WHAT A CARILLON!

Carillon Audio Systems' range of specially designed music PCs has been one of the most ambitious product launches in recent years. But apart from their distinctive design, what do these computers offer that other PCs don't? Martin Walker finds out...

The original Carillon was an automated bellringing system using a sequence of pegs in a grid to make music, which dates back to the 13th century. It is therefore claimed to be the world's first digital music production system, and has given its name to a major new company, Carillon Audio Systems. Carillon's business is purpose‑designed audio PCs, and there was a huge amount of interest in their range even before the first models rolled off the production line, reflecting their decision to go much further than most manufacturers in customising their computers for music recording and production. This decision has not only given their computers a distinctive appearance, with their precision die‑cast aluminium alloy rackmount front panels, but has produced several other unique features.

One of the major bugbears of using a computer in the recording studio is acoustic noise. Specialist retailers have incorporated noise‑suppressing tweaks into their computers for some time, but Carillon have made theirs a central part of the AC1 (Audio Computer) design. Their machines have a case made from 2mm thick steel, low‑noise CPU and PSU fans, and all hard drives encased in SilentDrive sleeves as standard. As a consequence, many people witnessing demonstrations have apparently not even noticed that the AC1 was already switched on.

Another perennial problem afflicting PC musicians is that of technical support and problem‑solving. You don't have to look very hard on the web or in the pages of SOS to realise just how many pitfalls there can be in getting a PC to work reliably for musical applications, and the technical support offered by non‑specialist retailers is often useless in this department. One of Carillon's major selling points is their comprehensive support system (see box). A third feature unique to Carillon is the Loopstation, a source of free samples which users will be able to download over the Internet (see box).

The special features of Carillon's music computers were set out in a widely available 32‑page catalogue, which won the company a lot of admirers. With PC component specs and prices in constant flux, some of the prices and fine details were almost inevitably out of date before the ink was dry, but what was important was that it specified a complete range of 16 standard models (see Other Models box), ranging from the VST Foundation System at £1399 to the UltraSynth 8 at £4849, capable of running eight stand‑alone soft synths simultaneously, each with individual audio outputs. Although other specialist retailers have been able to put together systems with similar specifications on demand, the Carillon catalogue allowed potential customers to spend hours poring over the various specs and prices to decide which was most suitable for them. The only remaining uncertainty was whether Carillon could actually deliver the goods, and this is what I'm going to explore in this first review of a specimen Carillon PC.

First Impressions

The AC1's front‑panel audio socket is mirrored on the back panel and could, for instance, be set up to route to the soundcard's audio input, or serve as a headphone socket.

I must admit to feeling a frisson of excitement as I opened the boxes containing the Carillon review system (sad, isn't it?). The heaviest one contained the main system case, and the specially designed casing looks just as attractive in the flesh as it does in the adverts. The left‑hand side of the front panel is divided into two areas, one containing a blue illuminated mains power switch and a recessed reset button, the other a hard drive activity indicator and a Neutrik stereo quarter‑inch locking jack socket, internally connected by screened cable to a similar socket emerging from the back panel. You can use this link in any way you wish — it might make a handy front‑panel headphone socket for instance — and Carillon supply suitable adaptor cables for each of their systems so that you can connect your soundcard inputs or outputs to it. This is especially useful if you want to avoid regularly using the phono and 3.5mm jack sockets some soundcards provide, and the two 15‑inch adaptor cables supplied with my VST Songwriter system for its Yamaha SW1000XG were of excellent quality.

Also accessed from the front panel of the review system were a 1.4Mb Teac floppy drive, a 40‑speed Teac CD‑ROM drive, and the one non‑standard extra I'd asked for in the review model — Carillon's RTM1 transport control panel (see Optional Extras box).

The AC1 case can, obviously, be bolted into a rack, and since the front‑panel rack ears are backed with vibration‑absorbing rubber gaskets, external vibration is prevented from entering the computer for greater reliability, while any internal vibration due to disk drives and fans won't be transmitted to the rest of the rack and amplified. For desktop or floor‑mounting use, you can screw squidgy Sorbothane feet to the bottom of the case to achieve the same end.

Matching Accessories

One of the reasons why the AC1 is so quiet is that its hard drive (top left) is encased in a SilentDrive sleeve.

The 15‑inch monitor in my system was an IBM model, though Carillon are planning to supply equivalently specified unbadged monitors in future, and the mouse was a standard two‑button job. While the entire Carillon range uses a standard Chicony keyboard, each system is enhanced by the addition of self‑adhesive stickers listing shortcuts attached to those keys that provide important functions for the main software application in the bundle. In the case of the review system this was Cubase 5.0, so the keypad displayed shortcut commands to launch the Channel and Master mixer panels, carry out transport functions, and use the locator and cycle functions, while the majority of letter and number keys on the main part of the keyboard also displayed command options. Shift, Control, and Alternate key labels have different colours that link with additional command options on other keys, and the shortcuts are marked clearly and comprehensively enough to help both novice and professional. Although they seemed to be stuck onto the key tops, rather than being part of the mouldings, the labels had all been attached squarely and looked capable of withstanding heavy‑duty use. My only reservation was that in the subdued lighting of many studios it's often difficult to see the controls on any black keyboard, and I did find it slightly less easy to use than my standard beige one for this reason.

Internal Affairs

The one optional extra fitted to the review AC1 was the dedicated front‑panel transport control.

My next task was to find out what electronic components Carillon had used in their design, and to do this I needed to gain access to the interior of its case. A total of seven screws needed to be removed before the 2mm thick steel cover could be slid rearwards, and of course you would need to unbolt the AC1 from a rack to do this. Once inside I was pleased to find an Asus CUSL2‑C motherboard, already widely recommended by many industry experts for various applications including music. It uses the Intel 815EP chipset, provides one AGP and six PCI slots, and three slots for installing up to 512Mb of RAM. In the VST Songwriter review system a single 128Mb strip of PC133 SDRAM had been fitted, along with a Pentium III 866MHz processor — thanks to continuously falling PC prices, all models specified in the catalogue and current ads as 800MHz now feature an 866MHz processor for the same price. Carillon use only Intel processors and chipsets in their range, mainly because they are compatible with more soundcards and give consistently good floating‑point performance. The processor had been fitted with an efficient radial‑fin heatsink and low‑speed fan for reduced noise.

Two of the PCI slots were already occupied by a Yamaha SW1000XG soundcard and internal Conexant modem, while the AGP slot contained an ATI Rage graphics card with 8Mb of video RAM — once again, this replaces all 4Mb models specified in the catalogue but with no price increase. One of the remaining PCI slot positions was unavailable due to the installation of a backplate housing two additional USB sockets, but I doubt that anyone would complain at this, since a total of four USB sockets and three spare PCI slots is likely to be more than adequate for any musician.

The single Quantum Fireball 20Gb hard drive had been fitted into a SilentDrive sleeve, while even the PSU featured low‑hum transformers and a low‑turbulence fan for lower noise. The internal wiring loom was extremely neat, so much so in fact that you would need to cut some of the clips if you wanted to add another hard drive in the future. Overall, the internal construction was to a very high standard, but with easy and unobstructed access to both PCI and RAM slots for possible upgrading.

The back‑panel motherboard socketry was fairly standard, consisting of a pair of colour‑coded PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, the two USB sockets already mentioned, a 25‑pin D‑type parallel port for printer or dongle, and a single 9‑pin serial COM port. The second COM port is used internally if you take advantage of any of the panels described in the Optional Extras box, but it would be possible to bring it out via a bracket if you ever needed a second rear‑panel COM port. Thankfully, the optional AC97‑compliant onboard game audio support components were absent from this version of the motherboard, so the associated Mic In, Line In, and Line Out sockets were missing from the back panel as well. While having such facilities may initially seem a good idea for the musician, they nearly always end up being disabled to avoid problems when using professional soundcards.

Bundled Software

The AC1's keyboard is customised by Carillon with the keyboard shortcuts appropriate to your choice of software.

Carillon currently install Windows 98 SE on all their systems, and sensibly include the original CD‑ROM and printed manual as well, since it's almost inevitable that you'll need these at some point in the future. They were supplied in a handy transparent holder that also contains support CD‑ROMs or floppy disks and manuals for the motherboard, graphics card, monitor, and modem. Each system also contains a small bundle of additional software comprising Cakewalk's Pyro CD‑burning application, Emagic's Zap! lossless audio compression utility, and a bonus pack of shareware and freeware VST Instruments and plug‑ins. The bundled VST Instruments include Fxpansion's DR002 Drum Player and Mysteron, MDA's DX10 and JX10 synths, a virtual Stylophone, and (my personal favourite) Big Tick's Rainbow synth, while the bonus plug‑ins include a Distortion and Equaliser from D‑Sound, and 30 from the MDA collection. Although there's nothing here that you couldn't download yourself for free, it's a nice touch to have them installed and ready to use.

Also supplied with my particular system were the full packaging and printed manuals for Cubase 5.0, and the original box containing support material for the Yamaha SW1000XG, although both were already installed and ready for use.

Silent Service?

Once I'd reassembled the case, connected up the keyboard, mouse, and monitor, I was ready for one of the most interesting parts of the proceedings — powering up and listening to the AC1. As I expected, the background noise levels were a great deal lower than those of standard PCs, and at switch‑on I could scarcely hear any noise at all apart from the 'snark' of the floppy drive being accessed during boot up and the one‑off 'beep' of the built‑in speaker. There was also a small amount of drive noise when accessing data, but due to the SilentDrive sleeve, this was again much lower than average.

Once the AC1 started to warm up, the thermostatically controlled PSU fan did speed up and become somewhat louder, but the overall noise level was still considerably lower than that of any other desktop production PC I've ever heard. Once bolted into a rack it would of course be further reduced, since this fan exhausts from the rear of the casing. I've installed nearly all the available noise‑reduction options on my own PC over the last year or so, and this proved to be slightly quieter than the AC1. However, this is mainly because I use an even slower power supply fan, and accept that the exhaust gets quite hot. With my engineer's hat on I wouldn't be happy to do this as a matter of course on every model emerging from a production line, and on this basis I think the Carillon AC1 won the contest. To my knowledge it's certainly the quietest production PC available, which should make a lot of musicians very happy.

Basic Setup

The RK8 MIDI Controller is another optional front‑panel extra, and provides eight assignable knobs which transmit MIDI Controller numbers to your sequencer or soft synths.

On bootup, the AC1 took about 45 seconds to reach the desktop, which turned out to be awash with helpful shortcuts to all the main applications and Carillon‑specific information (see Support box). The screen display was set to 1024 by 768‑pixel resolution, and looked crisp and clear, with no obvious geometric distortion. There was initially a fairly wide border around the periphery of the 15‑inch display area, but it only took me a couple of minutes to tweak the monitor settings and gain almost an inch on the diagonal measurement. I was a little surprised that 32‑bit True Colour had been selected, since many music developers recommend 16‑bit for reduced overhead, but it's easier enough to change on the fly, and I had no video‑related problems during the review.

The Task Manager had been suitably disabled, as had the Active Desktop, Power Management, System Sounds, Windows animation, and screensavers. Auto Insert Notification was correctly disabled inside System, while DMA is automatically enabled for hard drives using this motherboard. A fixed swap file of 512Mb had been created, and in fact I could find nothing that hadn't been correctly set for musical purposes — this should save a lot of hassle for the novice in particular. During my time using the AC1 I became increasingly impressed by the manufacturer's attention to detail. For instance, when I opened Internet Explorer I found that a large number of shortcuts had been added covering Internet music, magazines and forums (yes, SOS was included), media contacts, comprehensive lists of manufacturers and developers of music equipment, plug‑ins, and soft synths, as well as the Carillon and Turnkey home pages.

Performance

The soundcard specified in the review system was Yamaha's SW1000XG.

With an 866MHz Pentium III processor, there's plenty of power under the bonnet for music applications, and the Asus CUSL2‑C motherboard is also a good performer. I was pleased to see that Cubase 5.0 had already had the most recent revision 3 update patch installed, and that the Yamaha SW1000XG drivers were also the latest version 2.50. However, in an entry‑level system like the review model with a single hard drive, audio performance can be significantly affected by how this is set up, so I was keen to examine this aspect.

The 20Gb Quantum Fireball hard drive had been divided into a C partition of about 4Gb labelled System, formatted as FAT32 with 4K clusters, and containing Windows 98SE and all the applications. The remaining 15Gb in the D audio partition was again formatted using FAT32, this time with 8K clusters, and is intended for audio recording, playback, and sample storage. Splitting the drive in this way is the most sensible approach, and although the audio partition didn't have 32K clusters as most experts recommend, the difference in write speeds between 8K and 32K is often marginal. I was more concerned to see how much audio performance was lost by Carillon's splitting off the faster outer section of the drive for Windows and applications — some hard drives (notably the IBM Deskstar range) provide considerably higher sustained transfer rates at the outside than further in.

However, I needn't have worried: the Dskbench utility reported the read and write speeds for the Quantum Fireball drive's C partition at about 34Mb/second and 33Mb/second respectively, while those for the D partition were 33Mb/second and 32Mb/second — excellent figures capable of running over 100 44.1kHz/16‑bit tracks, with a difference of just 3 percent between the two partitions. If you wanted to tweak this you could use a utility like Partition Magic to resize the C partition to about 2Gb, since 4Gb is quite generous (as supplied, only 1.3Gb of it was being used).

Final Thoughts

The Carillon range is an ambitious new approach to designing a complete PC system that should appeal to quite a few musicians. There's no denying that the AC1 looks good, sounds quiet, performs well, and, for possibly the first time in the chequered history of music PCs, makes owning a PC desirable. There's not a large premium to pay compared to a bog‑standard high‑street model either. For many people, however, it will be the added value provided by the LoopStation, along with the safety net of Carillon Help, How, and Fix that may tip the balance when choosing a new music PC. If every manufacturer provided such a comprehensive support package, my regular postbag of reader problems might be considerably smaller.

The only aspects of the philosophy that I couldn't check out in detail were the Internet end of Loopstation, which is expected by early summer, and the product information and ordering web site, which should be online by the time you read this. Some potential customers have also been frustrated by the wait before the first systems rolled off the production line, but I do find it encouraging that Carillon refused to ship anything until they were sure that everything worked correctly. I had absolutely no operational problems during the course of my review, and can see why many professional studios as well as individual musicians are seriously considering the purchase of one or more Carillon systems. Even Mac‑based studios are apparently interested in the UltraSynth 8 system as a stand‑alone soft‑synth workstation. What more can I say?