How many tracks with this computer?

[Jubal]

Hi everyone,

My first post, though I have been reading through these forums frequently as of late.

The computer I am using currently has spec's as follows:

P-III 866
256 MB SDRAM
Win2000
5400rpm Hard Drive
Cheapo sound card

I am currently using Cool Edit Pro and was wondering how many tracks I could reasonably expect. I know it is not ideal, but it is dedicated as a DAW, which is a bonus. Would moving to Win98 make any difference? What about different software?

What upgrade to this would give the most improvement?

Lots of questions, I know. Thanks for any ideas.

 

[Gidge]

7200 rpm hard drive for audio files would help the most.....

I have a 500mhz Celeron with 320mb with a 7200rpm drive and i regularly get 16-24 tracks with a few effects.......

the big question will be how many realtime effects you will use...a 7200 rpm drive with your computer can sustain a ton of tracks.....the effects is what will crap out your cpu and bring the count down.....

 

[Even]

you can go to the echo websight and download their utility. You dont need to have an echo card to use it. It will run a scan of your system and tell you exactly what it is you are asking

 

[Jubal]

Thanks for the replys.

Yes, a 7200 rpm hard drive is definitely on my list of things to get.

Even: Is the web site you mention the www.echoaudio.com one? I could not seem to locate that particular utility, unless it is with their driver downloads. Didn't check there.

 

[knightfly]

Last time I tried to find echo's "reporter" utility, it was gone.

You can use almost any utility that tests for sustained thruput of the drive - mono tracks at 16/44 sample rate require about 5 mB per minute. This translates to about .084 MB per second. If a benchmark utility reports sustained transfer rates of 12 MB per second, dividing that by .084 would give you about 142 tracks, if that were the only limitation. Things like USB, which clogs up the PCI bus with constant updates and requests, slow things down more. Also, most benchmark utilities seem 'way too optimistic.

In real life, I've gotten an easy 40 tracks from a 7200 rpm U2SCSI drive, and at least 24 from a 5400 rpm IDE drive (older, ata33) These are probably pessimistic numbers, since at least some of my projects were streaming off the drive as 32 bit 44k files in Samplitude.

I'd recommend first a 7200 RPM drive, on its own SEPARATE IDE cable (put the CD-rom on the primary channel as a slave) and then, more ram. 512 megs is a good round figure, more if you can afford it - win 2k can handle more ram than 98.

Here's an optimize guide for win 2k, in case you've not been there -

http://www.opusaudioprojects.net/Win2k Installation and Optimzation Guide.doc