Best components for a music computer?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Monkeyface
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Everyone has an opinion, eh?

This thread is right up my alley because I work for a hard drive manufacturer. I have freinds whose job is comparing and testing our products against our competitors. Many of the issues brought up here are have been addressed by my coworkers, so let's dispell a couple of myths:

Myth #1 - VIA chipsets are bad. - These days it's really not an issue. And let's make one thing clear, it's not that VIA ever made an inferior chipset, it's that the sound card makers catered to Intel's chipsets. Maybe with AMD systems catching on, and VIA's KT133 chipset being 25% faster than its competitors, the sound card makers decided they needed to work harder on compatibility with VIA.

Myth #2 - Only a 7200 RPM drive will do. - Where is it documented that this is a requirement? Yes, a 7200 RPM drive can physically produce faster throughput. However, our newest line of 5400 RPM drives are actually faster than earlier lines of 7200 RPM drives due to better electronics and higher areal density (more data in a smaller space).

Myth #3 - If the configuration of two systems is the same, the lower-priced one is the one to get. Wrong! There are two aspects to this.

The first is PC vs. Mac. Mac will cost you more. Period. However, Mac has one platform, one system manufacturer, and one family of operating systems. This proprietary nature has good and bad points. On the plus side, there's no debate about chipsets, no wondering if this motherboard is better than that motherboard. The basic system is a known quantity. This also means better compatibility with add-on cards and with software, because the manufacturers know what they're dealing with. Also, some people like the Mac OS better, but that's a personal preference. On the bad side, Apple can decide to leave you behind and change their architecture entirely. Plus there's still the extra cost since it's a single-source system.

Second is PC vs. PC. Two systems, same processor , RAM, HDD, CD-R, sound, etc., but one is cheaper. Ever give any thought to why that might be? Sometimes you get what you pay for. In something like an Emachine, you get a system built for the lowest possible cost - down to the component level. They make their own motherboards so they can find ways to shave a few cents here and there. They design systems to be stable, not fast. If you're expecting cutting-edge performance, you really shouldn't buy a brand name machine. (Although Computer Shopper's benchmarks are a good source for locating the best mass-marketed boxes.)

But I think we've gotten off the path here. There are two interpretations of "best" being used here. One is "bang for the buck" - biggest numbers (clock speed, RAM, HDD), and easiest setup for the lowest price. For that, go with something like an EMachine. The second interpretation of "best" is performance, which means stability, ease of use, and measurably higher speed, regardless of cost.


For my money (and what I'm currently running) here's what I'd pick:

ABit or ASUS motherboard, preferably with on-board RAID (I have the ABit KT7-RAID)

One or two 40 GB hard drives, the fastest you can afford. (About $100 each for 5400 RPM on Price Watch). Running two good 5400's in RAID 0 mode will flat-out SMOKE a single 7200 RPM drive. In addition to the Maxtors mentioned earlier, check out the Western Digital drives or Seagate's U5.

AMD Duron or Thunderbird (1GHz Durons are around $100)

At least 256 MB of SDRAM (max it while it's cheap unless you can afford to move up to a DDR system).

ASUS V7xxx series video card (very stable and fast)

I have no advice on sound, right now I have a SB Live!

Okay, there's my 2 cents worth and then some.
 
Rocker151,
Can you go into more detail about RAID 0 mode? Does this apply to a certain setup? Certain drives? Thanks.

Dan
 
RAID 0

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (that's one translation anyway). There are different modes, depending upon what you want to do.

Someone mentioned RAID 0 earlier in the thread. It's uses "striping", where data is written to two or more drives at the same time, using them as if they were one, large drive. So, since you're writing to two at the same time, you have theoretically double the bandwidth for your data to pass through. In reality it's slightly less than double.

To put it another way, many seperate drives act as one BIG FAST drive, as far as Windows is concerned.

Your controller has to have RAID capability. Lots of motherboards now have the Highpoint chipset on board. Promise also makes really good PCI card RAID controllers. On these controllers, you can stripe across up to 4 drives at a time.

There's also RAID 1, which mirrors two drives. One drive is active, and the other one is constantly updated to match it exactly. That way if one drive dies, you can switch to the other.

Then you get into fun stuff, like RAID 0+1, where you have two RAID 0 arrays mirroring each other. That gives you both performance and redundancy.

Visit Promise's web site if you want more info: www.promise.com
 
rocker151,
Thanks for the info. I learn something new everyday here. One day maybe I'll be able to offer something other than editorials.

Dan
 
I recently built a system that contains the Promise RAID controller. I decided not to set it up as a RAID system since I only had one disk and figured RAID wasn't worth it in a single disk system. Was I correct or is there a good reason to set it up as a RAID system.
 
Rocker - Good post. While I am not a fan of emachines, all of your points were valid.

Kaydis - you need to have a minimun of 2 drives to set up a RAID system (preferably the same model of drive although it doesnt have to be).

If you want to read a fine piece on the basics of setting up an IDE RAID system, check out:

http://www.maximumpc.com/reprint/RAID/raid4.html
 
More about RAID

You can't set a single drive up as a RAID. By definition, a RAID is MULTIPLE DRIVES.

RAID=Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks

With that said, the Promise controller can still give your single drive better performance if it's faster than your on-board ATA (usually called IDE) controller.
 
Guess it's a good thing I didn't try then...

I guess what confused me is the BIOS kept asking me if I wanted to set my one disk up as a RAID :-)
 
Emachines, et. al.

RWhite,

I'm with you on not being a proponent of EMachines, well not exactly anyway. They're fine for your buddy who keeps calling up, asking if one system or another is a good deal. I've heard horror stories about their machines, but have yet to experience problems.

Now, I must say my girlfriend has one of their machines with a PIII 500 and it's a pretty solid machine. Not a screaming performer, and lacking features, but it's reliable and keeps her out of my hair with PC problems. The same goes for an associate of mine who runs collector car auctions. He hauls 4 of them around to auctions and they're pretty dang solid, but I know my home-built Duron that I've so lovingly tweaked (and overclocked) would smoke them. :-)

With that said, I'm generally a cheap bastard myself. I'm currently running an 800MHz machine with 256 MB of RAM, 45 GB drive, GeForce2 MX 32 MB video, SB Live!, etc. and I have about $800 in it, not counting my 19" monitor. Total spent is about $1200. Even after springing for some killer JBL powered monitors, I'm right at $1500 for the whole deal. As you can tell from my previous post, I didn't settle for B-grade parts anywhere. You just have to shop smart.

Of course, PC-wise I have an advantage over some in that I like to tweak hardware. I fully understand people buying off-the-shelf if they're not tweakers. However, if you're not a tweaker, you probably would be better off with one of the all-in-one digital recorder/mixers. A friend of mine has a Fostex and did some really impressive stuff with it.

Are you guys sick of my rambling yet? I'll stop now...
 
You can't do RAID with only one disk. Here's the rundown :

RAID 0 - This isn't "real" RAID since it is not Redundant, but most people count it. This is the striping option mentioned above - it increases speed, but, if anything, decreases liability (because you lose all the data if one drive goes, not just the contents of that drive)

RAID 1 - mirroring. Two drives, each in sync with each other. With a good controller, can increase read speed. With excellent controllers, no noticeable speed decrease, but because they have to keep in sync, some degradation is possible.

RAID 2 - "Hamming Code ECC" striping. Similar to RAID 0, but with fancier algorithms and ECC (Error correcting) disks - this means that if one drive goes down, the data is still intact within the RAID set. Rarely used in practice because it is inefficient in terms of disk space required. Rarely supported on RAID controllers. Very fast.

RAID 3 - Parallel transfer with parity - similar to RAID 2, but more efficient use of disks. Very fast. Quite commonly supported. Minimum 3 disk setup.

RAID 4 - Independent data disks with shared parity disks. Minimum 3 disk setup. Very very fast read rate. Slow write rate. Very commonly supported.

RAID 5 - Independent Data disks with distributed parity blocks. Fastest read rate. Fairly quick write rate. This is the most common RAID level for corporate systems - although 0+1 is becoming more common as disks drop in price

RAID 6 - a version of RAID 5 with more redundancy (you can lose more drives before losing data). more expensive, less efficient use of disks, very rare.

RAID 0 + 1 - basically two stripe sets mirrored together. Takes at least 4 disks, but has excellent performance characteristics combined with some redundancy (can lose any one disk)


Now, most homerecorders are more worried about speed - especially write speed. RAID 0 is probably reasonable, provided downtime is acceptable and provided a backup solution is in place. For pro studios, I would recommend a 0+1 solution - relatively cheap and very fast. Hotswap drives at that point would be a very good investment, along with a controller that supports them.

Example - at work I've got a fileserver - an IBM Netfinity 5500 with 5 x 10000RPM 36gb SCSI hotswappable drives arrange in a RAID 5 configuration. Now, that means that if any drive goes down - any drive - the system keeps on running, keeps on serving files - it just sends a message to me and I walk into the machine room, see a little red light on one of the drives. I yank the drive, put in a replacement and, within a few hours, the drive is fully integrated into the RAID and life goes on. During all this time, the server never stops serving files, never has to pause, we are just in a vulnerable state since we are not redundant. Two hours later, we're back redundant and the users never noticed. A RAID 0+1 system would work similarly.

RAID 0 vs 0+1 is a question of balancing money vs redundancy. If you do this for a living, go for 0+1 - the first time a harddrive dies with a client in the studio, you'll have made your money back in not having to reschedule. If it is just you, well - how much is your time worth to you? How much is that perfect riff you just nailed on the harddrive worth? Your call.

Now, since I am a professional paranoid, I'll just mention that RAID is no substitute for backups. It doesn't matter how redundant they are, if your studio catches fire, they'll still melt.
 
Getting off topic, aren't we?

Well, thanks for the full dissertation on RAID. :) However, I think we're REALLY going far afield of where this thread started. Let's keep in mind that this is homerecording.com. I'm afraid some of our less computer-savvy folks will be thrown off by mentioning the more sophisticated RAID levels that are probably not financially practical for the home recordist.

I agree, RAID 5 is the best solution if you have the means. However, it's fairly cost-prohibitive for home recordists since, last time I checked, none of the ATA (IDE) RAID 5 controllers had yet hit the market (although I hear they're coming soon). A decent RAID 5 setup, with 3 good-sized drives and a controller, is going to cost you at least $500 if you shop wisely, and that's without a hot-swap enclosure.

I'm a little new to the site, so I'm not sure about this, but I have a feeling that the only client most of us will have in the "studio" is ourselves, so I don't think there is too much to fear about downtime costing us money. Data loss, on the other hand is a bitch. I wholeheartedly concur that there is nothing more important than off-site backup of your data if you consider it to be of critical importance.

One anecdote: I used to work in tech support for tape backup drives. You wouldn't believe what a hard time people had understanding why they needed to take their backup tapes home from the office at night. Some people never learn until the place burns down. :)

For the average home recordist, a single fast drive and a ton of RAM is probably sufficient, unless you're doing a zillion tracks. (Even the new Alesis 24-track, 24/96 recorder only records to one ATA drive at a time.) For redundancy, consider getting one of those inexpensive removable drive trays and put a second hard drive in it. Copy your data to that drive once in awhile and take it somewhere for safekeeping.
 
Re: Getting off topic, aren't we?

Actually, I'm quite grateful for the primer on RAIDs. I'm about to take the plunge into setting up
a DAW, so I need all of the related info I can find. This thread has been extremely helpful.

Thanks!

-Waylena
 
I think a RAID 5 system would be quite excessive for a home system, even one used in audio production. But it is a beautiful thing to see in action!

I find that a large fast IDE drive is fine for what I do, 24 bit / 44.1 files recording as many as 8 at once and playing back up to 16-20 at once. I use a seperate drive for audio recording and another for the system files. I make frequent backups of the data files to CDR and regularly use Symantec GHOST to make backups of the whole system drive (then cut to CDR). If the system drive died I could pop in a new one, boot up from a floppy with a CD-ROM driver, and be back where I was in under 30 minutes.
 
I would actually recommend 0+1 rather then RAID 5 because of its faster write performance. However, 0+1 does require at least 4 disks, where RAID 5 requires only 3.

I figured I'd go down through the list since if people are comparison shopping they might come across the various RAID levels in the glossies and knowing what they mean is a good thing. For instance, you don't want RAID 4 for homerecording (slow write access)...
 
I should mention that I use just a large, fast drive at home myself - I did the price calculations and decided I could live with the downtime if necessary :)

That being said, a large RAID system is a beautiful thing :) I specced out one not too long ago for a company I do consulting work for - all SCSI, all 10,000RPM drives, hardware scsi/raid controllers, external enclosure, the works. A beautiful thing, but in general out of the reach of homerecorders (I think it came to about $2500 US for 72 GB online in a 0+1 (4 x 36gb disks)). The nice thing with a setup like that is you could put the enclosure away from the recording equipment (in a closet, outside the door, whatever) because it is external. But homerecorders (quite reasonably (and I include myself)) expect to get the whole system for less then that, so never mind :D
 
Ok, here's what I got goin' on. I am relatively new to this DAW stuff. My old system was cutting it for basic recording but couldn't hang once I got into real time stuff and it took forever so I went out and dropped a bundle on what I think is a good high end startup DAW for me. I am sure I'll change as I grow into this and out of things. My first mistake was the Soundblaster Live Platinum, which I thought was the thing. Nice card but not a real recording card. Here's what I got
AMD 1.0 ghz 266mhz FSB processor
ABIT KA7-100 board (which has great config software)
256 pc133 RAM (I'm going to get another stick soon)
30 gig IBM 7200 rpm drive
ATI Xpert 2000 4AGP 32 meg video card
Creative Soundblaster Live! Platinum 5.1 card I bought before I found this site and heard of the
M-Audio Delta 44 (which rocks)
Imation 12x10x32 Burner
Behringer MX 1604A Mixer
Nady 6 mic & stands cheapy deal from Musician's Friend
Cakewalk Guitar Tracks 1
Cakewalk Pro Audio 5 (yes that's a 5) which will be upgraded to SONOR by the end of the week
Now some of this stuff is not "top of the line" but at this point it's all more than I know how to use to it's full potential right now. I am starting to get some real nice sounding stuff (for me that is). And it will only get better.
Assess your needs and what you want to do, pick some components that feel right from your research, drop some cash, and get recording. Check out www.aberdeeninc.com. They'll put a system together for not much more than it'll cost to build it yourself and you get all the warrantees. I'm sure while everyone won't agree with my choices of gear, I am sure that they'll all agree that no matter who you are, how long you've been doing this, how much or little dough you got, there is always something else you'll want to make your system better.
Jam on !!!!
 
DDR RAM?

Since you're running a new AMD with the 266 MHz bus, does that mean you also have the new DDR RAM? I hear that bumps up performance quite a bit.

So the Delta 44 is really good? I need a low-cost card that's a notch better than the SB Live!

On that subject....

I recently got some badass (if I do say so myself) JBL powered monitors. When I connect them directly to my SB Live!, or connect my mixer to the SB Live! with the control room outs going to the speakers, I get a hellacious 60-cycle hum.

I can get rid of most of the hum by pulling out the RCA connectors on the cable from the computer far enough that the shield doesn't touch the jack. (I'm doing this on the end at the mixer, of course.) So there's obviously a ground loop happening, but I can't figure out why. They all terminate at the same wall outlet. The speakers are on a power strip, so I guess I need to take it out of the loop, but then I don't know where I'll plug everything in.

Anybody got suggestions?
 
Sounds like ground loop hum, go to radio shack, they have things that will fix it.
 
Hey Rocker151

Nah,I didn't go for the DDR because it was quite a bit more $$$$$$ as well as a different mo' $$ motherboard that would be needed. Since DDR is relatively new, I decided to go with the PC133 SDRAM for now.
The M-Audio Delta 44 is just under $300 and well worth the money in my opinion. I noticed a better, out in front, recording sound the first time I recorded just to check it out. As far as the hummmmm, maybe someone else can help you, as other than the checking for ground faults, I don't have a clue.
Jam on !!
MajonnaGotw
 
There is some wonderful information on this thread. :D

The info on RAID brought me up to speed.

Thanks :) ...

spin
 
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