Best computer for Mixcraft?

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iceland33
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Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by iceland33 »

What is the smartest way to create a computer wich is optimized for Mixcraft?

Is the i9 Alder Lake 12900k processor the best cpu for it anyway, because (as far I know) this is the fastest processor you can get at the moment?

Or can for instance an i7 processor be a better choice, while I see that game pc's with an i7 sometimes seeming to be a better choice for a gamer then one with the newest and fastest processor.

Also the memory, the motherboard and so on plays an important role, I realize that, but while the processor is such a central thing, and not so cheap, I was thinking that it is maby handy to first figure out what is the best processor to edit music.
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TrevsAudio
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by TrevsAudio »

Probably not the answer you want to hear... :D

Any old home computer or laptop will do. My biggest project to date was a 68 track mixing project done originally on a dated PC with Win 7, a 2 core processor, 4 Gigs RAM on Mixcraft 7. There were a total of 23 FX and loads of track automation and it never missed a beat! Granted, my current PC is a bit more 'specy' with i5 and 8 Gigs of RAM, but still nowhere near what modern computers are capable of.

Yes, I'm typically a 'home user' and don't normally record the London Philharmonic Orchestra and I see your main intention is to edit music; so you should be fine with whatever you have.

C'mon computer nerds - come and get me! :mrgreen:
Old Dudes Rock!
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Dell 3050 SSF i3, 8gig RAM; MX 8, 9 and 10 Pro; Win 11 Pro
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Rolling Estonian
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by Rolling Estonian »

Yes, you sure can try to replicate Trevors examples but I'd go another road. The general rule is get as powerful of a machine as you can afford starting with the best processor you can then RAM and of course SSD. The i-7 post 8 series and post 10 series made big leaps, especially after 8 series. Last year I got an i7-10750, 32gb ram, 1tb ssd and hdd for a good deal and it has no issues with anything I throw at it, including video. The i9=12900 with enough ram will be more than capable and smoking fast.

M
Drdish007
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by Drdish007 »

Hi,
When I wanted to get a new computer for music production I looked at what music stores were selling, and took notice of the specs for the different music computers they sold. I chose the features I wanted and went to a local computer store to have one made. The specs of my computer are listed at the bottom.

I have had no issues with recording and mixing. I also did a video without any issues. It also cost me less than what the music stores were selling theirs. It got it with Windows 10. I had to load my music software which wasn't hard. I then followed the computer setup recommendations from the Mixcraft forums.

Hope this helps.

- Myran
Mixcraft9RS(469)64Bit, Win. 10 64Bit, Intel i5 @ 3.20GHz, ssd 250GB(os),1TB hdd(library audio),1TB hdd (recorded audio),Nvidia GeForce1050i video,16GB RAM,Focusrite 18I20 2nd gen usb,Motu 5 ch.midi interface, D5,U220,Keystation88,B4000+,Leslie,Rhodes73mk1
iceland33
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by iceland33 »

Thanks Trevlyns, Rolling Estonian and Myran for your reply.
Not to imagan Trevlyn that your projects worked that fine with just an 2 core cpu and 4 gb ram.
Till now I have a pc with a 4 core i7 3770 cpu with 16gb ram.It doesn't work so well anymore and feels somewhat outdated.

DAW-developers counting of course with average computer-users and again Im behind them all it seems, a sign that I have neglected to much to invest in the past years.

By searching and learning about types and specs from all kind of parts I discovered that for instance one of the latest i7 cpu's, not necesarely having to be weaker then several early i9 cpu's.

Even I'm thinking about not to buy the i9 12900k (+/_€620,-) while the core i5 12600k (+/_€300,-) is not much less powefull.
In comparing with my actual computer, with the i7 3770 and 4 cores, it must be a huge progress.

That's what I'm thinking now, although I gonne do much more research to the differrences between cpu's and their prices, before I start to buy.

And anyway I start with the newest generation motherboard, the so called z690 ones, what I understood during reading about it.They are affordable I find (from €189,-) and with doing so, I'm certain not to get problems with upgrading to a good nvme ssd and to the i9 12900k, when I ever would decide to do so.

A smart idea Myran, to look to music stores to see what sort of pc's they selling.And in many cases I can also read then why exactly they sell a specific computer.

Step by step I will find out how I can build a for me affordable computer, with a acceptable performance.
jonljacobi
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by jonljacobi »

An i7-3770 isn't stone age. Most of my stuff will function just fine on something that old. Depends on what you're doing. Storage is what's really advanced over the last 10 years and is a huge amount of the faster feel of modern computers. I've upgraded so man old PCs to SSDs that my friends were giving up on that I've lost count. They're almost all amazed at the difference. I'm not trying to dissuade you from upgrading, but the subjective difference between my i7-6770 iMac (2TB NVMe) and the M1 I use at work simply isn't all that great.

I also still have a 3770 PC and it's not as snappy, but it's darn close. Certainly fast enough. But I don't run a lot of plugins.
gaffster
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by gaffster »

I picked up a new HP all-in-one 'puter, mostly for music. Very happy so far. The audio interface buffering is the latency bottleneck as usual, however the entire experience is better overall. Mixcraft starts up in 3-5 seconds versus 20-45 seconds with my ancient laptop and my 150 plug-ins load faster as well. Rendering is really fast. With some heavy processing synths I used to render the tracks to audio just to gain back processing, but this thing handles them.

The all-in-one uP fan noise is audible (my only concern) however it is gone with headphones on or monitors.

Intel® Core™ i7-1165G7 (up to 4.7 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 12 MB L3 cache, 4 cores)
16 GB DDR4-3200 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)
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1 TB 7200 rpm SATA
mixyguy2
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by mixyguy2 »

trevlyns wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:31 am Probably not the answer you want to hear... :D

Any old home computer or laptop will do. My biggest project to date was a 68 track mixing project done originally on a dated PC with Win 7, a 2 core processor, 4 Gigs RAM on Mixcraft 7. There were a total of 23 FX and loads of track automation and it never missed a beat! Granted, my current PC is a bit more 'specy' with i5 and 8 Gigs of RAM, but still nowhere near what modern computers are capable of.

Yes, I'm typically a 'home user' and don't normally record the London Philharmonic Orchestra and I see your main intention is to edit music; so you should be fine with whatever you have.
Wow. The voice of reason. Thanks for that. :)

Rolling Estonian wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 7:03 am Yes, you sure can try to replicate Trevors examples but I'd go another road. The general rule is get as powerful of a machine as you can afford starting with the best processor you can then RAM
That's never been a rule (depending on how you define "can afford"), it's a fallacy that's been around as long as personal computers have. If I had a nickel for every friend or co-worker I saw waste tons of money on something they thought "was future proof"...

This depends on what you plan to do, but honestly, unless you plan to do some crazy intensive stuff - like hundreds of tracks, tons of effects, etc - you absolutely do not need a top-end machine with 10 zillion GB of RAM. I have a Ryzen 5 (roughly an i5 equivalent) with 8B RAM and do songs with up to dozens of tracks and it's fine. Do yourself a favor and don't get wrapped around the axel with this.
cactus-head
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by cactus-head »

Just chiming in... I would say assess your needs. If you are going to record dry audio at 41000hz 16bits you won't need too hefty of a computer and can get away with something like 100 tracks. If you plan on recording at 192000hz 32bit and use gigabyte sized VSTis and heavy process hungry effects like izotope or certain Amp sims you're going to need beaucoup memory and a fast processor.

There is not really such a thing as future proof though you can get use out of something longer. The top of the line technology you get today is only the top of the line technology TODAY. You can hope that it is still useful in the years to come - but that depends on the individual. If one doesn't change their processes and ways of doing things then they can go on the same way for as long as everything lasts; but if one wants to adapt to where the world is and what the world's processes are then they likely have to change their ways of doing things and the tools that they use.

For example, I have several VSTis that have around 2 gigs of sample data. I can set a certain amount of buffering to the hard drive so all of the sample memory isn't loaded at once but that affects performance in certain ways. Even so, if there was a 4 gig memory limit on my computer, I couldn't load 4 of those instruments and not have problems. These types of sample libraries are the reality of today - and unless I have a computer up to specs to handle this, I would either not be able to use them, or have to record those tracks separately, or use them 1 at a time.

So one has to understand their needs and what they plan on doing with their machine. The decision shouldn't be modeled after what has worked in the past - though that should be a consideration - but rather about what is available now and what they see themselves doing with the technology in the upcoming year(s). Considerations from the past should be -what didn't work? What were the limitations? What would have made the situation better?
W1tchseason
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by W1tchseason »

I would have thought that the choice of sound card was more important than the PC/CPU/HDD/RAM. From my experience, Mixcraft makes relatively low demands on the CPU and doesn't use a lot of RAM. For me (running Mixcraft on a hi-spec PC as my main machine but also on a 5-year-old laptop when I'm away from home), adding a Focusrite Solo to the laptop made a world of difference. Of course, a more powerful machine is *desirable* but I've not noticed much difference in performance by upgrading CPU/RAM/HDD.
ppayne
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by ppayne »

As others say, it depends on how much you plan to do with it and what it's worth to you.

For normal home recording, you definitely don't need to spend more than 800 euros for a laptop with an i7 1355U processor, 1 TB SSD and 16 GB RAM. So everything runs perfectly and very quietly.

That would be completely enough for me. As I said, it depends on what you want to do. You can also take an i9. Personally, the cooling and power supply would be much too loud for me because I record with the microphone near the computer. Or you have to invest extra for it. I also want to be mobile with the computer.

Plus external components such as monitor, keyboard and sound card. I can also recommend Focusrite as a sound card for home recording.

I would rather put the rest of the money into cool VSTis and effects. You can easily spend 3,000 euros on this :)

I'm currently still working with a cheap Acer i5-10210U, 1 tb SSD, 16gb RAM and Focusrite 2i2 at 44khz and an Asio latency of 12ms. I have no problems at all with about 20 tracks by 30 percent cpu usage. And it's been that way for 5 years. My next laptop will be this cheap, completely sufficient toy: Acer Aspire 5 (A515-58M-705Z) Laptop | 15.6" FHD display | Intel Core i7-1355U | 16 GB RAM | 1 TB SSD | Intel Iris Xe graphics | Windows 11

As I said, it depends on what you want to do. In any case, for me it makes no sense to buy more than an i7 13gen for home recording and the fan has to be quiet.

I think you can see from the suggestions what would be sufficient. You can compare the CPUs here. And always look at the single thread performance, because that is one of the most important things in a DAW!

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare

Patrick
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Mr.Mxyzptlk
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by Mr.Mxyzptlk »

I probably went a bit overboard on the specs but just didn't want to be maxing out 6 months down the line, so was happy to spend a bit more when having my PC built. As using orchestral libraries was key for me, RAM and disk speed/size was priority. So I just went all in with 128GB RAM and NVMe drives. It's made a massive difference from the laptop I started my Mixcraft journey on and so far handles anything thrown at it. CPU and System usage rarely hits double figures.
i7-10700K 8Core @3.80 GHz, 128GB- 5TB NVMe+3TB SSD (Int) 4TB SSD (Ext)- Samsung 24"x3 Mon- PreSonus Studio 1810c+Eris E5 XT+Atom SQ- Yamaha Montage 7- AKG D5- Win 11 Pro- MX10 Pro- EastWest- Roland Cloud- KORG 4- Spitfire Audio- Heavyocity- 8Dio- NI
purplepat69
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by purplepat69 »

I'd be interested in hearing some "tech heads" ideas on this...

For instance (and perhaps Greg or someone else familiar with the coding of MX can comment), how does MX take advantage of multiple cores/threads, if at all? Is there a configuration that should produce the "best" results?

Likewise, I thought I had actually read somewhere that your graphics card may also play a role. Not sure if MX or some plugin would take advantage of the processing power of your graphics card other than for rendering stuff you are seeing on the screen.

I'm surprised there isn't a "standard test" DAWheads would run to see how many instances of a plugin with certain parameters/FX can be run before system resources get maxxed out. You always hear about various plugins being "CPU hungry", but there really isn't a standard AFAIK to compare one product to another.
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Acoustica Greg
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Re: Best computer for Mixcraft?

Post by Acoustica Greg »

Hi,

Mixcraft divvies up tracks between different cores so that all the plugins on those tracks can be processed separately.

Having an old slow graphics card and/or outdated graphics drivers could affect performance.

A major consideration is not just the computer, but the sound device. The soundcard that's built into even the fastest computer isn't designed for home recording. A low-latency USB audio interface can make a huge difference.

Greg
Mixcraft - The Musician's DAW
Check out our tutorial videos on YouTube: Mixcraft 10 University 101
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