the computer system. It definitely rocks, and by building my own I have extra money to spend elsewhere.
As far as quiet fans:
I also build my own. However, I would be hesitant to recomend the process to someone who isn't confident enough to have thought of doing it themselves. It's a peice of cake, but people get all funny and distressed around technology... If you haven't installed operating systems and added and removed components yourself before, I would recomend going with a turnkey system.
Whatever you do, don't buy a consumer grade prebuilt system - ie Dell etc. They come so loaded down with crapware (ie crippled shareware, adware etc, etc) that they are completley and needlessly intimidating to a novice user. You'll have as much distress from one of these systems as if you built the thing from scratch yourself.
I'd check to see if carillon will still offer support if you ins
I'd check to see if carillon will still offer support if you install additional hardware or software. For instance what happens when a new service pack comes out?
That would be the crutch for me. Besides that, its based on how comfortable you are with a computer, because for any problem that arises, the fix carillon will apply is the same one that your local tech could apply, which is the same one that you yourself could apply for free!
And also do you really want to ship your PC out every time something goes haywire?
mark
Was asking myself an alike question and decided to go for making
Was asking myself an alike question and decided to go for making music instead of finding the right PCI-slot.
It's perhaps easy to do yourself but I was happy to see the tweaks & thoughts, I guess an added value of dedicated builders for music applications over the usual computer store. And it wasn't even that much more money.
Bye,
Peter