Track count reality check, how many you got?

D

Deen

New member
Hi guys,

this is my first thread here so please be nice. I just wanted to
know how many tracks you were able to harness using your
PC DAW. Please include key info on your PC, like hardware
and software you feel have halped you attain your maximum track
count with enough plug ins or even soft synths. Boasting is
encouraged folks. Knock us all out. I think this reality check
will equalize the hype that's out there. Thanks.
 
OI.

I can get 4 audiotracks and possibly 2 DirectX FX on my (oi again) 350Mhz AMD K62:rolleyes::rolleyes:. I have a Live!Platinum:rolleyes:. I use N-tracks, Acid, and Soundforge. Thankfully I can bounce tracks.

I'm upgrading(more like replacing) to an Athlon XP/Palomino @least a 1600+. I plan on a Delta 1010lt but I'll have to make do with my Live! for a while longer.

I plan on purchasing an older version of Logic than upgrading to 5 Platinum. I might go out and buy the discontinued Audiowerk just for 2 more inputs and a decent version of Logic(will it work with other soundcards as well?). I heard the price went down to 50 now. I'm willing to spend the 100 though. But that's all besides the point.
 
Win 98se 800mhz 256mb ram
Delta Audiophile 24/96 PCI card
Logic Audio Platinum 4.8
Cool Edit Pro
Soundforge 5.0
Can lay down 24 tracks with DSPx10
However if I reach an overload point I can do a digital mixdown of any track with DSP and free up a DSP. With digital mixdown or remix the number of tracks and DSP is unlimited.
 
hokypokynose said:
OI.

I can get 4 audiotracks and possibly 2 DirectX FX on my (oi again) 350Mhz AMD K62:rolleyes::rolleyes:. I have a Live!Platinum:rolleyes:. I use N-tracks, Acid, and Soundforge. Thankfully I can bounce tracks.

I'm upgrading(more like replacing) to an Athlon XP/Palomino @least a 1600+. I plan on a Delta 1010lt but I'll have to make do with my Live! for a while longer.

I plan on purchasing an older version of Logic than upgrading to 5 Platinum. I might go out and buy the discontinued Audiowerk just for 2 more inputs and a decent version of Logic(will it work with other soundcards as well?). I heard the price went down to 50 now. I'm willing to spend the 100 though. But that's all besides the point.
Click to expand...
Hey Hoky, I just posted my Audiowerk8 Home Studio Kit on Ebay.
Includes Audiwerk8 card, Logic Platinum, Cool edit pro L.E.
250.00 reserved. Perfect condition. Retail is about 1000.00
It's a steal !!!
 
Before I upgraded a week ago, I would get up to about 24 tracks with:

Windows ME
192 MB RAM
Cubase VST 5
Lexicon Core 2 Audio Interface
Intel Celeron 500 Mhz Processor.

With my present DAW setup, I've got up to 48 tracks of audio so far:

Windows ME
192 MB RAM
Cubase VST 5
MOTU 2408 Audio Interface
Intel Pentium III 1Ghz Processor
 
I typically do 24 24bit/44.1khz tracks. Effects performance depends on the actual plugins. Usually I'm running 10 probably.

System is:

850Mhz Celeron
256MB
7200RPM Maxtor drives
Delta44
Ensoniq AudioPCI
3Com Network
32MB TNT2 video / 2MB S3 video
Windows 2000
n-Track

Slackmaster 2000
 
Any guessed as to how many tracks i'd get with the computer im going to be gettting next month? Ofcouse effects will affect my count and it will depend on what effects i use but this is just a rough guess.
P4 1.8Ghz 478 Pin
MSI 845AR Motherboard with Intel 845 Chipset and ATA 133
40 gig 5400rpm segate
20 gig 7200rpm segate Audio Drive
GeForce 64MB MX400 w/TV Out
512MB DDR RAM
Windows XP Home
Emagic v5 Gold
Delta Omni Studio

How many tracks you think i'd get @24 bit/44.1khz.
What sort of power would i have left over for plugins with around 24 tracks @24bit/44.1khz. Where can i improve/where would the bottle neck on performance be?
 
Same question as cold ash

Hi cold ash,

I am planning to build a Daw with specs a bit similar to yours.
Also 1.8 giga and 512 Ram. So I have the same question as yours.
I've seen some 128 track machines at the Gem website. Specs are about
the same. But they're using SCSI drives. Would it be correct to assume a Pentium 4 can do more than 64 easily?

Thanks for the initial response guys. It seems the Giga club hasn't arrived yet.
But sub gigas are still more than welcome. It's all good for the insight.
 
ColdAsh said:
Any guessed as to how many tracks i'd get with the computer im going to be gettting next month? Ofcouse effects will affect my count and it will depend on what effects i use but this is just a rough guess.
P4 1.8Ghz 478 Pin
MSI 845AR Motherboard with Intel 845 Chipset and ATA 133
40 gig 5400rpm segate
20 gig 7200rpm segate Audio Drive
GeForce 64MB MX400 w/TV Out
512MB DDR RAM
Windows XP Home
Emagic v5 Gold
Delta Omni Studio

How many tracks you think i'd get @24 bit/44.1khz.
Click to expand...

More than you'll ever need unless Enya stops over! Personally, I would opt for an Athlon setup (more power for less $$) but the P4 will give you plenty of power for plugins as well.

BTW, the limiting factor for overall track counts is not the CPU, but the hard drive. Even a 400 MHz Celeron will have bandwidth to spare when playing 50+ tracks, it just won't have the processing power to handle many plugins.
 
yep, Id say your drives will be your bottleneck....Ash.. werent you going to go with a RAID array? I hear that can improve performance... and want to do it myself.,

maybey someone knows... can i run RAID for storge and temp folders.... and house my programs and OS on a normal IDE channel??? or would that defeat the purpose? or what.?

xoxox
 
I don't know where the top of my system is as I've not hit it yet. I have a 700MHz P III with 640megs of RAM, two 7200 RPM 30 gig drives. I've had track counts around 36 at 24 bit/44.1 KHz or so with a couple of plugs running with no problem.
 
camn said:
maybey someone knows... can i run RAID for storge and temp folders.... and house my programs and OS on a normal IDE channel??? or would that defeat the purpose? or what.?
Click to expand...

For how you just described it, Yes it would defeat the purpose.

at a basic level, there are generally three types of raid: Mirror, Striped and Mirror/Striped.

Mirror, uses a minimum of 2 drives. It allows a backup copy on another drive. So if one drive goes down, you still have another one to run off from. - this is a backup ideal

Striping, Uses 2 a min of 2 drives. It splits the data between the two drives reading them in parallel for a theoretical doubled speed increasement. - this is a performace ideal

Mirror/Striped, Uses a min of 3 drives. Its a combo the above two, only instead each drive holds 66% of the data. the 33% left over exists on the other 2 drives. This allows a stripe between each drive, and if any of the 3 goes down, you can replace it with a new drive, rebuild it with the data on the other drives, and all is well. - this is your ideal solution :)
 
Your primarly bottleneck would only be the drive IN A PERFECT situation. Even then, in most cases it wouldn't technically be a bottle neck because a single ATA drive can handle more than enough tracks unless you're really going crazy.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I'll have to disagree

I'll have to disagree w/Wildfire and say that using a RAID setup for your data and having your OS on a seperate channel would have better performance...

also, Wildfire, what you described is RAID 5 (striping w/parity), not striping/mirroring (or RAID 10)

RAID 10 (striping/mirroring ) uses 2 sets (at a minimum) of mirrors and stripes data accross them, this yeilds very high performance, but costs you an arm and a leg b/c you have to have 2x the number of drives...

but if IMHO if you are going to go to the trouble of using RAID, you might as well go w/SCSI too, and get 15k spin drives :) hehe

or get a fibre channel drive array, but I think your money would be better spent somewhere else....

we have these servers here in our data center that I've wanted to try out for recording since the day we started buying them, they are mean as crap dual t-bird 1.5Ghz, 2GB RAM, w/an external 200GB (usable) RAID 10 array (running off an adaptec controller that has 256MB of onboard cache)....momma....they hall balls for what we need 'em for and I can only imagine using 'em for recording purposes...hehe

oh, btw, my setup is:

PIII 1.0Ghz, 256MB RAM, 40GB (I unfortunantly think it's only a 5400RPM) hdd, n-track, and a DELTA 1010...I have no problems recording 8 tracks at a time, and I've mixed down songs w/30+ tracks, with effects and I have yet to see any lag (knock on wood, knowing my luck now that I say that I'll start lagg'n)

take care

EZ
 
500mhz celeron
380mb ram
maxtor 7200 rpm audio drive
delta audiophile 2496
windoze 98
n track

i usually use ~ 24 tracks of 24 bit/44.1khz

2 reverbs
2 compressors
up to 3 or 4 special effects (delay,flange,etc, depending on mix)

all buffers are CRANKED to achieve this....
 
ok, you little conflicting aid-heads...

I know the different arrays... but Im thinking about a RAID array AND a single drive for progs... and Im in it for SPEED , and DATA backup.. so Im ok with no backup in the programs.. but will I get a speed benefit?

I reckon yes...because the comp loads up the prog into ram... and doesnt need to refer to the progs home directory too much during tracking.. right? Esp if the temp folders are all on the raid drives?

c'mon, slack.. help us out with the brains!

xoxo
 
observation

It seems most of the guys in the forum are using P3's or celerons and similar
processors between 850 and 350 mhz. So it appears there is no reason to
get a P4, given I had a 7200 rpm drive. Honestly, I can be happy with 16.
24 is just right. 32 is too much but nice. Over that and it's overkill, unless
I was Hanz Slither, what's his name. But I'll probably get a P4 because
P3's are still expensive in my country. That means I can run more plug ins.
Besides who knows what software will be able to do in the next few years.


But hey, let's not stop here. Keep it coming folks. This is all inspiring stuff.
 
I've got an old Pentium 233mmx based computer with a 5400 2 gig OS drive and a 6 gig 7200 audio drive with a single 128 stick of RAM. (I have one slot left and another 128 should get here today from Crucial!) I even still run Win95. I get a solid 20 tracks on Cooledit without too many volume/pan envelops going. Another year or two...the new computer will "come to papa!!"
 
Re: I'll have to disagree

ez-e said:
I'll have to disagree w/Wildfire and say that using a RAID setup for your data and having your OS on a seperate channel would have better performance...
Click to expand...

He claimed data was "storage & temp". That to me defines files that are not frequenently edited or even kept at all. Therefore would not need the use of raid. ie. a "mp3" dedicated drive (storage) wouldnt need a perfomance drive.

Putting your OS, or anything that requires frequent access on a striped drive would give you better performace. I'm sure you know there are lots of alternatives and options depending on your needs so there is no need to listen all the different configurations per applications.

also, Wildfire, what you described is RAID 5 (striping w/parity), not striping/mirroring (or RAID 10)
Click to expand...

Yes, your right... striping with parity. My bad

RAID 10 (striping/mirroring ) uses 2 sets (at a minimum) of mirrors and stripes data accross them, this yeilds very high performance, but costs you an arm and a leg b/c you have to have 2x the number of drives...
Click to expand...

actually, if you wanna get techincal, its "RAID 0/1" :p :p

but if IMHO if you are going to go to the trouble of using RAID, you might as well go w/SCSI too, and get 15k spin drives :) hehe
Click to expand...


I agree.

Buyer beware, a lot of advertised Mobos with RAID options are usually software based. This taxes your system resources. Not a good thing... especailly when your power hungry plugins need those resources. This is why a HW SCSI solution would be better... if your gonna spend the money... why not spend it right?
 
When I first got my system I tested Max track count by basically plugging in a drum machine and overdubbing as many tracks as I could, that means that the track counts below are for simultaneous non stop audio (yes it did sound like random noise :D ). This is without plugins.

My system is a Pentium III 866, 256 ram, 7200 rpm dedicated audio drive.

At 24 bit /44.1K and 24 bit /48K - in excess of 64 tracks.
At 24bit / 96K - 34 tracks before glitching started.
 
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