Computer will handle 8trks at once?

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Ptron

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I'm getting ready to fork out more money than I can really afford on a multi-track soundcard. Probably an Aardvark Q10 w/Cakewalk. From reading other posts here, I gather everybody's mileage varies, but I'm hoping for a few quick guesses as to whether my computer can handle this bad boy recording 8-10 tracks@ once. I've got:

an 1400 athlon processer
512 Mb ram w/room for 256 more
I run windows XP

My instinct tells me my computer won't hack it, but what do I know? If it doesn't, I'm in trouble because I certainly won't have the dough to upgrade my PC for a long time. I currently do whatever PC recording I do on a Soundblaster and N-track and have never had a lick of trouble with that.

Ptron
 
Ptron, Hope your computer would handle 8 tracks at a time. I know that recording six tracks with a 2.0Ghz Pentium IV, 512mb ram is a piece of cake in Sonar. But I am not sure about Athlon, Heard that they over heat on multi track recordings like these. you may face buffer problems, or clicks or pops. So run a trial recording before you jump into the real one. Good Luck!
 
You should be okay with 8 tracks with that computer. No problem! You don't need a super-computer to record 8 tracks at the same time, just a fast harddisk (although a 5400 RPM could do it).

I have an Athlon 1900+ (1.6 GHz) and have no problems recording 8 tracks at the same time. :)
 
My guess is that your computer will handle that many tracks at once. 1.4gHz is still a pretty fast computer compared to what folks were recoring multiple tracks on a year and a half ago.

Your bottleneck is likely to be your harddrive, as far as tracks go. Its a relatively cheap upgrade to a high RPM drive, if you don't have one already. If you've been getting good enough mulittrack playback with n-track, you should be OK on the first pass. ONce you are playing back several tracks, your ability to record all 8 will likely decrease.

For cmparison, I was recording 4 tracks at once with no problems on a laptop (slow drive) with an 800 mHz processor and 512M ram. Even playing back 8 tracks I could record 4 more.

Take care,
Chris
 
Athlons only overheat when they are mated to crappy heat sinks. Spend the money, get a good heat sink and have no worries.

I use Alpha PAL8045 combined with Panaflo H1A in all my client machines. Works well, cools constantly. I pay $50 for the fan+heatsink combo. Buy from www.heatsinkfactory.com as they are always in stock, deliver fast, and good (read: honest) folks to buy from. I've bought a ton of Alphas from them.

If you have a motherboard with an Athlon installed, why not push it up in speed with another Athlon? Most of the older Athlon boards will go to 2000 or 2100 XP as the upper limit. Check for a bios update first.
 
The system sounds fine. Don't upgrade anything yet. I do 8 tracks on half the machine.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I used to record 8 tracks at once (24 bit / 44.1 rate) on a Pentium III 533, never had a problem. It's when you start adding on plug-ins that the extra horsepower is really needed.
 
You guys are awsome! Thanks for the replies. I'll probably get theQ10 tomorrow. First step: get the hang of using it. Second step: Spend hours and hours transfering old 8track cassettes to the hard drive until I can't take it anymore.

Ptron
 
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