Hi all!
I’d be interested in your opinion on which one of these NUCs would be the best option for my Cantabile rig.
My setup is based on Cantabile running Pianoteq, various synths, lots of effects (GR5, Soundtoys, GRM tools, etc.), and loopers, controlled by 2 keyboards and 6 USB controllers. Each keyboard+3-controller control an independent set of plugins. In fact it’s like two independent setup running at the same time, mirrored (I have the same set of synths and fx for each keyboard).
I want to make a very portable version (using two Korg Microkey 61) of my setup so I’d be interested in using a NUC and a small screen instead of my laptop. My laptop is a quite old Lenovo Z-500 i7. While it still works, I would be happy in getting as well a performance improvement with the NUC.
Here’s my understanding of the pro/cons for these NUCs:
The Skull Canyon has a quad-core but slower processor compared to the Kaby Lake (quad-core 2.6 to 3.5 GHz Turbo vs dual core 3.5GHz to 4GHz Turbo)
The Skull Canyon is apparently quite noisy but there’s a fanless case.
I guess for my setup a quad-core machine can be beneficial, but I’m not sure.
Which one would you recommend?
Thanks a lot for your help!
I was wondering the same thing recently and went for the Skull Canyon just because I assumed 4 slower cores would be better than 2 faster cores for real-time audio and Cantabile running multiple plugins at the same time for 2 keyboards. I have no idea if that was a good assumption or not. I stocked it with 32GB Kingston HyperX RAM and a 2TB Samsung 960 Pro drive.
I also got a GeChic 1503i 15" 1080p touch screen for it which is working pretty good so far. Hopefully it will be bright enough when using it outdoors. I plan on mounting the NUC on the back of it for now until I can figure out a way to put everything in a small vented rack case with a custom rack panel for all the connections.
I’m still in the process of getting everything installed and haven’t given it a good stress test yet. Hopefully this weekend. I don’t think it’s that noisy, but perhaps it won’t get “quite noisy” until I push it some more. It’s much quieter than my desktop and I can’t imagine it being a problem on stage.
I’ll post an update after I play around with it some more.
Hi!
That’s actually my same thought, that a quad core would be better than 2 faster cores.
The touch screen looks great, thanks for sharing the info.
About noise, people seem to complain about it, but it’s hard to know how annoying it can be.