One computer with rewire or two computers

[Timothy]

I posted a similar post awhile back in trying to determine how to do the correct balancing act with cpu horsepower to get the best response and track count. To many choices just to many choices! I wondered what you other home studio guys were doing.

The cpu costs keep dropping for dual core with an AMD Athlon going for under 500 for an X2 3800,4200,chip mobo combo. The specs are better than Pentium D dual core. I have been hearing about great results with an all in one setup on much lesser computers with pretty good track counts. Do you agree with that?

It looks to me like two computers are better because you can run two apps that you like together and sync with mtc (or an expensive clock).

I like the idea of building midi tracks on the host computer and then dumping them into the second computer as a sound module. Using Kontakt 2 or gigastudio you could have a great sounding midi rig with no cpu load on the first computer....................you could then route the sounds back to the host after you get the midi right,which brings my next question.

Do you dump multiple channels back say with ADAT or just do one pass at a time with a say an m-audio 24/96. The ADAT concerns me because to keep it at 24/96 you would need S-MUX capability and you loose half of your tracks.It looks like to stay in the digital realm without lossy A/D conversions you are forced to use 24/48 or 24/44.1 resolutions.

Waddya think?????????

 

[JeffLancaster]

In my setup I have both Sonar and Gigastudio running on a single computer. I have two interfaces because I can't playback out of Giga and Sonar at the same time through the same card (I suppose I could if I hard a card or interface with multiple stereo outs, but in my case I am outputting my Sonar through a Seasound interface, and Gigastudio through an Audiophile 2496). When it comes time to record my Gigastudio stuff into Sonar I just use the spdif out on the Audiophile to the spdif input on the Seasound interface. Of course I can only do one track at a time this way, but it works perfectly and there is no compromise of audio due to a/d conversion. Eventually, I hope to build a more powerful system for running Sonar on, and I will keep Gigastudio on my existing system. However, I will still use spdif to transfer from one to the other.

 

[Timothy]

I guess those who bought computers say two years ago are running p4 2 or 3 ghz maybe higher. If I went with something else now it would be a dual core 64 or pentium D. What kind of track counts are you getting? Is it possible to effectively go 24 tracks with say 8 launches of K2 and onboard reverb,compressor plugs?
I could probably use several tracks just on building the drums up before anything else. If I also wanted to rewire acid or abelton what would this do to a p4 with 1gb ram? Thanks Jeff,
In my mind in order to complete a good project I could really go through the tracks,there would probably be quite a few midi tracks and a good number of vocal and instrument takes and using lots of software instruments. Do you think an Athlon X2 4200 with 2gb will sustain all that?

 

[JeffLancaster]

I am running a three year old system (an Athlon XP 2200 with 1 GB Ram). I have been able to run projects with several Midi tracks triggering Giga instruments along with 20+ audio tracks, however when I start adding a lot of plug-in effects I really start feeling the load. Although I recently upgraded from 512 MB RAM to 1 GB, I actually didn't notice much difference, my CPU is still running at around 70% on these bigger projects (I start getting dropouts when CPU load gets up to around 75%). So, what I suspect is it is actually the processor speed which would make the most difference. If I had to guess, I would figure I'd be able to run double the amount of tracks and effects if I had a new dual-core CPU system running at 3800 or 4200 mhz. Keeping Gigastudio on a separate system would certainly help as well, although I imagine the most noticable difference with that would actually be more efficient hard drive usage - I don't believe Gigastudio eats up that large of a percentage of CPU power. It seems to be the effects plug-ins which demand the most CPU resources - I'm thinking the answer for that is to add a UAD card and offload the plug-in processing away from the CPU (I also like this idea due to the fact that I've heard the UAD plugs are supposed to be some of the best available). Now, the reality is, I'm still managing to get along ok with my system the way it is, however as a power hungry gear slut I'm always thinking about the biggest and baddest way to do things! Think about it - a dual core cpu system, with Giga running on a separate PC and the plug-in power demands being met by a UAD card; ought to be able to get, oh I don't know, 100 tracks of audio maybe?