Recording machine / internet machine

notCardio

I walk the line
Please weigh in on the following topic:

Some say you should keep your recording computer isolated from your internet computer. Others say they've never experienced any problems and think that's paranoia. What's your view? If you think it should be separate, how separate is enough? Do they need to be different machines completely, with no connection between them whatsoever? Can they be different machines, but connected via a home network? Can they be the same machine, partitoned and set up for dual booting? Can they be the same machine, using different physical drives? Or, is it enough to just partition the same physical drive? If it matters, I'm using XP Home.

Thanks
 
Do a simple experiment to test this. Install any firewalls, antivirus or other net protection software you might want to use. Then run a benchmark (do a google search on computer benchmark) program and record the results. Then uninstall all the net protection software and do the same tests.

You tell ME which is better?

I would way rather have a dedicated machine for audio recording. How will you feel when an email worm eats through your entire D drive and turns the last few months of recording you were going to get around to backing up into garbage?
 
It's easy enough to protect your machine without going overboard. You don't have to run full-time virus protection on your DAW...scanning every so often is fine. Heck, if it makes you nervous you can just unplug the network cable from your DAW when you're not using the network.

You should definately have it connected, otherwise it will be a pain to install new software and service packs. By the 90th plugin you have to download on your other machine and copy to disk...you'll really be wishing it was connected....and having to burn cd's every time you want to post an mp3...blah.

My machine is loaded with crap. It's fine. I would not recommend it if you were running Windows9x/ME however.

Slackmaster 2000
 
My computer is multi-purpose. I record on it, I game on it, I surf with it…

For those of us that can’t afford 2 computers, there is no reason on earth you can’t use your general us computer as a recording computer. Just take the proper precautions and turn off all running applications other than explorer and maybe systray when you are doing major recording (I don’ even bother with that for small projects).

I’m not saying it is the best way, but it ain’t a bad way if that’s all you’ve got.

P.S. I’ve never had a virus on my computer. I take sensible precautions (ex. not opening emails that look fishy, not going to suspicious web links, not being a mp3 download monkey (I’m thinking of Kazaa & such), virus protection, router/firewall to the net (my wife has her own computer for her work as well that we have networked)).

If I had all the money, gear, etc. that I wanted, I would consider having an audio only computer, but until then, this will do nicely.
 
I think there is a lot of paranoia, but for good reason. The last thing you want is for your music to get screwed up by a virus or something. My DAW PC started out as a complete stand alone system and I would use my notebook for internet and all that kind of bs. But I have a router connecting 4 computers together to a cable net connection and all the PC's are networked together so I can transfer files back and forth., This has been very convenient for me and in time it got to the point I wanted to get on the net fast and my notebook is somewhere else so I got the internet going on my DAW and I'm not having any problems. However there are times when I disable the network and anything else that might be running in the background because in the past I have encountered problems with that. I have done dual booting to and at least for me I see no reasoin to do that now, I'm running XP on all machines. When I'm working on projects and don't want to always be backing up to CD I simply throw files over to another computer, easy!

I see absolutely nothing wrong with networking your computers. You can always disable it if you need to. Just be smart and don't download some virus and wipe out your data drive!

Oh yeah, my router has a built in firewall.
 
I have internet on my DAW and wouldn't wanna miss it. But I have a network installed so the Lan-card is there annyway.
 
I experience 99,5% less problems when making music since I have the DAW and the rest physically separated (only LAN between two boxes).
The DAW is fast, stable and all what you want, plus the other box is great for testing software before I let them on the DAW.


Herwig
 
I've had net-connected DAW for years with no problems.

BUT if you just DIDNT have the internet at ALL.. you would get more work done, methinks!

xoxo
 
Did someone say GOTO?

I have my music PC connected to the internet via DSL. When I'm working on music, I just kill the connection, stop the WinPPPOverEthernet service, shutdown ZoneAlarm, and turn off my Antivirus software. Never had any problems.

L'espion Noir said:
you should try the "Do...While" for that
the do loop is simply unpredictable....LOL
:D
 
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