Organizing my pc for Recording

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funkin182

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Hi everyone! Ive been a lurker for a while but i come to you for some advice on my new recording pc. I dropped about 1000 aud on a new w7 computer with an i5 and 4g of ram. The interface im using is an m-audio profire2626, currently with audition and sonar 8.5 as my daws - hopefully when i have the money ill get pt m-powered.

Im just new to pc recording and drivers and asio etc etc although i have done some homework. I made sure that the firewire chipset was TI compatible. so far i have done a bit of recording only with two mics out of the 16 inputs and just monitoring through some headphones but the quality wasnt as great as id hoped. there was the odd glitch and pop in recordings and sometimes when i was just using the 2626 as a soundcard listening to music through winamp the signal would crackle or become completely distorted.

I know recording is a resource hog so i was wondering if i should reinstall windows. Im not lucky enough to make this a sole recording computer and i will need other programs installed so im wondering if it would help creating another user account and jsut having my daws etc on that with my games and work stuff on another account? is it possible to create a seperate hardrive partition for each account, or better still have a hard drive for each account? i am planning to do a clean install of windows as theres been a lot of trying out programs and games and stuff that has probably left a lot of junk in the system.

Ultimately im just looking for some quick tips on helping the computer and audio interface get all the power they need when recording so when i start relying on it i wont record a song only to realize i have to do another take because theres a few huge clicks in the chorus haha!
 
Rather than another user account, partition and do a dual boot with 2 seperate windows installations. An install for audio and one for the rest. The install for audio can have windows slimmed down to it's lightest, internet disconnected and no antivirus, all unwanted processes and hardware disabled on startup etcetc.
 
Are you able to install a second hard drive in the machine you have for audio recording, that would be a good solution

Avoid partitioning if you can it will not give good audio performance IME

Check here for background processes you can safely turn off at startup to put less calls on the HDD and CPU http://www.blackviper.com

I wouldn't bother with a windows reinstall unless you are having OS based problems because there is always the chance that stuff you are already running (and plan on running) will have problems if you get rid of all the patches, service pack updates and framework updates that have been downloaded since the original install. plus it's a major hassle having to reauthorize everything and find all the drivers that you need etc.

Certainly do get something like REVO UNINSTALLER and REGISTRY MECHANIC to clean out any junk that you don't need from the system and then clean up the registry once it's gone
 
Bristol Posse said:
Avoid partitioning if you can it will not give good audio performance IME
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That's not entirely true. It depends on how you're set up.

Having a dedicated hard drive for your projects to be stored on, thus being devoted almost entirely to streaming the audio files, is going to give better performance, and I'd recommend that for sure. However, for the purpose of putting 2 windows installations on your computer, partitioning is fine. There's no point in getting an extra hard drive just to put your second operating system on, as the 2 operating systems aren't going to be running at the same time, and you're still going to need another extra drive for audio streaming.
 
If i go for a multiple hard drive setup do i need to learn about raid configurations and that stuff?? I didnt know you could have two hard drives with two operating systems. would it work with 1 being w7 and 1 being xp or something? i suppose having a barebone windows 7 install without all the internet protection and background services would be similar to xp anyways?
 
funkin182 said:
If i go for a multiple hard drive setup do i need to learn about raid configurations and that stuff?? I didnt know you could have two hard drives with two operating systems. would it work with 1 being w7 and 1 being xp or something? i suppose having a barebone windows 7 install without all the internet protection and background services would be similar to xp anyways?
Click to expand...

Yeah, with seperate installs of windows, you could pretty much have whatever combination of the different OS' you want. I used to have a triple boot with 2 XPs and 1 98SE.

You don't need to worry about RAID configs if all you're doing is having seperate hard drives for seperate purposes. RAID comes in when you want to have the drives work together. For example if you want one to mirror the other (mirroring), or if you want them to act as 1 big hard drive (striping).

My point though was that You can take 1 hard drive, split it in 2 so that it shows up as 2 hard drives (or partitions), and then put an install of windows on each partition. Then, get a new hard drive, and use that soley for storing your recording projects. That way, that drive isn't loading any software as such, and is more or less dedicated to playing the audio files in your projects. Without that hard drive having to do any more work than that, it'll perform way better.
 
thats sounds sweet as. i could get another tb drive for $80 and have 500gb for each os and then the tb audio drive. just to be clear i still want to have my daws and plugins etc on the os hard drive? the extra one is just for the tracks and session files right?
 
legionserial said:
That's not entirely true. It depends on how you're set up.

.
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Fair enough
But unless your are going to do a complete format of the HDD and then restart from scratch installing everything all over again there is a better than good chance that the old stuf stays where it is and the new audio partition has to be placed away from the outer segments of the disk (Because the existing install and apps are already installed there) and be forced into the less efficient portions of the drive.

Partitioning can certainly work if you are starting with a clean slate and are intalling things in the correct order in the most optimal area of the disk but even then I don't personally see a reason to do it Unless you want use two different OS like one partition for XP and one for 7 but personally in that situation I'd still use two drives, on for each boot, but I always build my systems with tons of room for additional Drives and I realize that may not always be the case if you are buying a branded machine

If you get a dedicated recording drive, or even if you dont but either set up a user profile with most of the non essential services turned off or just manually turn off all the junk before you record, there is no reason, with a computer made in say the last say 3 or 4 years, that you can't get good enough performance for audio without dual booting and partitioning (excepting of course super user type stuff like recording the entire london philharmonic with each individual instrument mic'd up)

That's just one opinion though YMMV
 
funkin182 said:
thats sounds sweet as. i could get another tb drive for $80 and have 500gb for each os and then the tb audio drive. just to be clear i still want to have my daws and plugins etc on the os hard drive? the extra one is just for the tracks and session files right?
Click to expand...

yes correct just recording on the new drive keep the OS and plugs and apps where they are
 
thanks for the input bristol posse i think ill give that a try first as i currently only own one copy of windows anyways. ill just make sure to set up the user account for my daw has all the black vyper tweaks and try using another hard drive for the session files - that might be all im missing ass right now everythings lumped onto the one hdd.
 
Bristol Posse said:
Fair enough
But unless your are going to do a complete format of the HDD and then restart from scratch installing everything all over again there is a better than good chance that the old stuf stays where it is and the new audio partition has to be placed away from the outer segments of the disk (Because the existing install and apps are already installed there) and be forced into the less efficient portions of the drive.

Partitioning can certainly work if you are starting with a clean slate and are intalling things in the correct order in the most optimal area of the disk but even then I don't personally see a reason to do it Unless you want use two different OS like one partition for XP and one for 7 but personally in that situation I'd still use two drives, on for each boot, but I always build my systems with tons of room for additional Drives and I realize that may not always be the case if you are buying a branded machine

If you get a dedicated recording drive, or even if you dont but either set up a user profile with most of the non essential services turned off or just manually turn off all the junk before you record, there is no reason, with a computer made in say the last say 3 or 4 years, that you can't get good enough performance for audio without dual booting and partitioning (excepting of course super user type stuff like recording the entire london philharmonic with each individual instrument mic'd up)

That's just one opinion though YMMV
Click to expand...

Fair enough. Makes sense. I generally wipe my entire machine barring the dedicated audio drive once a year anyway. Mostly my use of 2 OS' has always been a precautionary measure after something went wrong with windows and I couldn't boot up, but eventually also to keep my audio install away from the internet. I have 2 big hard drives striped and then partitioned 3 ways... 2 partitions for windows installations, both rather small, and then a big partition where I install videogames and archive stuff. Then I have my seperate drive for audio streaming. And there's a tiny POS drive I never use, that has an emergency install of windows on it should everything else go to crap. Which has happened before. I actually have no more room for hard drives unless I go external, my case only fits 4, and I don't want a seperate hard drive for the benefit of a windows installation just to play games, watch movies, and surf the net on anyway.

I know I can probably assign hardware profiles and user accounts etc to save from having the extra install, but I prefer to keep the installs completely seperate.
 
I guess i just never realized that having a computer hooked up to the web causes such a power drain on the system! Ill probably have to wait till next week when ive finished an assignment before i start wiping things but hopefully ill be able to do a clean install soon! It looks like ill grab another hdd and have it set up with w7 on 1 hard drive with the second being audio files. Is it possible to do the users thing on separate partitions of the w7 drive?
 
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