Dual Monitors

  • Thread starter Thread starter Beathoven
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Beathoven

Beathoven

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Hey, what's the advantage of having dual monitors? I see those studios with two or three monitors hooked up on the same computer... What's the deal here?

Peace,
Beathoven
 
some applications (cubase, SONAR) support dual monitors so you can edit on one monitor and mix on the other.

You need either a dual monitor grafix card (Matrox make one) or two grafix cards, one PCI and one AGP...and obviously 2 monitors.

Hope this helps
 
I run dual monitors. I'll often put my meters and other things I want to see all the time on the secondary monitor. It's pretty cool.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Does Logic supports dual monitors?
And does a GeForce 2 supports dual monitors?

Peace,
Beathoven
 
If you go to Emagic's site, there's that pic of the console with like four monitors, so I would assume they support it. I don't think the app necessarily has to have "support" for dual monitors, just panels that can be undocked and moved over to the other monitor.

I believe there is a GeForce 2MX card that has dual heads. Matrox is probably the best at dual head video cards, but if you already have a single head video card, then you just need to get a PCI video card and hook it up.
 
Video monitors are going cheap and you can get a cheap video card. With a mixer, meters, plug-ins, time line, etc., if you can aford it go with two monitors. It makes it much easier. I am using a cheap old 15" monitor I had laying around the house as my second and it works fine.
 
You guys have got my curiosity. I just picked up a used 17" monitor for $25, which is lying in my basement (I didn't have a use for it, but couldn't pass on the price).

I'm running Sonar on my DAW, which has a 19" monitor and an AGP graphic card.

If I hear you correctly, I can get a cheap PCI video card and use the second monitor. How do I tell Sonar where to display everything - or does it simply split a single screen over two monitors? What happens with any other programs (e.g., Wavelab, or just Windows)?

This sounds like something worth trying, but I'm a little confused about exactly how it works. With an AGP and a PCI card, wouldn't I simply get the same display on both monitors???
 
Windows will basically create one large "virtual desktop" that is shared by both monitors. You can tell windows where the secondary monitor is in relation to the primary, and then simply move your mouse to and from the secondary monitor. For instance, if you place the secondary monitor to the right of your primary, you'd simply just move the mouse off the right side of the screen and the pointer would appear on the secondary monitor.

You can drag windows between monitors in the same fashion, or even split windows between the two monitors. It works fairly well. There are some weirdities, though. Depending on how a program saves its window locations, you might have to move windows around between monitors every time you start a session. For instance in n-Track if I move a VU meter to the secondary monitor, and then close and reopen n-Track, the VU meter appears back on the primary monitor. So, yes, some programs are more "dual monitor friendly", but all programs incorporating multiple windows can benefit from dual monitors....not to mention that it sure makes life easy when you're running several programs at once.

Now I've only done this in Windows 2000 and XP, and am not sure how well it works in 98 or ME. It does work very nicely in Win2k and XP. I simply installed a little PCI video card I had lying around (an old S3 Trio 2MB thing) and windows took care of the rest. In the "display settings" dialog you'll find everything you need to set your primary monitor, "extend your desktop" over the secondary monitor, and position your secondary monitor in relation to the primary. It's pretty slick.

Probably the oddest thing to get used to at first is that the BIOS will favor PCI over AGP so all the bootup and "loading windows" crap will appear on the secondary monitor...even if you disable the secondary monitor in windows. Some BIOS's have an option to set PCI or AGP as primary, but setting it to AGP sometimes yeilds bad results. Oh, and the reasons you'd disable the secondary monitor from time to time would be a) you want to play a game and the game freaks out when it tries to take over the display b) you want to save that last tiny bit of CPU power for a big ass mix that's really taxing the system. On 2K/XP, you can enable and disable the secondary monitor without rebooting so it's no big deal...I'm not sure about 98/ME though.

Slackmaster 2000
 
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