Synergy Audio PC

Synergy is defined as 'the simultaneous joint action of separate parties which, together, have greater total effect than the sum of their individual effects', and Digital Village have chosen this name for their new PC range carefully, to highlight their close working relationship with OEM providers and DAW developers such as Cakewalk, Digidesign, M-Audio and Steinberg. Each of their systems has been put through its paces with all the major DAW packages and aims to be powerful and reliable, yet very quiet. While there are entry-level models, overall the range is aimed at the mid- to high-end market and with ex-Carillon expertise on board, I suspect DV are hoping to gain some of the previous customers of this well-respected range, now that it's no longer available. Let's look at the parts and see how the total stacks up!

The Blofelds DSP40 benchmark test result for this 3GHz CPU at the higher 512-sample buffer size shows the 25 percent improvement in performance that you'd expect over a Q6600 2.4GHz processor.

The ATX Tower case of the Synergy review PC is one of the largest I've reviewed to date, and it certainly looks sophisticated in a black, hi-tech sort of way, while its hinged front door and blue LEDs add plenty of class. Although there are already six USB ports and a Firewire port 'round the back', I also approved of the hinged panel at top front of the Synergy case, which conceals an additional Firewire port and another two USB ports. These are ideal for plugging in occasional devices such as mobile audio interfaces, RAM sticks or dongles (many cases provide USB ports on their lower front panel where smaller devices can easily get broken off).

Inside the case, the wiring is a model of neatness, and there's also plenty of expansion potential if you need to install additional hard or optical drives later on. Talking of drives, both of the 500GB Seagate Barracuda models installed in the review PC were housed in Scythe Quiet Drive silencers — aluminium cases lined with foam rubber to damp vibration and reduce both airborne and structure-borne noise.

The motherboard in the review PC was from Asus (a popular company with DIY builders, and with some, but not all, system builders), and is a P5Q Deluxe running with a Front Side Bus speed of 1333MHz and featuring Intel's new P45 chip set. This was released in mid-2008 and is similar to last year's P35 chip set but adds native support for Intel's 45nm processors and support for the PCI Express 2.0 standard. Neither are earth-shattering improvements, especially for musicians, who are unlikely to need the extra PCI Express bandwidth for their typically modest graphics cards.

However, the P5Q does feature three x16 PCI Express slots and two x1 PCI Express slots, plus two PCI slots, providing good expansion potential for those who are into all things cardy. It also offers six SATA 3.0 ports, two RJ45 LAN ports and a SATA port for external hard drives, so few users will ever need to install additional port expander cards.

The back of the case is where you'll find most of the Synergy's connections, but there are also two extra USB ports and a Firewire port on the top for easier access.

Unfortunately, the Firewire controller is from LSI/Agere, and known to have various problems with audio interfaces from MOTU, Presonus and RME, among others (the same chip has also been causing problems for new Macbook Pro and iMac users). This isn't a major issue, since you can buy a suitable Firewire expansion card featuring the highly compatible TI chip for under £10 if you do run into problems, but it's nevertheless annoying on a dedicated audio PC.

Fitted in the review unit expansion slots were a modest Nvidia 7300 graphics card (I chose one for my own PC because of its low power consumption and passive cooling, both of which help to keep noise levels down) and an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard for testing purposes.

The most expensive component by far in the review machine was the CPU, since Intel's Core 2 Extreme Q9650 model contains four cores, each running at 3GHz, and currently retails at around £350! However, if your budget stretches this far, such a high-powered choice is a good one for running loads of soft synths, especially in combination with the higher 1333MHz FSB to ferry all the data about.

In a way, I was surprised to see that Windows XP 32-bit was installed, but many builders have stockpiled this now-discontinued operating system, as it still provides slightly better performance than the newer Vista at low latency.

One unusual choice was the total system RAM complement of 3GB (most builders opt for 2GB or 4GB, but in this system there are three high-quality 1GB DDR2 800MHz modules). As I explained in PC Notes August 2008, if you fit 4GB when running a 32-bit operating system you're only likely to see between 3GB and 3.5GB of available RAM, so this seems a sensible compromise. Sometimes, fitting an odd number of RAM sticks can result in all your RAM running in single- rather than dual-channel mode (resulting in half the theoretical memory bandwidth), but in this motherboard two of the three gigabytes run as dual-channel, while the third gigabyte will run as single-channel. Heavy sample users may not be able to run quite as many samples at low latencies as they might with 4GB RAM installed, but most musicians are far more likely to benefit from the extra 1GB of RAM than they are to notice this slight reduction in performance.

The inside of the case is a model of neatness, and as you can see, there's plenty of room for future expansion.

Acoustic noise is an important issue for most of us, so I'm pleased to report that the quiet Seasonic 500W PSU, Noctua CPU cooler and associated 92mm fan, along with the Scythe Quiet Drive silencers, all help significantly in keeping overall noise levels down. I'd judge that noise was on a par with most specialist music PCs, although drive seek noise was still slightly audible despite the silencers, and the side panels rattled a little, both of which could be easily improved by lining the case with silencing material. The Synergy PC also ran cool — the idling temperatures of the four cores were fairly low at 42 degrees Celsius, and during my torture test they stabilised at a healthy 60 degrees Celsius.

In the BIOS, the High Definition Audio soundchip had sensibly been disabled, to avoid confusion with whichever high-quality audio interface you decide to install for serious work, and once in Windows I was pleased to note that all my 'essential' XP tweaks had been implemented (Processor Scheduling to 'Background Services', Power schemes to 'Always On', and Sounds set to 'No Sounds'), as had most of the ones I deemed 'useful' in my XP Tweaks feature in the September 2006 issue of SOS.

The first hard drive had sensibly been divided into 44GB System and 420GB Data partitions, so even if you ever have to restore the Windows partition you won't lose any personal stuff. There's also an additional 3.5GB partition holding the Acronis True Image backup file of the Windows partition as shipped, just in case of emergencies. The 500GB Audio drive had been left as one huge 470GB storage area for your projects. In my benchmark tests, hard drive performance proved to be excellent, providing a massive 100MB-per-second sustained transfer rate, and a huge theoretical 16-bit/44.1kHz track count of 700!

Sisoftware's Sandra measured the highest results of any SOS review PC to date, with Memory Bandwidth of 6.1 GB/second, CPU Arithmetic of 44.24 GIPS (Dhrystone) and 30.67 GFLOPS (Whetstone), and CPU Multimedia of 110 MPixels/s (Integer) and 62 MPixels/s (Float). However, the most appropriate test for any music PC is one that contains a representative combination of audio tracks, plug-ins and VST Instruments, so once again I turned to the Blofelds DSP40 benchmark test (www.dawbench.com/benchmarks.htm). I experienced some glitching issues at low latencies (even with 'safe' 70 percent CPU meter readings), but these could well be due to the audio interface, so I concentrated on higher values, to exclude the interface contribution and concentrate on PC performance alone. At a buffer size of 512 samples, the Q9650 turned in the impressive performance of 199 Cubase Magneto plug-ins, almost exactly 25 percent more than the 161 of the Q6600 processor, and perfectly in line with their relative clock speeds (see screen at start of review).

The Synergy PC is also available in a rackmount case — and for exactly the same price as the tower case version.

Digital Village have been designing and assembling their specialist music PCs in house for quite a few years now, and they have already helped countless musicians seeking a reliable PC whose components have been thoroughly tested for their compatibility and performance with music hardware and software, along with technical support from people who know their audio interfaces from their E-bows.

Some Firewire audio interface users may have to bypass the motherboard's Firewire ports in favour of a £10 expansion card, but apart from that there's precious little to grumble about in this system. In the middle of 2007 I reviewed a similar specified PC to this one, except for its slower 2.4GHz quad-core processor, and it retailed at £2300. Here we are, 18 months later, and you can get 25 percent faster performance for £850 less!

To sum up, this Synergy PC from Digital Village is the fastest we've yet seen at Sound On Sound, looks elegant and has relatively low acoustic noise. What more could you ask for?

Motherboard: Asus P5Q-Deluxe with one Socket LGA775 (for Intel Core 2 Quad/Extreme/Duo, Pentium dual-core, Celeron dual-core or Celeron processor), Intel P45 chip set, four DIMM sockets supporting up to 16GB of system memory, two PCIe x1 slots, one PCIe x16 slot, two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, and two PCI slots.

Synergy will be replacing DVPC as a full re-branding process, although existing DVPC customers will still be supported as before. All PC systems have a one-year free parts and repair warranty, while out-of-warranty repairs have a £70 minimum charge covering the first two hours of labour and are charged at £50 per subsequent hour, plus the cost of parts.

Telephone and email support is available from Monday to Friday between the hours of 10am and 5pm, and there is a generous Full Lifetime support for the PC, software and hardware. The other essential support ingredient is Acronis True Image Home 11 software, so you can back up your system and restore it later on if anything ever goes wrong.

The final part of DV's Synergy system is a generous OEM software bundle, comprising Native Instruments' Guitar Rig 3 LE and Kore Player 2, Propellerheads Reason Adapted 4, and FXpansion's BFD2 Lite. BFD2 Lite is a new version that comes with a 1.5GB library, while the Kore 2 Player includes nearly 3GB of 'Essential Instruments', and both are special Synergy-badged versions.

This is a great bundle that would cost you hundreds of pounds to buy separately, but the upgrades that are available make it even more attractive: you can get the full version of BFD2 for £169 (representing a saving of £60), and upgrade Reason 4 Adapted to the full Reason 4 for £159 (another saving of £90), and there will also be an upgrade path to NI's full Kore 2 package (with or without Komplete 5). What's more, these upgrades are available both at the time of purchase and for up to one year afterwards — which is a very attractive proposition for the financially challenged!

As I mentioned in the introduction, the Synergy brand involves rather more than a PC specification, but it's only when you start investigating the on-line 'configurator' on the DV web site (www.dv247.com/synergy) that you begin to realise its true extent. There are three types of Synergy PC on offer, along with various hardware options to change CPU clock speed, amount of RAM, hard drive capacity, and so on. Whichever you choose, one very attractive option is that you can choose either a tower or 4U rackmount case for exactly the same price, depending on whether you want your PC tucked away under a desk or bolted into a rack.

The entry-level 'Origin' models start at £999, and are available with either Intel P45 chip set and DDR2 RAM like the review system, or Intel's x48 chip set plus DDR3 RAM for those who demand even more performance. The latter may benefit those who routinely load in several gigabytes of sample data, since the additional memory bandwidth should ensure no bottlenecks when ferrying this data between RAM and CPU (this can become more of a limitation in such situations than CPU clock speed), and also adds an element of 'future-proofing' to a new PC.

Synergy 'Extreme' models offer faster processors, more RAM, and up to 1 terabyte of hard drive capacity, while Synergy 'Custom' lets you specify your PC from the ground up, with hard drive capacity up to 7.5TB (tower) and 4.5TB (rack). The review PC is just one example of a Synergy Custom PC.

All these lines ship with the same attractive 'Synergy Essential' software bundle as the review model. However, DV's close working relationship with OEM providers and DAW developers has also allowed them to offer various extremely attractive audio interface and software application 'deals' when you buy any Synergy PC. For example, if you buy M-Audio's ProFire 2626 with your Synergy PC you get it for £50 less than the currently advertised DV price, while Steinberg's Cubase 4 and CC121 controller will both be available at a 10 percent discount over DV prices. Other such 'hot deals' are also likely in the future, and such savings make the Synergy range significantly more attractive to those who need more than just 'a PC to make music'.

Synergy Audio PC

Music Computer