Compute Speak

[Bittch Beeter]

I'm new to computer DAW recording....seems easier than hard-disk recording when it comes to storage, editing, and adding effects...


anyway, I'm building my own b/c seems like anything I'd buy would have me paying for stuff that I have no intention of using...

that being said

what is RAID and SATA? I'm building a DAW strictly dedicated does that matter?

what is FSB...is more better? It seems so, therefore I'm leaning towards 800mhz

I've done some research, and am sold on a bigger cache (1mb), Hyper Threading capabilities, and DDR but question if 1gig of ram is overkill...

most of the sites I've been to rave about video and game playing...I've got Xbox and PS2 I need no more games, this is about work...I'm serious about music production...what do I need to focus on to ensure the the audio sound is where it needs to be...fyi m-audio 2496 will be card most likely

 

[manning1]

i was a computer engr for many years with hi tech companies.
so its up to you if you follow this advise.
"sweet spot" value for money right now.imho.
amd athlon , 512mb ram( 1 gig max if you want to feel comfy in your own mind), two 7200 rpm drives on their own channels . and all the usual stuff like mic etc.
stay away from usb sound solutions. people are finding probs with them.
if your anticipating huge numbers of tracks /plug ins , i would seriously look at amd64. read many recording forums. people are quite excited about its
speed and are repoting some interesting performance figures..
i dont run raid. no need for it. on a humble amd system i get easily 40 tracks.
any more inho is overproducing a song. normally i use no more than 30 tracks absolute max.
and i'm not sold on 1 meg caches being needed on the processor.
due to the way programmers code multitrack applications in C++
and assembler and allocate/deallocate pc resources. i'll get technical if you wish.
what i AM sold on is hard disk drives with large caches.
my advise - KISS concept. keep it simple.
dont get too fancy. those who get fancy end up often with probs.
you didnt mention sound cards. but i would suggest the delta range that a lot of people on here seem happy with. or if you have BIG BUCKS.
you cant beat rme or lynx. both have solid reputation with lots of advanced daw users.
FINAL TIP - if you end up going for a pci sound card solution.
DONT PUT ANYTHING IN ANY OTHER PCI SLOT. NO FANCY GAMING CARDS OR TV TUNERS would be my advise.
thus you wont have the possibility of audio interruptions.
if you want software and mic and other recommendations - just search under my name for what i use.
peace.

 

[JonR]

Some answers

SATA (Serial ATA) is a new hard disk connection standard which will replace the 40 & 80 pin cables current IDE disks use. It uses smaller cables which are easier to deal with. It's slightly faster than parallel IDE but you are unlikely to notice the difference in practice.

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Devices) is a way of connecting more than one hard disk to improve speed, reliability or both.

New motherboards can come with SATA RAID as standard, but normally only offer a choice of RAID-0 or RAID-1. There are other levels of RAID in use, (most commonly RAID-5) but these usually require add-in cards for best performance. Google if you care.

RAID-0 "stripes" your data across two or more disks, so it's much faster. The downside is, you lose one disk, you lose EVERYTHING. Two 40GB disks gives you an 80GB RAID-0 array.

RAID-1 mirrors your data across the disks - no real speed improvement (reads can be faster but writes are just as slow as a single disk) but you can lose a disk and not lose any data. Two 40 GB disks gives you a 40 GB RAID-1 array.

FSB is Front Side Bus - it's the speed the CPU talks to the North bridge chip on the motherboard, which is responsible for talking to memory (amongst other things). More is better, but comparing Intel & AMD FSB speeds can be tricky because the buses don't operate the same way. It's actually not all that important; for a DAW, you want lots of memory (1GB is not overkill) and lots of fast disk space. If you want to run a lot of effects plugins you'll want a decent CPU and FSB.

Large cache can't hurt, but isn't that important. You only start to see real benefits with very large (prohibitively expensive) caches.

Hyperthreading isn't going to make much difference - it MAY make things a bit more responsive under load but IME (I'm a professional coder) it's not revolutionised how we write software...

HTH,

Jon.

 

[Bittch Beeter]

Thanx gentlemen all of that helps alot...some stuff I'd kinda figured out, and some was just greek, but this connectst the dots...


...I've done much studying on this today...I'm tired just looking at it all, but I'm learning what I need to know...


...one major question I have in my travels is about overclocking

...it's not something I'm treading upon lightly, 'cause it seems like it's pretty easy to f*ck something up if you don't know what you're doing, but one of the CPU that everybody's really high on everybody talks about OC'ing it...

...what are the thoughts on that?

 

[manning1]

re....overclocking.
i dont do it. but many do. i have arguments with my fellow computer types on this. there are two different camps. one for , one against.
my camp says keep it simple. the other camp says lets have some fun and see if we can blow this sucker up somehow. the reason being they dont care because the processors are so cheap these days.
but hey - do what floats your boat.
frankly i dont see as much need as in the past because the processors are getting so fast. but when 8 ghz processors come out i'm sure some of my friends will try and see if they can push them to the edge of destruction.
its all good.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

Overclocking doesn't seem to be super smart for music. I've heard some bad stories. Anyways, CPU isn't always the big block on music production except for processing plugins--disk speed and RAM are much bigger issues it seems.

Meaning to say, a 3.4ghz computer is great... but if you have 5400 RPM drives and 256 megs of RAM running Windows XP (the RAM equivalent of flying an single prop airplane with an elephant tied to it) you are going to be in deep dookie and not because of the processor.

In general I dislike using the computer for music. The way I see it is that they are like the early space program--offering a lot of power they are reliability and maintenance nightmares.

My rules of music computers:

Match your components to work together as a unit--RAM, hard drives, processor should be on par with each other. Having one radically better than the others creates a diminishing return on investment as far as music processing power goes. Keep 'em on a level field.

Buy only name brand components--especially RAM. Glitchy RAM is impossible to troubleshoot and you'll blame either the software or yourself.

Throw away the Soundblaster... anything less than an M*Audio is a waste of your time. Try to aim for a RME soundcard.

Skimp on the video card. Get what you need and that's it. Just make sure it can do multiple monitors.

Use quiet fans and powersupplies.

Speaking of power supply... get one that is rated far above what you are going to use. It will work less hard and generate less heat... plus be more reliable.

Don't use cracked software except to demo or if you're desperate. Problems galore waiting to happen.

Build the computer yourself... avoid manufacturers. You don't need some annoying Gateway or Dell flash screen built into the BIOS. It's also usually cheaper that way.

Buy the OS outright instead of getting it bundled with a computer, unless you know that it will be unsullied by stupid manufacturer's tinkering. If you have to buy a manufacturer's computer re-install the OS fresh as soon as you get it.

Have at least 2 10k RPM drives--one for audio, one for software.

Have Firewire on it--either a card or on the MOBO.

 

[teknomike]

Use quiet fans and powersupplies.

Speaking of power supply... get one that is rated far above what you are going to use. It will work less hard and generate less heat... plus be more reliable.

These things are often the most overlooked items.
Noise suppression is very important, as you will quickly discover once you get out your condensors ...

Have at least 2 10k RPM drives--one for audio, one for software.

Good idea, however, be aware that 10K RPM drives can be VERY loud. You can buy 5 1/4 inch insulated slot mounts that will suppress their noise, but then you have to be careful with overheating (a 10K drives also get warmer).

mike

 

[Bulls Hit]

If you want to overclock, get an Asus mobo as their bios are designed to make cpu and ram overclocking as easy as possible.
I run a P4 2.8Ghz at 3.5GHz on an Asus P4P800.
The most overclockable P4s are the 2.4 Ghz models, which are quite cheap now.
Don't get the Prescott as they run too hot.
Clocking's been good for me as it lets me throw a few more plugins/tracks into a project before it starts hitting the wall

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

These things are often the most overlooked items.
Noise suppression is very important, as you will quickly discover once you get out your condensors ...

Yeah but the computer at the studio I'm working at is 15' and 2 doors away from the isolation rooms. It's been years since I had the equipment in the same locality as any noisy computer... however, I can't stand the background noise when mixing.

 

[teknomike]

Yeah but the computer at the studio I'm working at is 15' and 2 doors away from the isolation rooms.

Unfortunately, many of us do not have that luxury ...

Especially here in an apartment in Seoul. I live next to an expressway - that's almost as loud as my bloody fans ...

 

[Bittch Beeter]

That's the business

Good looking out peoples


Bulls I was looking at your specs in another post, and acutally went out and priced the combo you're talking about...


...the price of that seems like where the rubber meets the road, but which is the one...there are several p4p800's...I have you plan to use any of the onboard audio stuff, and just plain old video card should be enough...I have no intention on ever putting this puppy online so would that be sufficient...


...also what are the thoughts on chipsets...saw a post where a dude was sh*tting on the 865 chipset...there's also 848 chipset, and there's talk of the 915? c-set...


...the power company gouged me for some dough today which will hurt my short term buying potential...what's the use of having a comp w/no electricity I figure


...what are some good combos?

 

[Bulls Hit]

...the price of that seems like where the rubber meets the road, but which is the one...there are several p4p800's...I have you plan to use any of the onboard audio stuff, and just plain old video card should be enough...I have no intention on ever putting this puppy online so would that be sufficient...


...also what are the thoughts on chipsets...saw a post where a dude was sh*tting on the 865 chipset...there's also 848 chipset, and there's talk of the 915? c-set...

I've got the basic P4P800. The newer models (P4C800, deluxe etc) have firewire ports, and use the 875 chipset.
If you want firewire get the deluxe model. There's no difference between the 865 and 875 chipsets, except the 875s cost more. Intel would have you believe they perform better, but Asus got around that with their "Hypertransport" technology on the 865 boards.
One good thing about the base P4P800 is that the SATA/Raid controller is intergrated on the southbridge, where other models of the mobo use a Promise controller on the pci bus - not something that should be clogging the pci bus in an audio recording machine, bad karma.

Yep ordinary video card is fine.

Don't listen to any bullshit about 845 or 848 chipsets - that's 3-4 year old technology & don't support dual channel ddr, 800MHz fsb etc