In view of all the new Intel technology turning up and of course Windows 7 we thought it would be a good time to put some searching and penetrating questions to a builder of audio computers. Rain Recording has been running for 3 years in the UK (a few more in the States) offering a range of computers designed for music production. It's headed up by musician, author, technical whiz and all round PC music guru Robin Vincent.

PC-Music.com – So what's your computer music experience up to this point?

Robin Vincent – Well I first got into MIDI sequencing and sampling on my Commodore 64 back in '87/88. You got like 1.2 seconds of fabulous 8bit sampling time. I even did a gig with the computer playing backing – each song took three minutes to load. A few years later I got a degree in Music Instrument Technology and in 1996 went to work at Turnkey music shop in London as a naïve and bleary eyed sales guy. I realised quite quickly that no one had a clue how to make any of this stuff work on a computer and so, having access to all this music software and hardware, I made myself learn everything I could about all of it. I wrote a book “PC Music – The Easy Guide” and became a bit of a PC music evangelist.

After a couple of years myself and a few other heads at Turnkey created the Carillon AC-1 computer which was the first time anyone had purposely put together a computer for music production – it was quiet, fast, and in a striking 4U rack case with transport controls on the front – beautiful. But the best thing was our commitment to getting the machine working with the software and audio interfaces – it was really hit and miss in those days. After a while I took a year out to make some music, get married, that sort of thing but when I came back to the idea of working again I wanted to do it myself rather than get involved in a big company. So, a friend (Bill Paschick) in America had set up Rain Recording and it was looking pretty sharp and carried the same sort of ethos that had given birth to Carillon. So using his established brand and marketing expertise we set me up to provide the same quality computer music systems here in the UK. And in that time I've produced three albums on my PC, written a couple more books, magazine articles and websites all about the wonders of making music on your computer. That brings us up to date I think.

PC – Why do your computers seem so much more expensive than ones on the high street?

RV – Well, they're not really, that's a bit of a misconception. If you base your comparison on a Quad core system you can get from Dixons for £500 and one you can get from us for £1000 then it appears expensive – but then you've got to look at the quality of the motherboard, the RAM, the size and quietness of the PSU, the CPU fans, the hard drive performance, the case – our Element system has a case that's worth about £200, but it's a beautiful aluminium thing with superior airflow and cooling characteristics that your 20 quid plastic tower case is not going to match. The other factor is that we're going to spend time on your system getting it right, they're not cookie cutter machines on a production line, they're built by hand and looked after. And finally the key point is that they are guaranteed fit for purpose – for making music on and that's not something you'll find on a computer from a high street shop.

PC – Don't real professionals use Apple for making music?

RV – Some do certainly. Ten years ago you would have been right but increasingly the PC has found its way into professional environments. Apple has made some good machines but they have evolved into a manufacturer of phones and mp3 players and their interest in the creative computer markets has waned. They don't offer much in terms of support for music making and are really starting to piss off the music tech retail industry by their terrible profit margins and strict stocking conditions. So Mac users are more and more on their own. Since Apple moved to Intel the technology inside the machines is essentially the same which means that your choice comes down to price and whether you prefer OSX over Windows. Most people have grown up making music on their PC's and so when they start working in professional creative environments they are going to use the tools they know best – the PC. Then, if you want to talk about reliability and performance, you come and speak to us because we can provide a PC that's every bit as reliable and powerful as a Mac, and for less money, and guaranteed to do the job..... and you don't have to buy into a corporate lifestyle :)

PC – With components being so cheap why wouldn't you build your own PC?

RV – I would! I'd certainly never discourage anyone from building their own computer, it's a worthwhile and interesting exercise that's going to teach you loads about technology and computing – there's even articles on this website about it.

PC – Why then would anyone want to buy a computer from Rain?

RV – Ah, but that's a different question. When building your own computer you take on a load of responsibility, you become your own tech support person. If something goes wrong you only have yourself, or a mate, to turn to. You're unlikely to have the money to buy a few comparable motherboards or components to check out which are best – if you break something you're not going to have another one “in stock” you have to send it back and wait for a replacement. Then there's the unforeseen problems, maybe you can't get Windows to install, or there's some unsettling entries in the BIOS and once you get it up and running there's no guarantee that your audio interface is going to work with it. On top of all that there's the time it's going to take you. If all goes well then maybe it's an afternoon, but if something does go wrong then it can quickly turn into days and weeks – that can happen to even the most experienced system builders. That said, more often than not, it should work out ok. Buying from Rain you know a couple of things for sure, firstly that it's going to be a system built from quality parts but more importantly that it's going to work with your music software and hardware. Even if problems do arise you have the support of experienced people who will work with you to get your system working even better than you imagined it would. Ultimately you're buying a machine to do a job without all that mucking about, it's about peace of mind and the kind of accountability you won't find down the high street, in a self-build or from Apple.

PC – All right then, moving on. Vista was crap, why is Windows 7 going to be any better?

RV – I'm not sure that Vista was “crap” as such. A lot of the criticism levelled at Vista was unfounded and a bit sort of nasty – it was a marketing and perception disaster certainly and that had an affect on the speed with which manufacturers came up with decent drivers. The mistake that Microsoft made was to treat us all like idiots, turning everything on and have it all flashing at us all the time. Performance wise Vista wasn't far off XP but it had lots more going on in the background. The way Vista handles files, networking, and ease of use is pretty fabulous – i've been using it since it first came out and I wouldn't go back to XP.

Windows 7 then  is built on the foundation of Vista but what Microsoft have done right this time around is to let us in on the development, let us play with it, they've listened to the criticism and appear to have taken it on board. Windows 7 feels faster and cleaner and seems like you're actually moving forward, whereas Vista, although very pretty, felt a bit clumsy and clunky. Vista drivers are now available for pretty much everything and these should work fine in Windows 7, so rather than when Vista was launched nothing worked on it, this time around Windows 7 is launching with almost everything already working. There's bound to be some hiccups along the way but Windows 7 looks like it's going to be fabulous.




PC – Isn't it just simpler to stick with XP?

RV – Maybe, but you're going to find yourself stuck in time before too long. We've become accustomed to our systems being updated and upgraded, being able to plug in new things and get new functionality. More and more new updates and devices will become Windows 7 only – it's inevitable. If you are happy with the software and hardware you have now and don't want the next best thing then sticking with XP is the best way to go – it works, it's great, sorted. But I for one love technology, I love the new stuff, love seeing innovation and cool things and so that means moving to a new OS that's going to be key in unlocking all the developments of the next 10 years.

PC – So this Quad Core i7/i5 Lynnberg Blooming 1366 Gigahertz X58 or P55 stuff – what's that all about?

RV – Intel's particular gift is to make things as complicatedly precise as possible.

Right let's ignore the older stuff, the Core 2 and the Quad, that's all last years technology and on its way out. The new stuff is the Core i7, i5 and i3 processors. Core i3 is your entry level processor and not available until 2010, Core i5/i7 is the mid level and Core i7 is the top – so there's two types of Core i7, it's all very confusing. The most basic I can make it is that you've got the all singing and dancing Core i7 “Bloomfield” processor that runs on an X58 chipset motherboard with 1366 pins. Then you've got the Core i5 “Lynnfield” processor that runs on a P55 chipset motherboard with 1156 pins. There's also a Core i7 “Lynnfield” processor which is the same as the i5 but has Hyperthreading (virtual cores) like the Core i7 Bloomfield. So, for the best you want a Core i7 1366 processor running on an X58 motherboard. For fantastic performance at a better price then the Core i5/i7 1156 on a P55 motherboard is the way to go – and that's what I'm building for myself as soon as Windows 7 gets here.

The best summary of all this messy nonsense I've come across is a cool cartoon on the Scan.co.uk website (which we'll steal and put here:)



PC – What does this mean for making music?

RV – More processing power is always welcome, it has a direct impact on the number of plug-ins you can run. The Core i7 Bloomfield has been available for about a year and was a huge leap forward in terms of performance and it really worked well, even the Hyperthreading which has been problematic in the past. The new Core i5/i7 is still a bit unknown but all reports and our own testing has been very favourable but it's still a bit too early to say exactly how they stack up, especially with so much change going on. One advantage the Bloomfield (Core i7 & X58) system has is that it can accommodate more bandwidth through the PCIExpress bus so if you have multiple audio interfaces or DSP cards then that would be the best system. One new technology unique to the Core i5/i7 Lynnfield is the “Turbo Boost” idea where if a piece of software is only using one core (all these processors have four cores) then it will dynamically overclock to boost the speed of that single core – that might be interesting in music software, however, i'm not sure yet how well that will work and whether, like with speed stepping, it will cause audio glitching because of the constant variation in speed. It's new and these things will become apparent over time. Which ever way you go it's all good news for computer musicians – the performance you get for your money these days is amazing.

PC – And for your final bit of flag waving, why would someone buy from Rain rather than one of the other Audio PC Specialists like Digital Village, IntaAudio, DARC etc?

RV – You're going to get a good system from all these companies – we all use similar components and by and large hit similar price points so you can't go far wrong. I think with Rain we offer a more personal service, we're a small company, not attached to any shop or large entity, the guy you speak to on the phone or via email will be the person building your machine. We're keen to install your software and hardware for you, in fact we prefer to do that if we can, so if you send us your gear we'll set it up and test it all our for you. We're passionate about all this stuff, it's not just a job, we get a great deal of satisfaction out of providing people with good, solid, working systems that are going to help them realise their music making potential – we like it :)



PC – Well there you have it, we hope that was useful and interesting. If you have any further questions you'd like to put to Rain then please add a comment below.