ok, here's the thing, I've get a penium II 400 running windows 98 and have been using cakewalk pa9 for quite a while. I have the internal soundcard and a D-man (1 stereo in, 1 stereo out) For this post at least we are stearing clear of midi.
So with cakewalk, I've got roughly 8 tracks before it starts dropping out abnormally often and by 12 if i can get that far it will drop out LOTS. There are obvious solutions like bouncing all dem tracks to 1 but that's no fun. I've maxed out my ram (to 384). Obviously this is a matter of a. processor speed or b. cakewalk is unstable. I believe it is the first of those two but it's possible it's not. A few people I know are under the opinion that multitracking sound cards are the answer (some examples are the terratec ews88mt, delta 1010 pci, pg 124 on the christmas 2001 musician's friend brochure). The answer being that these cards will take some heat off of the processor by handling the tracks.
lets, for this scenario use the terratec ews88mta 24bit/96Khz, 16 track simultaneous record/playback, 20 channel mixer(i assume the mixer is a software based mixer). Now the "answer" that the supporters of these style cards is said to be that as long as I assign the .wav files i use (recorded or inserted loops) to the specific channels in the soundcard, my computer will treat that as 1 track the old fashoined way. (My computer can do 6 tracks with absolute stability, so it would theoretically be able to handle 6 X 16 tracks this way) Is this right/possible/logical? I don't want to go buy a 1.7 ghz beast but I need an answer to get me roughly 16-24 tracks with absolute stability even regardless of simultaneousness. Any ideas on this subject????????
So with cakewalk, I've got roughly 8 tracks before it starts dropping out abnormally often and by 12 if i can get that far it will drop out LOTS. There are obvious solutions like bouncing all dem tracks to 1 but that's no fun. I've maxed out my ram (to 384). Obviously this is a matter of a. processor speed or b. cakewalk is unstable. I believe it is the first of those two but it's possible it's not. A few people I know are under the opinion that multitracking sound cards are the answer (some examples are the terratec ews88mt, delta 1010 pci, pg 124 on the christmas 2001 musician's friend brochure). The answer being that these cards will take some heat off of the processor by handling the tracks.
lets, for this scenario use the terratec ews88mta 24bit/96Khz, 16 track simultaneous record/playback, 20 channel mixer(i assume the mixer is a software based mixer). Now the "answer" that the supporters of these style cards is said to be that as long as I assign the .wav files i use (recorded or inserted loops) to the specific channels in the soundcard, my computer will treat that as 1 track the old fashoined way. (My computer can do 6 tracks with absolute stability, so it would theoretically be able to handle 6 X 16 tracks this way) Is this right/possible/logical? I don't want to go buy a 1.7 ghz beast but I need an answer to get me roughly 16-24 tracks with absolute stability even regardless of simultaneousness. Any ideas on this subject????????
