Sonar & PC Upgrade

[Boltman]

I have been learning in Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 software with a Gateway Pentium III 192MB 13GIG Windows 98SE. I have the opportunity financialy to Upgrade.
I am asking for suggestions for a new PC system to work with the latest SONAR software. Would Window XP Professional or XP Media Center software be worth considering? What about the Windows 64 bit software? I can upgrade to the top of the line in PC's...any suggestions? DELL?
Gratefully,
Boltman

[acidrock]

I got my computer from a shop that builds computers specifically for audio,and these units will typically be more robust than the average off the shelf "consumer" model.Here is the place I got mine from...

http://www.advanceddesignky.com/systems/index.cfm

if you do a search,you can probably come up with quite a few more.

Can't speak to the OS,but I'm running XPhome with no problems.

My only other recommendation is that if possible let the computer be dedicated to audio only and that you get a decent soundcard.

[ARMAVIR]

Im using Sonar 3.0 with my laptop & im having some problem with Audio Playback..The tracks are stattering when i playback audio tracks & i can see on Corner my screen CPU 98%...I cant understand why should be like that, because my laptop has a 512MB, 80GB & im using US-122 USB AUDIO INTERFACE...

[Boltman]

I had similar problems until I corrected A/D converter rate to correlate to my Cakewalk record speed. All better now. Play back was a stinker until I figured it out. Hope this helps.

[ARMAVIR]

can i know how you correct it?

[Boltman]

Forgive me. Of course...I set my A/D converter to the same sample rate as my Cakewalk sampler rate; all at CD speed of 44.1 Otherwise my playback was as you described it. I have an external A/D converter that has several sampling options and I was not carefull enough in my newness to notice before. Everything set at 44.1 sets you up for great playback. Good luck. Let me know if this helps.

[manning1]

boltman ..re new pc.
(also read my back posts. search under my name , lots of tips posted on pc configuring.)
if your not doing tons of plug ins
amd athlon , 512 ram to 1 gig. 2 fast 7200 rpm hard drives. one small one for windows. one bigger for tracks. 8 mb caches are nice.
if your using a pci sound card solution stay away from (or disable prior to recording) network cards, fancy gamer cards, tv tuner cards. ie...
anything that can conflict/interrupt the sound card doing its thing.
if you DO want tons of plug ins consider an amd 64.
(i posted a link to real performance figures of amd in the soundcards section of the bbs headed athlon 64)
peace.

[Boltman]

I will chck your back log. Thanks for the info!