Every now and then, we release a product that everyone in the company wants for themselves. A dream machine that fulfills the promise of taming the most CPU hungry virtual instrument, of delivering so many audio tracks that your ears would scream for you to stop, of storing so much data that you can go away on a 3 week vacation and find it still recording 24|192 audio upon your return. That machine is the brand spanking new, smooth as a baby's bottom, MusicXPC Professional S3.
A machine designed to occupy the most demanding spot in your music production work space. We would be lying if we didn't admit that we engineered this computer to blow the doors off every other music computer on the planet. That was our goal and as you will see, we clearly succeeded.
The Professional S3 is an Intel Core 2 Duo workhorse built on the 1066 MHz front-side-bus Intel P965 chipset. It runs Windows XP music applications at the rate of a scream. The dual-core engine is the latest wave of performance power coming to a desktop near you. We are blown away at the performance increase compared to the previous generations of processors - and you will too. For years we have preached the virtues of the Intel architecture and its outstanding performance attributes. Now, finally, everyone's is on the bandwagon. While some of our competitors are just getting their feet wet in the Wintel world, we are onto our fourth generation of music production powerhouses. At MusicXPC, we are focused on a single mission - build the finest music production computers on the planet, that's the S3. 
The Professional S3 is equipped with a versatile motherboard packed with features and new innovations that reduce noise and temperature. This super-quiet fanless motherboard supports 1066 MHz FSB, Intel Pentium dual core and Core 2 processors, DDR2 RAM (Dual Channel) and PCI Express x16. The motherboard supports the next-generation hard drives based on the SATA 3 GB/s storage specification, which provides enhanced scalability and a doubling the bus bandwidth for high-speed data retrieval and saves. The external SATA port on the rear allow hot-plug connect/disconnect of very high performance hard drives. The motherboard provides all the normal ports that you would expect to find in a high performance computer and then some. 
The Professional S3 is loaded with 2GB of top-tier dual channel DDR2 800 MHz RAM upgradeable to 4GB. All RAM chips are not created equal. RAM chips are graded for quality by the handful of top-tier manufacturers that actually make the chips. RAM chips that pass are sold under top-tier brands. The ones that marginally fail are sold off to second tier manufacturers and then sold at discounts under a multitude of brand names. For CPU, RAM and HD intensive work like professional digital audio production, it can be a fatal mistake to allow anything less than top-tier RAM into your workspace. At MusicXPC, you will find only tested, top-tier, first-rate RAM in our machines. 
The Professional S3 is meant for professional music production. This means that its storage capacity can no longer be measures in Gigabytes - say hello to 1.1 TeraBytes of storage. If you want to get a sense of how much recording time a TeraByte can hold, check out the table below. As everyone who is reading this knows, we are from the music production industry. We know from personal experience that it is not uncommon to use 25GB for a piano or string library. In our view, no MusicXPC user should ever have to juggle HD space and erase this to make room for that. The Professional S3 therefore comes with a magnificent 1.1 TeraByte of Hard Drive storage standard. We deliver enough storage to record more than 4 months of CD-quality audio. This is more than any other music production computer in the world.| How much music can 1 TeraByte store? Numbers get thrown around with reckless abandon all the time. We decided to really give you a chance to digest what a TeraByte of storage. Put simply, this is enough time to operate your studio and not think about recording time. With the Professional S3, you can record over months of CD quality audio and have room to record an album. You need a calendar not a stopwatch. |
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Four Serial ATA hard Drives This generous storage is distributed over four hard drives that should keep your libraries, linear audio tracks and video files nicely and professionally managed. This configuration also provides a meaningful improvement in hard drive performance. The Professional S3 represents a new high water mark for music production computers and is easily one of the most robust recording system ever offered in our industry. We love you too.
The Professional S3 ships with a 16X CD/DVD+/-RW recordable optical drive that does it all. Not only does it whip through CD authoring tasks, it also allows for backups of your audio projects to dual-layer DVD discs. This optical drive records data up to 4.7GB per side on DVD media and writes in all kinds of formats: DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, DVD-RAM and CD-R/-RW. The Super-Multi also reads most DVD and CD formats, including DVD+R/+RW. This adds up to one versatile drive suitable for any application. Buffer Underrun Protection and UltraDMA 4 support ensure fast, reliable writing every time. Supported formats include: DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD+R DL, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-R DL, DVD-RAM, CD-R, CD-RW 
The Professional S3 would not be a MusicXPC if it didn't have components carefully selected to generate the whisper quiet operation music producers desire, deserve and demand. Each generation of computing technology ups the ante with respect to speed in all areas, this speed comes with a price - heat. To keep things cool, some computers employ an army of fans and we all know that this only brings with it an army of noise. The Professional S3 steps around this with advanced cooling technologies that result in an astonishingly silent computer. This is one computer that you won't have to house outside the control room or in a special noise-reducing case. 
We spend what seems like every waking moment loading the latest versions ProTools or SONAR or Nuendo on our systems in a never ending quest to optimize performance within the applications and within the OS. The Professional S3 is heavily 'tweaked' for music production. This means that the services that are not needed for music are disabled and ones needed to optimize performance for music production and intensive hard disk recording are enabled. With a MusicXPC there is no need to make any adjustments. Simple unpack this dream machine, install your software and start making music. We tested the Professional S3 extensively with ProTools 7, Nuendo 3, Cubase SX3, SONAR 5, Reason 3, FL Studio 6, Melodyne 3 and many of the major plug-ins and virtual instruments on the market. 
The Professional S3 covers every type of connection that music producers need now and later. There are 3 PCI slots and also PCI-E, PCI-E x4 and PCI-E x16. So whatever kind of card comes down the pike you are ready. There are the USB 2.0 and FireWireŽ ports and dual Gigabit LAN ports to lessen bottleneck when piping data over a network. Serial ATA throughout and "SATA on the Go" mean blistering, direct connections between the S3 and external hard drives. This option makes FireWireŽ hard drives look downright ordinary. The S3 goes where no other music computer's been with the addition of wireless LAN connectivity. There are still the legacy PS2, COM and Parallel ports to make sure you can load up that trusty old Nuendo 1 or plug-in that MOTU MTP. Aren't PC computers nice? Protected Backup/Restore
The Professional S3 sets itself apart from all other music computers with the inclusion of an almost magical backup/restore facility with the power to turn a nightmare of tears into a sigh of relief. You can easily survive major computer problems and fatal crashes by restoring the computer in minutes rather than in weeks.
How is this possible? Before a Professional S3 is born we do some special work in the womb - so to speak. A special section called the Protected Area is created on the main hard drive specially to hold the original factory image as well as future user created backup images. This is followed by the installation of the Windows XP section of the drive. The "Hidden Zone" invisible to the Windows OS and cannot be erased or tampered with by normal operations. This preserves and protects the backups and factory images from damage, accidents, viruses and deletions. The music producer can easily survive a fatal computer crash by invoking a restore procedure to a previous image stored in the "Hidden Zone".
How do you spell peace of mind? Let me see . . . M U S I C X P C. The backup system is so flexible that you can even back up to DVD, across a network, another hard drive. You can load images and modify them and append to them - it's just freaking amazing. Go ahead, knock yourself out, this is one of the most robust computer systems money can buy.
We are crazy about Aluminum. All our Desktops and Small Form Factor machines have been made from this amazing metal. Aluminum makes for the best computer chassis because it is excels in a few key areas. It is strong and therefore can be a solid place to anchor other components. It is light and therefore will not add needless weight to the final product. It is corrosive resistant and therefore will never rust of warp like steel or plastic. It is a great heat conductor and helps the system dissipate heat by acting like a giant heat sink. Finally, one of the best qualities is that it looks gorgeous. The Professional S3 is Aluminum through and through and it is a truly beautiful computer. 
MusicXPC is supported by the best network of music retailers on the planet. Sam Ash Music, Sweetwater, Long & McQuade and many others are all excellent places to purchase these gems. These retailers form the backbone of our user-friendly support system and provide the first line of support. Added to that is our informative live telephone support line where we treat you like a human being and not an incident number. Our customer support is FREE. Better yet, our staff is familiar many music software programs and can speak the musician's language, not just GeekSpeak from a flow chart. Yes, we know what Automatic Delay Compensation means and we won't be asking you if the 'clicking sound' is coming from the built-in computer speakers. 
The Professional S3 surely is one sexy computer but don't for one second think that this is the end all and be all for MusicXPC. The reason we are in this business is to make tools for us to make music. These tool ought not to detract us from our central purpose - creativity and production. MusicXPC takes the trouble out of making music today in a demanding studio environment by making triple sure that the system will work in 95% of conditions. It gives you unprecedented power and flexibility out of the box - no upgrades needed. We provide every feature we can think of that 95% of our customers need and want and then some. In the end you get to spend more time thinking about and music instead of installing drivers and the next version of Tiger, Leopard or Grrrr!!. Let music reign. Rock on!
DETAILED SPECIFICATIONS |
|
MODEL |
PROFESSIONAL S3 |
CPU |
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13Hz CPU/1066 FSB |
CHIPSET |
Intel 975X Express |
SYSTEM |
Windows XP Professional |
RAM |
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 800MHz |
Upgradeable to 8GB memory |
|
VIDEO |
|
CHIPSET |
NVidia GeForce 7600 GS [PCI Express x16] |
RAM |
256MB DDR2 |
|
Dual-DVI/VGA output |
|
2560x1600 maximum resolution |
STORAGE |
|
HARD DISK |
HD1 • SATA 250GB, 7200 RPM, 8MB Cache |
|
HD2 • SATA 320GB, 7200 RPM, 8MB Cache |
|
HD3 • SATA 320GB, 7200 RPM, 8MB Cache |
|
HD4 • SATA 320GB, 7200 RPM, 8MB Cache |
MEDIA CARD |
50-in-1 card reader |
OPTICAL DRIVE |
16X DVD+/-RW [48x40x16x16] |
PORTS |
|
I/O PORTS |
6 USB 2.0 ports |
2 FireWire ports |
|
E-SATA on the Go |
|
Parallel port |
|
Serial port |
|
Joystick port |
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16 channel MIDI I/O |
|
RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet port |
|
PCI EXPANSION |
|
|
3 PCI 2.3 slots |
|
1 PCI-Express x1 slots |
|
1 PCI-Express x4 slots |
|
2 PCI-Express x16 slots |
COMMUNICATIONS |
|
LAN |
Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps |
WIRELESS |
Integrated 802.11a/b/g |
AUDIO |
|
SOUND |
AC'97 support |
7.1 surround sound, 24-bit/192kHz |
|
Microphone-in, Headphone-out |
|
Stereo in/out, Rear L/R, Surround LFE |
|
POWER |
|
POWER SUPPLY |
600W |
90-264VAC [47-63Hz] |
|
RoHS compliant |
|
INPUT |
|
KEYBOARD |
105 keys | 12 function keys keyboard |
MOUSE |
800 dpi Optical Mouse included |
ENVIRONMENT |
Operating temperature: 0 – 35°C |
PHYSICAL |
|
DIMENSIONS |
482mm x 219mm x 436mm |
WEIGHT |
14.2 Kg / 31.3 lb |
OTHER |
|
|
Microsoft Windows XP Professional |
|
Host-Protected Area Recovery System |
|
2 Years of Free telephone support |
|
1 Year Warranty |
|
U$2,799.00 |
