The best CPU for Audio production.

[Ranajoy Shil]

Hi guys, my friend is currently having a confusing between which is the best processor for music production because his choices are 3900x or 9900k, can you guys help me out with that which one is better for music production only because that's all he gonna be doing and why it's best I mean does recording programs prioritise single core performance or multicore?, thanks.

[Praesi]

My Stepfather is Music Engineer and runs a Studio. He uses Macs for the Job.

[SomeGermanGuy]

You dont need a high end cpu (or gpu for that matter) for audio production.
I would rather recommend something like a R5 3600 and use the saved money to buy a good external DAC and good speakers/ Headphones.
Im not an Audio expert so please get a second oppinion on this matter before deciding.

[Blatcher2]

6 minutes ago, Praesi said:

My Stepfather is Music Engineer and runs a Studio. He uses Macs for the Job.

Heard Mac CPU's are better than AMD and Intel!

 

 

 

jk lol... He could build a Hackintosh so CPU choice is relevant regardless.

[Blatcher2]

14 minutes ago, Ranajoy Shil said:

Hi guys, my friend is currently having a confusing between which is the best processor for music production because his choices are 3900x or 9900k, can you guys help me out with that which one is better for music production only because that's all he gonna be doing and why it's best I mean does recording programs prioritise single core performance or multicore?, thanks.

Both are great CPUs but I would go for 3900x for the future upgradability with Ryzen 4000 and the AM4 Platform.

[SpookyCitrus]

23 minutes ago, Ranajoy Shil said:

Hi guys, my friend is currently having a confusing between which is the best processor for music production because his choices are 3900x or 9900k.

Neither, both would be complete overkill for audio production. I have a friend who does professional audio production/ cleanup and he uses an early 2012 iMac. Honestly your friend should just do a 3400G with 16GB of 3000+mhz ram, a good  storage drive and an SSD, if the program they use will work with it. What programs do they use?

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, Blatcher2 said:

Both are great CPUs but I would go for 3900x for the future upgradability with Ryzen 4000 and the AM4 Platform.

Pretty sure most rumors are pointing to the next gen of Ryzen stuff not being on AM4. Threadripper is already switching to a new socket IIRC, and that's just the 3rd gen of TR. 

[SpookyCitrus]

4 minutes ago, Blatcher2 said:

Both are great CPUs but I would go for 3900x for the future upgradability with Ryzen 4000 and the AM4 Platform.

A 3900X for audio production? Have you ever done audio work before? It would be complete overkill and a huge waste of money.

[Praesi]

7 minutes ago, Blatcher2 said:

Heard Mac CPU's are better than AMD and Intel!

 

 

 

jk lol... He could build a Hackintosh so CPU choice is relevant regardless.

He runs his own Studio for 35 Years and make a living out of it. What does he know, right?

[rice guru]

34 minutes ago, Ranajoy Shil said:

Hi guys, my friend is currently having a confusing between which is the best processor for music production because his choices are 3900x or 9900k, can you guys help me out with that which one is better for music production only because that's all he gonna be doing and why it's best I mean does recording programs prioritise single core performance or multicore?, thanks.

CPUs and such are pretty negligible for music production. You want to worryore about your external gear, like DACs,amps ,mixers, and software. Like at most I would put a ryzen 3600 in and worry more on ram so you can have a ton of synths on at the same time.if you want to make music videos and edit stuff too in the same PC then maybe you will have grounds to build a higher end pc

[Blatcher2]

18 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Pretty sure most rumors are pointing to the next gen of Ryzen stuff not being on AM4. Threadripper is already switching to a new socket IIRC, and that's just the 3rd gen of TR. 

AMD is guaranteeing AM4 support through the end of 2020 so thats why I said Ryzen 4000. Rumors are pointing towards Zen 3 CPUs coming out next year so maybe on AM4 fingers crossed. You could be right though, its just speculation.

[Blatcher2]

17 minutes ago, SpookyCitrus said:

A 3900X for audio production? Have you ever done audio work before? It would be complete overkill and a huge waste of money.

OP said "his choices are 3900x or 9900k", I was just picking between them. I don't know what is classified as overkill for audio equipment though so if a 3600 is a better fit, then by all means. You're the boss

 

20 minutes ago, Praesi said:

He runs his own Studio for 35 Years and make a living out of it. What does he know, right?

XD don't think you read my post too carefully mate. OP is asking about CPU choice, not OS choice. I was just pointing that out.

[Zando_]

19 minutes ago, Blatcher2 said:

AMD is guaranteeing AM4 support through the end of 2020 so thats why I said Ryzen 4000. Rumors are pointing towards Zen 3 CPUs coming out next year so maybe on AM4 fingers crossed. You could be right though, its just speculation.

Yeah, my point is mostly that peeps shouldn't go around recommending AM4 because of "upgradability" or "futureproofing" because the chances are the next gen of CPUs won't be on this socket. Now you do have a better best-in-socket chip with AM4, the 3950X vs Z390's 9900KS. No guarantee of future CPUs though. 

 

44 minutes ago, Blatcher2 said:

jk lol... He could build a Hackintosh so CPU choice is relevant regardless.

Hackintoshes are bad if you depend on them, they often require a lot of setup, and updates can break them and require you to rebuild the whole OS and then all your settings and everything. Better off with actual Apple hardware if you depend on it. 

44 minutes ago, Blatcher2 said:

Heard Mac CPU's are better than AMD and Intel!

they use Intel CPUs tho AFAIK a lot of audio people use Macs for their better MIDI support or something, I'm not in that industry tho so IDK for sure. Actually got a 5770 for a Mac Pro from a guy in the music/audio industry, he mostly talked about using Macs so they seem pretty standard. Also pretty much every portable audio setup I've seen at various churches, events, and concerts, was run by a 15" MacBook Pro, lol. Some of the keyboard guys use 'em for changing stuff on the fly as well. 

[Blatcher2]

5 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Yeah, my point is mostly that peeps shouldn't go around recommending AM4 because of "upgradability" or "futureproofing" because the chances are the next gen of CPUs won't be on this socket. Now you do have a better best-in-socket chip with AM4, the 3950X vs Z390's 9900KS. No guarantee of future CPUs though. 

 

Hackintoshes are bad if you depend on them, they often require a lot of setup, and updates can break them and require you to rebuild the whole OS and then all your settings and everything. Better off with actual Apple hardware if you depend on it. 

they use Intel CPUs tho AFAIK a lot of audio people use Macs for their better MIDI support or something, I'm not in that industry tho so IDK for sure. Actually got an 5770 for a Mac Pro from a guy in the music/audio industry, he mostly talked about using Macs so they seem pretty standard. Also pretty much every portable audio setup I've seen at various churches, events, and concerts, was run by a 15" MacBook Pro, lol. Some of the keyboard guys use 'em for changing stuff on the fly as well. 

I'm not in the audio industry but I 100% agree. Everyone I've seen who is works with audio professionally uses a Mac. That being said, there are those that use PCs.

 

I also wouldn't count on Zen 3 not appearing on AM4. You seem a little too confident based on what AMD has said on the matter and considering there promise to support AM4 through 2020:

Quote

AMD’s CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, said in October 2019 that we could expect the debut of Ryzen 4000 CPUs in early 2020...

Desktop Ryzen 4000 CPUs will likely arrive later in the year, somewhere between July and October. They’ll be built on the new, Zen 3 architecture and have several performance enhancements.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-ryzen-4000-rumors-news-specs-features-price-release-date/

[PriitM]

I think CPU plays an incredible role in ADC and DAC softwares. The speed with which you can process fine point frequency data is the upmost importance. I mean, you need serious hardware for the 96kHz studio playback. Its 96 000 separate points of data, each with 0-god knows how many dB levels. Thats like...960 000 to 9,6 million data points per second. I suggest you get something with a decent singe core performance. SSD and high speed RAM is a must.

[Zando_]

Just now, Blatcher2 said:

I also wouldn't count on Zen 3 not appearing on AM4. You seem a little too confident based on what AMD has said on the matter and considering there promise to support AM4 through 2020:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-ryzen-4000-rumors-news-specs-features-price-release-date/

Seeing a lot about speculation and "should" and stuff. Then some "will" statements just based off of how AMD has launched every Ryzen product so far, those are pretty easy to guess. Not seeing anything about it being guaranteed to be on AM4 or backwards compatible with current chipsets. Same as how Threadripper 3000 is an iteration on the previous chips, but with a different socket and chipset that aren't compatible with current stuff. Seems similar to LGA2011/X79 and LGA2011-3/X99 on Intel's side. Oh and they also quote WCCFTech as a source, AFAIK they're horribly unreliable. 

Basically no, nothing is solid enough that you can give someone a hard recommendation based on future CPUs, because none of that is guaranteed. I can tell you that the 9900KS will work on Z390 boards. I can tell you that the 3960X will work on AM4 boards. There's no confirmation of the Ryzen 4xxx CPU being on AM4 that I've seen. Hell they could even be on AM4, but with a different, not backwards compatible chipset dependancy. Similar to how Z270 and Z390 use the same socket (LGA1151) but aren't compatible. AMD said they'd be supporting AM4, not backwards compatibility across A320, B350, X370, B450, X470, and X570 chipsets. Socket =/= chipset. 

TL:DR; no confirmation that Ryzen 4000 will be on AM4, and I haven't seen any guarantees from AMD that they'll support backwards compatibility with older chipsets, and non-compatible chipsets using the same pin-compatible socket is a normal thing in the industry thanks to Intel. 

[Derkoli]

3 hours ago, rice guru said:

CPUs and such are pretty negligible for music production. You want to worryore about your external gear, like DACs,amps ,mixers, and software. Like at most I would put a ryzen 3600 in and worry more on ram so you can have a ton of synths on at the same time.if you want to make music videos and edit stuff too in the same PC then maybe you will have grounds to build a higher end pc

This, RAM is so much more important.

[Derkoli]

Honestly, RAM is so much more important, at the studio i work at we use mac's with a 12 core xeon, and 64GB of RAM, get a R5 3600, and put more money into RAM and other stuff, such as EQ's, compressors, synth's etc. A high end CPU isn't really that noticeable.

[pas008]

3 hours ago, rice guru said:

CPUs and such are pretty negligible for music production. You want to worryore about your external gear, like DACs,amps ,mixers, and software. Like at most I would put a ryzen 3600 in and worry more on ram so you can have a ton of synths on at the same time.if you want to make music videos and edit stuff too in the same PC then maybe you will have grounds to build a higher end pc

this by far

 

Just now, Derkoli said:

Honestly, RAM is so much more important, at the studio i work at we use mac's with a 12 core xeon, and 64GB of RAM, get a R5 3600, and put more money into RAM and other stuff, such as EQ's, compressors, synth's etc. A high end CPU isn't really that noticeable.

and this

 

 

@Blatcher2

basing a daw on upgrading for what more overkill

 

you should see what it takes for a DAW

[Offbeat Trance]

Hey, consider using MAC, it will be great. but if you don't have budget, go for Intel.

 

http://www.scanproaudio.info/2017/03/02/amd-ryzen-first-look-for-audio/

 

Ryzen “gives up” and starts to crackle much earlier (At 70–85% CPU load) compared to the 7700 (which start to crackle at 92–99%. Much, much later).

If you just need to record stuffs and use sample packs, you may go for Ryzen. But if you use vst like Serum, Omnisphere, Kontakt, etc, go for Intel.

 

*I have Intel i5-4300, and it still works great.

[rice guru]

1 hour ago, Offbeat Trance said:

Hey, consider using MAC, it will be great. but if you don't have budget, go for Intel.

 

http://www.scanproaudio.info/2017/03/02/amd-ryzen-first-look-for-audio/

 

Ryzen “gives up” and starts to crackle much earlier (At 70–85% CPU load) compared to the 7700 (which start to crackle at 92–99%. Much, much later).

If you just need to record stuffs and use sample packs, you may go for Ryzen. But if you use vst like Serum, Omnisphere, Kontakt, etc, go for Intel.

 

*I have Intel i5-4300, and it still works great.

this is first gen ryzen when it was new though we are on 3rd gen with more matured chipsets and much better software support.  do you have anymore articles that is much more updated?

[Offbeat Trance]

1 hour ago, rice guru said:

this is first gen ryzen when it was new though we are on 3rd gen with more matured chipsets and much better software support.  do you have anymore articles that is much more updated?

IDK about 3rd gen, but 2gen Ryzen vs Intel 8th gen, Intel works better, as faaaar as I know.

Can you say which vsts you use and yr DAW?

 

[rice guru]

12 minutes ago, Offbeat Trance said:

IDK about 3rd gen, but 2gen Ryzen vs Intel 8th gen, Intel works better, as faaaar as I know.

Can you say which vsts you use and yr DAW?

 

Im not a music producer. I was just askinf if you had a more recent article cause I wanted to read up on it

 

[Offbeat Trance]

Just now, rice guru said:

Im not a music producer. I was just askinf if you had a more recent article cause I wanted to read up on it

 

Ohk that's good

 

[Roswell]

3 hours ago, Offbeat Trance said:

Hey, consider using MAC, it will be great. but if you don't have budget, go for Intel.

 

http://www.scanproaudio.info/2017/03/02/amd-ryzen-first-look-for-audio/

 

Ryzen “gives up” and starts to crackle much earlier (At 70–85% CPU load) compared to the 7700 (which start to crackle at 92–99%. Much, much later).

If you just need to record stuffs and use sample packs, you may go for Ryzen. But if you use vst like Serum, Omnisphere, Kontakt, etc, go for Intel.

 

*I have Intel i5-4300, and it still works great.

This is a real load of misinformation.