The OS Battle for DAWS

[Pearldiver]

Ok folks, pardon me if this thread exists elsewere, and moderators, if it does, redirect me and delete this thread if you wish...

I am a somewhat frustrated guitarist who's "been entering" the world of digital audio recording for about 2 years now, in other words, I haven't been too co-ordinated with my choices of gear - never have had a reliable stable system yet ;( Anyway, enough crying right?

Heres my question. My current setup is as follows:

PC Based system with:

ECS C7VMM Rev. 1.0 motherboard (socket A - AMD)
Athlon 1.7 gHz cpu
VIA VT8233A ATA133 chipset
686 Phoenix Bios
256 MB DDR RAM (high quality I'm told, not cheapo stuff)
HDD0 Maxtor ATA100 20gig OS drive
HDD1 Maxtor Diamond 8(9?) ATA133 40 gig DATA drive
MSI 48/16/48 CD Burner
GeForce 2 MGA200 AGP 32 MB video

Audio:
Delta 66 / PCI / 24bit/96khz audio system
Guillemot ISIS /PCI/ 16 bit/44.1 khz audio system

First off, I'm wondering:

1.) What is the best OS for recording audio. I own 98se, ME, and Win2KPro, but i do not own XP. MY delta has support for all, and my ISIS, well it's old, only supports up to ME. What audio apps, such as Cubase and Logic, etc. behave the most reliably under which OS's? any good matches you've made?

2.) How does a guy make sure his audio cards are not subject to IRQ sharing, as seen in ME?

3.) Are there any programs that actually TEST the integrity of your OS at a given moment?

4.) Is it better to use my faster drive strictly as an audio data drive, and leave the OS, and audio apps on the 20 gig ata100 (slower) drive?

Thanks

 

[Slackmaster2K]

1). What is the best OS for recording audio. I own 98se, ME, and Win2KPro, but i do not own XP. MY delta has support for all, and my ISIS, well it's old, only supports up to ME. What audio apps, such as Cubase and Logic, etc. behave the most reliably under which OS's? any good matches you've made?

Win2k, hands down.

2.) How does a guy make sure his audio cards are not subject to IRQ sharing, as seen in ME?

In Win2k, configure the machine as a standard PC (instead of using ACPI). This change can be made via the device manager under "Computer". This will disable windows ACPI and allow you to configure devices on their own IRQ's, just like the old days. To actually change an IRQ, you will have to *physically* move the device in question to a different PCI slot (although some BIOS's have mechanisms by which you can configure certain slots with certain IRQ's, but these are often awkward).

3.) Are there any programs that actually TEST the integrity of your OS at a given moment?

Yes, your audio applications. Seriously though, it's a good idea to have a nice big test project filled with tracks and effects and whatever else you might use...such that you can test your system's performance over time.

With Win2k, you will have MUCH less OS degredation than 9x/ME. While I've seen every single 9x/ME installation eventually self-destruct, I have seen this on win2k only a few times (on 30+ machines over 3 years now).

In fact, I've been recording on Win2k for a long time now, and I use one installation for everything. This machine is so loaded up with junk the average DAW nerd would shudder at the thought of it! Yet my audio performance is just great, and I typically run 20-24 track projects at 24bit/44khz with a LOT of effects on a lowly old 850Mhz celeron and a Delta1010.

Is it better to use my faster drive strictly as an audio data drive, and leave the OS, and audio apps on the 20 gig ata100 (slower) drive?

Yep, and it's not so much a performance thing as it is an issue of convenience. If all of your data is on its own drive, backups become very easy, and it's also quite easy to do an OS/software reinstallation without having to worry about losing any data.

Slackmaster 2000

 

[ambi]

I use winxp and it's fine. I think it's between Winxp and Win2k. Depends on which one you have access to, and which one your equipment/softwear supports.