HELP!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter AlChuck
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AlChuck

AlChuck

Well-known member
Wallycleaver,

I have a Delta66 myself, also from Bayview Pro Audio. It sounds great. They also pitch in a free copy of Samplitude Project. I use Cakewalk, so I haven't done more than try Samplitude, but it seems pretty good for a "lite" version.

You can probably survive without upgrading. But Windows 98 is better. NT 4 is more stable but you have to be careful that all your hardware is supported. M Audio is advising against Windows 2000 (aka NT 5) for the time being. See http://www.m-audio.com/m-audio/techfaq.htm and scroll down a bit to the red heading "NOTE: Windows 2000 Update. Important information for current or potential Windows 2000 users."

To upgrade, get the Windows 98 upgrade CD and do it! I've heard that it's a good idea to reformat the hard drive and start from complete scratch, but I'm not sure how true that is (and I'm not sure if the upgrade will let you, 'cause after reformatting how can it tell you had an earlier version of Windows?) For lots of good info on installing and configuring Windows 98, check out http://www.annoyances.org/win98/

-AlChuck



[This message has been edited by AlChuck (edited 07-12-2000).]
 
here's a dumb question but here it goes. How does one upgrade ram and hook up a sound card?
 
Ok,
Looking to start a pc based studio. I have a computer but no sound card. I would like to have 8 inputs but need a minimum of 4 in. I have budget for the card is about $300. Any suggestions? Also will be using n-track Thanks,
Wally Cleaver
All around great guy


[This message has been edited by Wallycleaver (edited 07-12-2000).]
 
one other thing I have window 95. How does one upgrade to nt or 98?
 
Wallycleaver,

Again, not a silly or dumb question at all. I'll try not to make the answer silly either.

Sometimes people want more than one sound card. For example, I have an SB Live! card, which has a terrific synth and sampler built in to it (for the money). I don't have any outboard MIDI synths or samplers so this is it for me; I wanted to keep it and add the Delta 66 for its superior digital audio quality and multiple inputs. Also, the Delta 66 does not have a connection for the internal audio cable that's used to connect a CD-ROM drive to a sound card so that you can play ordinary music CDs from it, which I like to do when I'm working on other stuff. (My warning comes from my personal experience with this. It took me several weeks to get all the problems figured out when I put my Delta 66 and SB in the same box with each other. First, some IRQ conflicts to sort out. Finally, it boiled down to a hard drive controller that apparently didn't like handling the amount of data it was required to sling around under Cakewalk. All is well now, but it was very frustrating and I wasted a lot of potentially productive hours.)

Another reason is to chain soundcards for more i/o. You can have more than one Delta 66 as long as you have available PCI slots and IRQs in the host computer, so you get 12 tracks instead of 6. So say you have one Delta 66 and after a little while you realize that 6 tracks at once isn't enough. So rather than having to rip out the Delta 66 and get a new card with more i/o, you can just get a second Delta 66 and add it.

Hope that helps.

-AlChuck
 
No, the question isn't dump. The answer is unfortunately: You buy it, and put it in! :)

When it comes to memory, the big problem is finding out what to buy and where to put it. It should be described somewhere in the manuals for your computer.

The sound card is put into one of the PCI slots in your computer. You also need to install drivers. How to do all this is explained in the manual of the sound-card.
 
wallycleaver,

regebro had it right -- buy it and put it in!

Actually there's a bit more to it, but if I could do it, anybody -- well, almost anybody -- could do it. There's lots of good books and websites that can tell you how to put in RAM and cards into PCs. Here's one:
http://www.pcmech.com/

A lot of these sites are geared for gamers who are constantly doing stuff like running their system clocks faster to wring more performance out of their CPUs and buying new video cards every two weeks, new motherboards every six weeks, etc. :) It seems a little intimidating, but if you stick it out, you'll get there.

One more tip -- if you're completely new at this and daunted by it all, but still want to go for it, try to go with a single sound card. It's very possible to have two or more but the headache potential is very high and it often requires a lot of fiddling and experimenting to get it to work reliably.

Good luck!

-AlChuck



[This message has been edited by AlChuck (edited 07-13-2000).]
 
Another silly question. What do you mean buy a single sound card? I was looking to get the delta66. I assume its a single card with multiple in and outputs.
 
Thanks for the replies. I ordered a delta 66 and the n-track software. Again thanks for help me out. I've been scared of digital, but if I have questions AI know where to get honest answers as opposed to the Pro sound/musicians superstore answers saying that i need to spend more money.
 
You will want to wipe your HD and start again if upgrading to Win98. If I recall correctly, Win95 only recognizes 2 Gig partitions, so a larger drive must be broken up into 2 gig (or smaller) pieces.

To AlChuck:
The Win98 upgrade knows you have Win95 by asking for the install disk. My Win98 upgrade was an upgrade to the Win95 upgrade which was an upgrade of Win 3.1.1 (whew!). I had to install all eight Win 3.1 floppies before Win98 would install...

MikeDog
 
Only the initial version of Windows 95, which only had FAT16 support, had the 2MB partition size limitation. Win95a and above all have FAT32 support.

Slackmaster 2000
 
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