There are several factors you need to consider when choosing a case for your Digital Audio Workstation.

• Cooling: A design that has excellent airflow will improve the cooling capabilities, therefore allowing you to keep the system in hotter rooms without risking damage to the internal components. This could be especially important if you plan to store your DAW in a separate equipment room or a closed desk where airflow is limited or the room temperature is already high.
• Silence: It is generally recommended to keep your computer as far from your mics as possible. However, if you don't have the room to do so, going with a quieter case will decrease the noise your mics will pick up. More so, a quiet computer will make a very precise mixing job a lot easier as you won't have any white noise confusing your ears.
• Rackmount or tower: Towers case are generally quieter and cooler than rackmount cases.  However, with a rackmount case you have the ability to easily integrate your DAW in you studio or mobile rack. We currently do not offer a rackmount solution for our Artista model.

The Dual Quad Core Xeon processors deliver impressive performance with up to 8 times the performance of earlier generation single-core processors.  The 64-bit cores are designed to handle all of today's x86 32bit software with ease and effortlessly migrate to 64-bit software.

The faster the CPU the more tracks you'll be able to record or playback simultaneously. A big factor in this is low latency. Everyone is looking for latencies low enough to perform/track with. Below are some raw benchmarks showing you how each processor performs. This is directly related to how many tracks you can expect to be able to playback/record at the desired 4-8ms latency.

Dual Xeon Performance Benchmarks
Shown below are the results of benchmark tests using the PassMark PerformanceTest™. A CPU with a higher PassMark score will yield a higher plugin count at lower latencies.

With a faster CPU you'll be able to record or playback more tracks simultaneously. Latency is an important factor here, with everyone looking for latencies low enough to perform/track with. We've compiled some numbers that will help you decide.

Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology delivers two processing threads per physical core for a total of four threads for massive computational throughput. This 4-way multi-task processing allows each core of your processor to work on two tasks at the same time. This can greatly improve performance in DAW hosts that support Hyper Threading

Intel® Turbo Boost Technology maximizes speed for demanding applications, dynamically accelerating performance to match your workload—more performance when you need it the most.

Intel® Smart Cache is shared cache dynamically allocated to each processor core, based on workload. This efficient, dual-core-optimized implementation increases the probability that each core can access data from the fast cache, significantly reducing latency to frequently used data and improving performance.

All RAM chips are not created equal. RAM chips are graded for quality by the handful of top-tier manufacturers that actually make the chips. RAM chips that pass are sold under top-tier brands. The ones that marginally fail are sold off to second-tier manufacturers and then sold at discounts under a multitude of brand names. For CPU, RAM and HD intensive work, such as professional digital audio production, it can be a fatal mistake to allow anything less than top-tier RAM into your studio. We've done the research for you and only offer top-notch memory.

The amount of memory you decide to purchase will directly affect the amount of Virtual Instruments you can run simultaneously (especially using Hyper-Sampled libraries such as GigaStudios, BFD, Steinberg's The Grand etc.). That being said, 2GB is usually enough memory for most recording type applications.

The Big Memory Conundrum

A RAID Array uses technology that allows two (identical model) hard drives to look like one to the computer. The operating system will assign one drive letter to the drives yet spread the data across both/multiple drives - either doubling the throughput of the drive or providing a "mirrored" drive (or perpetual backup) in the case of hard drive failure. There are many types of RAID Arrays - the most common use in DAWs are RAID 0 and RAID 1.

RAID 0 Specs:

• RAID 0 uses two hard drives as one with minimal overhead.
• RAID 0 implements a striped disk array, the data is broken down into blocks and each block is written to a separate disk drive.
• I/O performance is improved by spreading the I/O load across many channels and drives.
• Very fast, but in case one of the disks in the array dies; all data is lost. Another backup strategy is recommended.

RAID 1 Specs:

• RAID 1 provides fault tolerance as all writes are duplicated on both drives.
• 100% redundancy of data means no rebuild is necessary in case of a disk failure, just a copy to the replacement disk.
• Transfer rate per block is equal to that of a single disk.
• Since both drives have the same data on it you lose the capacity of one of the drives - inefficient but safe.

What do we think of RAID 0?

The latest generation SATA 3 GB drives are very fast, we've tested single drive setups that can easily handle ±64 tracks (live) @ 44/48KHz or ±40 tracks @ 96KHz. Only if you'll be working on projects larger than this will the extra performance of RAID 0 become important. If you think you would indeed benefit from having faster drives or drive arrays, we strongly suggest you consider the Western Digital 10,000 RPM drives - you will see similar performance out of one 10,000 RPM drive as you would out of RAID 0 array without doubling the risk of data loss.

We've had many people come to us explaining they need RAID 0 because they work on very large sample based projects. Again, we've done very thorough testing in applications such as GigaStudio, EWQL and we've actually found that spreading out samples across multiple drives actually gives better performance and yields higher track counts than a RAID 0 setup. So here again RAID 0 just isn't right.

The Clincher: With RAID 0 you double the chance of losing all your data. If one drive fails all data on both disks is lost. Depending on two drives for one set of data means the chance of one of those drives failing doubles.

What do we think of RAID 1?

We love RAID 1 as we ourselves have been victims of drives dying during critical times. Luckily they've all been in a RAID 1 setup and we haven't lost any of the data. In fact when a drive does die, you can simply continue working until you have a replacement. Once you have the replacement, simply install it, boot up the system and the RAID utilities will repopulate the data so that you once again have fully redundant backups of everything. It's really that easy. Although we still recommend having an additional backup strategy (external drives, DVD-Rs) when utilizing RAID 1 you are taking a very big step towards having failsafe data storage. The only real downside is that you pay for twice the amount of storage - do we think it's worth it? Absolutely!

There are lots of choices as far as DVD/CD burners are concerned. We have found the Lite-On burners to be both fast and reliable. The LITE-ON burners come with SMART-BURN technology; this helps you avoid Buffer Under Run errors. Now you can mix down your next session while burning the previous session to disc without the risk of burning a coaster - brilliant.

The CD/DVD burners we've selected have the LightScribe technology allowing you to label the CD from the burner itself. When you're done burning your tracks, simply flip it over to 'burn' a label.

We will install a fully licensed version of Nero Burning Rom Essential Edition so you're ready to burn your hits out-of-the-box.

Having the right video card for your DAW is important. Not all video cards/chipsets play nice with popular DAW software and the last thing you need is a seemingly unrelated piece of hardware hindering your workflow. Again, we've done thorough research and recommend the following video cards because they have proven to be reliable and 'audio friendly.'

Things to consider:

The motherboard is the single most important component in your Digital Audio Workstation when considering stability and reliability. There are literally hundreds of choices on the market. Most of these choices have chipsets that have proven to be counter-productive for professional audio applications.  Of course we only offer motherboards that through thorough testing have proved to be fast and reliable.

We've determined the best chipset for Dual Quad Core Xeon Nehalem processors is the Intel 5520 chipset provided by Tyan. The built in Texas Instruments firewire chipset provides the ultimate in compatibility and reliability and is ideal for connecting your Firewire audio interfaces.

If you plan on using a FireWire audio interface along with an external FireWire hard drive (or any other FireWire device) we recommend adding a FireWire add-on card to your computer configuration.  This prevents the external FireWire hard drives from bottlenecking the audio interface's FireWire path.

We've found that the most reliable, most compatible chipset is made by Texas Instruments. The Texas Instruments chipset makes all the difference with FireWire audio interfaces from brands such as RME, Tascam, Presonus, Focusrite, Motu, DigiDesign, M-Audio etc..

The first thing that should be determined is whether to go with an internal or external audio interface.

The internal interfaces we offer are installed on the PCI or PCIe ports inside the computer chassis. They come with breakout cables, into which you will plug your instruments and microphones. They also offer the ability to add to their feature sets via expansion analog input/output cards, TDIF expansion cards and word clock options. The downside of internal cards is that all wires end up having to be plugged into the computer itself, making wire management a bit more difficult.

The outboard interfaces we offer connect to the computer via FireWire cable. This provides a single fast connection between the computer and the interface making wire management a lot easier. Also, many of the FireWire interfaces have built-in microphone preamps. External FireWire interfaces are often rackmountable, which provides a clean, organized look in your studio when paired with a rackmount computer chassis. We have prepared our builds to give you the absolute best performance with these FireWire interfaces: with proper Texas Instruments Chipset you'll see the absolute lowest latencies available on the market.

Windows XP 32-Bit Home/Professional:

This is by far the most mature, efficient, and reliable choice for your operating system. Virtually all Windows DAW software will work well on the 32-bit version of XP. The main difference between XP Home and XP Professional, for DAW purposes, is that with Pro you have the ability to use Remote Desktop to terminal into your DAW - this can be useful if you plan on controlling your DAW from a secondary computer/laptop also running Windows XP - for example you want to control your DAW from a vocal booth. On Windows XP Home one can control the computer remotely using a 3rd party open source/free software called Ultra VNC. With Windows XP Professional you can also join your computer to a domain, along with many other more advanced networking features generally best left turned off on a Digital Audio Workstation. For the ultimate in lean speed and reliability we recommend Windows XP Home.

Windows 7 Professional 32-Bit:

Reyniers Audio participated in Microsoft's Beta Testing program for Windows 7.  We've been running Beta versions of the operating system since the first release was made available to us from Microsoft.  We are glad to report that it will be a worthy replacement of Windows XP.  Windows 7's performance is on par (if not slightly faster) with what we've come to expect from Windows XP.  We still offer Windows XP Home as the default operating system as it is on its 3rd Service Pack meaning it is the most compatible operating system on the market.  Although Windows 7 is miles ahead of Vista in regards to compatibility there are still some legacy interfaces that simply will not work with.  Check with your Audio Interface manufacturers for status of Windows 7 compatibility.

Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit:

There are good reasons to purchase Windows 7 Pro 64 and there are good reasons not to.

• The Good: In order for your OS to utilize more than 4GB of RAM it needs a 64-bit Operating System. This is due to the fact that in Windows 32-bit there isn't enough address space to be able to see beyond 4 GBs of memory (4GB installed on Windows 32-bit will only register as 3-3.5GB). With Windows 7 64 you are able to access all the memory your motherboard supports. More so, having a 64-bit operating system will give a remarkable performance increase in software that supports the 64-bit architecture.
• The Bad: Windows 64-bit is not very mature yet and it will most likely cause problems with software and hardware that isn't fully compatible with it. This is especially true in the audio recording world, where many audio interfaces don't even have 64-bit drivers. Before choosing Windows 7 64-bit we strongly suggest calling us to discuss your likelihood of success. Keep in mind that often times a 64-bit driver is available for "x" hardware/software but it is still very buggy, problematic and not recommended. In other words, getting a 64-bit OS running as smoothly as it's much more mature counterpart - the 32-bit OS, can be a challenge.

Windows Vista:

We strongly suggest staying away from Windows Vista, it is far from being usable as a DAW Operating System.