The Song Fight Bulletin Board

There's so much nerdy music-computer hardware talk going on in the DSP thread that I realized we don't seem to have a thread dedicated to the subject. This should be the place to debate the merits of dual- versus single- core processors for audio applications, Mac versus PC, Intel based Macs verse IBM flavored ones, more ram versus faster CPU, etc etc etc. Most of all, I really hope that more people than just myself post here.

I'll kick things off. What is your ideal DAW configuration? I haven't settled on mine yet, but at its heart is a Dual-Core Opteron 165 processor modestly overclocked.

I'd "settle" for a quad-core PowerMac G5 with as much RAM as possible. That's quite a beast of a computer for tasks that can take advantage of symmetric multiprocesing.

OK, so there's this new Miko from Open Labs. Trying to be an all-media production / playback center for you and I. The specs look good. Overkill? You know you want one

Yes. Yes I do.

Right now I use one of these digital 16-track dealies. It was affordable, and it came with a package of studio accessories and stuff. I still don't really have my 'recording room' set up right though. (Could you tell?)

ouch @ the all-in-one dealies. modular 4tw.

there are a ton of 8-24 channel sound cards out there now, and Shuttle is making better and better XPC form factor computers.

then you can mix and match front-end gear as you need more/better or whatever, or even combine a nice live-sound setup with your recording setup, and it'll last a ton longer.

Happy Freaking Birthday to me.

I'm building a new PC. In the last couple weeks my ideal CPU has inflated from the Opteron 165 to the AMD X2 4200+, which is about 25% faster in the GHZ department (not a bad gain for the 40$ difference, methinks, especially considering these are AMD gigahertz and not P4 gigahertz) but has half the CPU cache (:?). I also shelled out a bit to get a ram kit with lower timings, and also a new quieter case. Lets see if I can break it all when I put it together.

My New Baby:
AMD64 X2 4200+ (Dual Core @ 2.2ghz, but hopefully higher)
2x1 GB DDR400 Ram (Dual Channel)
1/2+ TB Storage (250 GB SATA2 + 200 GB SATA + 120 ATA133)
Antec Sonata II Quiet Case
The Awesome Power of On-board Video (although it should be noted that it can run multiple monitors)

Anyway, the dual core AMDs are supposed to be a very good CPU for building a DAW when you are working with a sane budget. I'll report my findings when I get this bad boy built. As you can see, I'm excited.

I recently got a new Dell Dimension E510, Pentium 4, 3GHz and 1GB of RAM. I got it for work, but I've been doing some *other* work on it musically speaking, and I've been very pleased with it. I've thrown a lot of apps at it at once and it never gets sluggish on me. THen last week I picked up the Line 6 TonePort UX2 and plugged that into it. This week's fight is my first experimentation with that, but can I just say that it's nice to finally get to be able to play thru "real" amplifiers. Obviously they're simulated, but the sound is incredible. Now if I can' just get my mixing chops down...

Puce wrote: Antec Sonata II Quiet Case

Man, my desktop machine is crazy loud. I wonder if I should replace the box with something like this. I always have to do my vocal recording on the laptop because of the vast amounts of noise generated by the comp...
Is this a highly regarded brand?
-bill

HeuristicsInc wrote:

Puce wrote: Antec Sonata II Quiet Case

Man, my desktop machine is crazy loud. I wonder if I should replace the box with something like this. I always have to do my vocal recording on the laptop because of the vast amounts of noise generated by the comp...
Is this a highly regarded brand?
-bill

It's one of the most highly-regarded brands out there, actually. Antec makes really nice cases and the best thing about them is that when they come with a power supply built in you're getting an Antec power supply instead of some no-name built-to-fail PSU.

I have the original Antec Sonata, and I absolutely love it. It's not completely inaudible but definitely close enough for me. I should mention that I haven't done any actual recording with it but that should change in the upcoming week.

Plus it's just classy, the piano black finish is beautiful if you're nice to it.

Yeah, that Antec Sonata 2 is on my list of purchases this year as well.

Congrats Puce!

Ken