Hope for Simple PC Recording

M

memphis

New member
If you are trying to do some simple multitrack like guitar
and vocals with a budget PC, here's hope:

I have a modest machine-
Cheap Celeron motherboard, 333mhz, (this cel has cache)
64MB
5400 8 gig drive.
Diamond Sonic Blaster sound card, pretty good S/N.
Disabled the motherboard sound card.
Video is AGP built on the motherboard.
Win98 1st edition.
I have a cheap ACER CD burner installed
Theres a win modem installed, all my ports and USB are
enabled. I have a graphics tablet aways on serial 2.
Mouse is PS2.
I don't use the special IDE drivers that came with the
motherboard- they caused audio breakup.
I Record in a dedicated 4 gig partition on the one
harddisk.
Theres lots of programs in my tray- PCCillian, mixer,
a monitor controller, etc. I don't disable anything or
close down any TSRs that windows is running.
I upgraded to N-Tracks 2.1 recently.

When I last used this rig I had to reduce the sample rate
to 22k to do multi tracks & in mono.
Still had performance probs.
Based on readings on this board, I turned on the DMA Option in the My Computer/Properties/Disk Drives/Generic IDE DISK TYPE47/Settings checkbox.

I NOW RELIABLE RECORD SEVERAL TRACKS AT 44Khz.
Boy does everything sound better.
This may keep me from going to scsi drives for a while...

Thanks!
Memphis
 
Finally a success story

Congratz Memphis!

Glad to hear that all this ranting about settings here and mumbojumbo there pays off. No need to look at SCSI discs at all. Next time you run into performance probs, get a 7200rpm IDE disc and record to that and you'll be all set.

Cheers

/Ola
 
I almost got a 7200 last purchase.
However, my MB only supports UltraDMA 33.
So I'm not sure if I even can run them,
and if i can, if it will be a benefit.
That's why I thought I'd just go SCSI and
maybe be able to do video on the machine too.
I can go up to a 450 PII with this MB,
but it it seems to me that the disk system matters
more than the processor these days.
I could just scrap the MB, and get one that
supports faster IDE. Decisions Decisions.
For now its working though.
 
I HIGHLY recommend a 7200rpm UDMA/66 drive (and motherboard that supports it). I actually had a UDMA/66 drive that I plugged into a regular 33 port and when recording and playing back lots of tracks simultaneously it couldn't keep up. I plugged into a 66 port (my mb has 4 IDE ports, 2 each) and everything was cool. If you have at least a PII/Celeron already but only have a UDMA/33 hard drive I'd make that upgrade first, just speaking from my personal experience.

By the way, I just saw a 40GB Maxtor 7200rpm UDMA/66 drive at Best Buy for $199! I paid that much for my 20GB drive a year ago (now it's like $130 or something).
 
You can get a IDE controller card, which goes into a free PCI slot. You can go all the way and get a IDE RAID controller (only slightly more expensive) for future upgrades. Search tips: RAID, Fasttrak, Promise.

However, if it ain't broken, don't try to fix it:)

/O
 
UDMA33 is plenty good enough. There's a fair bit of consensus that the UDMA66 rate offers no real advantage over 33 for audio recording because the differerence is in burst speed; the sustained rate is essentially the same. From what I've read, stepping up to a 7200rpm drive would have a more significant impact. And now there are UDMA100 controllers and drives... and 10,000rpm drives... and faster front-side buses... in a year or so it'll all be moot, a cheap PC and drive will give you as many tracks as you could hope for...
 
I found this article in another post.
Its great- http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/1A37C1C69674D6D786256950005D2C39

UDMA 33MB/sec interface is capable LOTs of tracks.
So I'm fine there. The sustained thruput of the internals
of the drive is in question- I don't even remember what
I put in there! a 10gig something or other.
Gotta check!

So if I put on a 7200 and the drive actually does the UDMA
it should be fine. I think maybe the other poster who
mixed mixed a UMDA66 on a UDMA 33 cable may have
lost UDMA all together... that might explain the poor
performance.

Like the man said, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
I'll see where this current setup maxes out.

Thanks ya'll.
Cheers!
 
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