I need Computer Specs...please

[meta5ical]

I'm upgrading to the NTK very soon...

also my computer and soundcard.
I am having endless problems with my computer or sound card buffering and causing my vocals and midi arrangements to go out of sync for no reason and I haven't even used 2% of the system resources. I don't understand the problem I figure it should be running smoother than Mauric Green but not quite. Could anyone help me out? Even if it is simple system configuration which can save me the money, instead of upgrading. thanx

Me currently:

Celeron 800mhz
768 megs sdRAM
Guillemot MAXI ISIS Sound Card
CUBASE VST 5.0

What I am looking to upgrade to:

Pentium III 1 Gig
768 megs sdRAM
Layla 24
Cubase VST 5.0

What I need is the specific specs ie. Mother board, and Chip sets or whatever all that techincal stuff I don't know much about.

Could some one point me to a good link or even give me the specs for a virtually flawless DAW setup.

What is yours like and how is it running?

 

[ozraves]

most of the daw makers using the piii were using the intel d815eea2 motherboard. i built my daw with the piii 1 gHz and the d815eea2. it has a limit of 512 mb however. i don't think that's bad as i've yet to encounter a memory problem. i have encountered cpu limits but i am the biggest hog of cpu you'll probably find anyplace.

if you want more ram, then you might look to an asus board based on the intel 815 chipset. i imagine asus will give you a motherboard option with the 815 chipset w/o integrated video or audio. on the d815eea2, the integrated video is disabled when you stick a vid card in the agp slot and you disable the integrated audio in the bios. no big thing but some people don't like this.

mine runs pretty damn good.

 

[knownuttin]

Hi Meta! Sorry to hear of your probs. Are they new? Did it used to work okay? What mobo you using? prorec.com has some cool articles about building and tweaking systems on their articles link. I'd try and fix what you got cause it doesn't sound bad, except for the ISIS being a gamer card, and all. I feel your pain.

Check out this link for some OS tweaks:
http://www.geocities.com/pcoptimisation/win_98_optimise_audio.htm

HTH!
-kent

 

[meta5ical]

thanx guys

knownuttin' ya link was dead

 

[knownuttin]

Then I guess my name is aptly chosen. My apologies. Here's the update.

http://www.bluelifeaudio.com/~pcconfig/

-kent

 

[tdukex]

You might want to read this:

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/D6A94D6B2F7DA99186256A7F00747CC9

And you didn't mention the hard drive you were using. If you are not using a 7200 like the Maxtor or IBM, you should.

 

[knownuttin]

You didn't mention your motherboard either. That could clue us in to a trouble source.
-kent

 

[h kuhn]

first: there is a forum for everything around computers and recording here on that bbs, if i remember right. You should post your Q there.
Then get rid of the isis. It is a pile of crap, the dream chip they use is simply a PITA. You will never see drivers for this card that can acomplish what you want (syncing audio and midi properly). I had the isa version, the maxi sound, which uses basically the same architecture as the isis. Get something decent with a modern dsp on it and use software synths/samplers. m-audio, st-audio, terratec and echo audio come to mind.

 

[meta5ical]

Thank a lot people

I totally 4got I had posted...

I have a Abit VH6 Pentium 3 s370 MB ATX - I don't know if that is any good, I'm only now just getting into the techincal side of computers.

Actually I think I may pick up the old Layla 20bit card over the weekend (used) getting a pretty good deal for it...

is there any objections?

 

[h kuhn]

Actually I think I may pick up the old Layla 20bit card over the weekend (used) getting a pretty good deal for it...

is there any objections?

their asio drivers suck big time, but sound quality wise a big step up from the isis

 

[meta5ical]

really?

cuz the ISIS asio driver are the biggest peices of crap...

I hope the layla's are at least 2 as good *even that isn't really that much lol*, I've heard nothing but good things about it.

and you're right anything literally is better than this problematic isis.

 

[h kuhn]

really?

cuz the ISIS asio driver are the biggest peices of crap...

I hope the layla's are at least 2 as good *even that isn't really that much lol*, I've heard nothing but good things about it.

and you're right anything literally is better than this problematic isis.

I can only compare the asio drivers to those of the st audio dsp24. Projects that run without problems with the dsp24 sometimes won't even start playback with my layla24. For softsynths i need latencies higher than 20ms to make them work without pops and clicks, what makes them unplayable. Although switching to logic with the EASI drivers seems to solve the problems. no idea how the performance is under cubase.