So what's a real soundcard look like?

yeah i think thats the way to go ola...cheers
Im sure theres some uni student out there who has to do some project for some piss weak percentage of your final score ... so why not try designing an OS for audio!!!!!!
well worth a try anyway .....
 
Stack 4 Laylas together and someone who knows what they are doing using Logic and you will see that it sounds VERY Professional. Just like having 4 ADATS only WAAAAAYYYYYYYY better, and they take up a lot less room than an ADAT ;-) I would say that this soundcard and its Equivalent rivals are just as pro as any ADAT or DA88 machine around, in my opinion nicer.
;-) http://www.mp3.com/codyyoung
 
Make sure you know what you're doing before you change operating systems.
Windows NT is not just a "more stable kind of Windows 98", or anything like that. It is a very different operating system, not targeted for home users. I personally wouldn't put NT on a recording computer unless I used that computer for recording, and nothing but.
But yeah. I've experienced Cakewalk crashes in Win98 too, and it pisses me off. In fact, I'm fresh off an extremely annoying crash right now. This message board is good for soothing those raw nerves. :)
But I'm not sure you can blame Windows 98 for that. In my case, anyway. It was Cakewalk that crashed, not the Program Manager or Explorer (the most common Win98 crashes). Would that problem be eliminated in WinNT? I don't know; I've never tried it!
For those of you who have LOTS of crashes in Win98, it may be time for a clean install of Windows. Yes, it's a pain in the ass. But after a clean install you'll have hard drive space you didn't even know you'd lost, your computer will run loads faster, and Windows will crash far less. Windows 95 was far worse, but Windows is still a self-corrupting operating system. The longer you use an installation, the worse things become.
You can counteract this if you know enough about your computer to do routine cleanings and tweakings. But I've been working with computers for about 17+ years now and even I can't keep an installation of Windows running forever.
Some people have it far worse. I've seen people with very fast computers, whose machines operated with about the speed of a 486 - when they operated at all - because those people cluttered their Windows installation to the point where it was beyond repair.
Now, if you don't have backup capabilities, this is pretty tough to pull off. But if you do, wiping your hard drive clean and starting over is more painless than you might think. And assuming you have a quality machine to begin with, it can solve a host of problems.
Spider mentioned performance issues even with 256mb of RAM. If you're running Windows 98, anything more than 128mb is practically useless. It's far more likely that the bottleneck you're experiencing is your CPU or hard drive.
I've read that 256mb may help performance in Win2000 and NT, though. Can anyone vouch for this?
 
BTW - if you're experiencing speed issues, there are lots of tweaks and quick fixes that may help you out.
Lock the size of your swap file to stop hard drive accesses that may be causing dropouts. I believe the formula is that the swap file should be able 2 1/2x the size of your RAM. I forget, but you can read about this on lots of websites. I have 128mb of RAM, and my swap file is locked at 320mb.
You may also want to pick up a second hard drive to store your swap file. Someone gave me a 550mb hard drive, so I stuck it in my computer and it now handles all my swap file duties so my (not very fast) primary hard drive has a little more room to breathe.
Unless you have a very nice video card, set your display to 16 bit (high) color instead of 24 or 32 bit. You won't notice a difference in color quality when you're working in Windows, but your computer will appreciate the change. Anything above 16 bit color draws a lot of your system resources.
Heck, you may even think about going to 256 color when you're recording. I've never tried that.
Delete true type fonts that you don't use. Believe it or not, too many fonts will slow your computer down. And they slow it down ALL THE TIME, not just during bootup. Just be careful you don't delete fonts that Windows likes to use. If you use Word, for instance, it comes with some fonts that you may never use, but if Windows doesn't see the fonts when you load Word up, you'll see an annoying error message.
If anyone wants to hear more tweaks, I'd be happy to post them as I remember them. I know I'm definitely not operating on a big budget - I have to squeeze every bit of speed out of this machine that I can.
 
"I wouldn't put NT on a recording machine unless I was just using it as a recording machine"........

Actually, If I was forced to use a 9X OS, that would be a true statement. On NT, you are far more flexible. I have 2000 with a bunch of different software installed (internet, graphics, Office Suite, etc...) and it records just fine.

128MB if RAM will comfortably run NT4 or 2000. Yes, NT platforms require more system resources to still run fast.

I like the color resolution tweek idea... :) I run True Color on my 16MB video card, and that "may" explain the little occassional clitch of previewing in real time plug in's. When I go to adjust them, I get a little drop out in the audio, so that may just be the ticket. Makes sense at least... :)

Ed

[This message has been edited by sonusman (edited 07-14-2000).]
 
I notice noone has ever mentioned Creamware TripleDAT and Pulsar - any thoughts guys??
oh - I use Fixit 2000 to clean the gunk out of my machine.


[This message has been edited by John Sayers (edited 07-14-2000).]
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by pglewis:
I hear all these issues with Win98's stablity and I wonder how I got the "lucky machine". <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Okay... I had to reboot 3 times yesterday. Some days are better than others :D.
 
Ed - Maybe some people would find NT more flexible, but I'm a little old-fashioned.
I doubt that my MIDI software would run under NT, for instance. Plus, I still play lots of old DOS games! That would be a REAL no-no. :)
Hope the color tweak helps you. Keep in mind, your mileage may vary - that tweak is essential on my computer, but my video card is just a 2mb PCI piece! :) Since I'm a do-it-yourselfer, and a poor college student to boot, I'm never able to upgrade everything at once... ah well.
Someone gave me a nice SCSI hard drive, though! Just need to find a controller card and recording will get a whole lot easier.
I wasn't asked, but...

Don't expect too much improvement with WinMill as a recording OS. I would like to think it's going to be more stable than 98 (but I'm going to hold out for a while and see what kind of experiences other people have, as I did when upgrading to 98 from 95), and so far I'm told it's _slightly_ faster. But the basic elements that make NT/2000 better for recording won't be present in WinMill (essentially the final service pack for Win98).

I remembered a few other tweaks that might help a few of you.
First of all, I mentioned locking the size of your swap file before, and storing the swap file on a different hard drive. But I forgot the most important part. If you want to see any performance increase, you HAVE to put the secondary hard drive on a different IDE controller. If it's on the same controller as your primary hard drive, it's self-defeating.
Under "system properties", go into Performance/File System, and choose "network server" as the typical role for your computer. This makes Windows expect the kind of heavy hard drive activity that recording will require.
Here's one that I just round out today. I was informed of this tweak by a guy who uses his computer for video editing - the principles are the same as with audio recording. I haven't tried this myself, but he suggests do disable write behind caching. This will cause the computer to write to your hard drive right when you tell it to, rather than storing information in RAM and writing later. I would assume that disabling write behind caching would help latency issues.
 
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