Does anyone know if any companies exist in Australia who build specialist PCs (desktops and laptops) whose hardware is optimized for DAW applications? Examples of such companies in USA are and . My research indicates getting a DAW to actually work can be hit and miss when it comes to getting PC hardware, interfaces and sequencers to cooperate with each other. Finding a specialist PC builder with a good reputation for service here in Australia would be great. Unfortunately ordering from USA just became too expensive as the $AUD has gone down the toilet.

Maybe not what your looking for but here are a couple of good articles on building a good PC for audio work from sound on sound. The 1st is for a dual core and the 2nd is the recomendations for a quad core if nothing else it worth the read. Cheers

Great articles. Thanks a lot.

This guy Vin Curigliano does DAW's. He also designed the universal benchmarks that showed us old Sonar users why we weren't getting the best performance from our multi-core systems (And why Reaper kicks so much ass). Oh yah! He also lives in Australia. Here is a link to his Website. Good Luck and Have Fun. Jason

I only know of this site because of the DSP24 resources, but they do build custom PCs as well. Not sure where in Aus they are located.

from my experience, dedicated daw builders are more or less a relict of the past(when hardware/compatibility problems indeed were much more frequent). there are some important points to consider, but otherwise many "regular" pc's e.g. from dell or others will work wonderfully and without issues for many many people. but cost much less than the dedicated ones. so it really depends on how skilled you generally are with computers and how much "security" you want: it's of course a big advantage to get a system that is tested and will work for sure. and also having a contact person is cool in case one does not like to search specific information in the internet. but i realized that many daw builders (and with these i do not mean e.g. scott from ask or jim from studiocats etc. but our locals here in town) do not know significantly more about the technical side than the average guy. but they keep telling that customer pc's won't work, what is (most of the time) total bs. they only wan't to sell their stuff, whhat's of course totally ok and their good right, but i as a customer also have the right to save my bucks..;-) to cut a long story short: i'd advise dell or something similar in case you don't find a builder that really convinces you and that has reasonable prices. there is of course a risk, but i really know various studios that run such machines without any problems. good luck and have fun oxy

drillbit's PC system setup tips 

Thanks for all the detailed info. I will follow your leads. While I will attempt to build a desktop PC based DAW in the future, at the moment I want to create laptop PC based DAW so I can create and mix music while away from home. The quest continues. One question. In laptops that have Firewire ports are these ports integrated into the motherboard directly or are these FW ports provided via cards that slot into the motherboard? Sorry if this make no sense.

notebook 

Everything on a laptop is integrated. There are not many ports and no room for cards they come direct from the motherboard. I have a Dell XPS1330 for live work. I went for a smaller laptop because all my friends said you won't want to take it anywhere if it's large and heavy. It's a laptop that's what they are for. Good laptop brands are Sony, Dell and Apple. Dell do the best deals. Some of the new Toshibas look good but they are not compact. This is a good place to start: