Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => Time Out => Topic started by: HTH AMPS on May 16, 2009, 06:41:21 PM
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I ended up getting a Digidesign Mbox2 mini to do some recording with. Unknown to me, the Protools software that comes with it requires 1Gb of RAM minimum so it won't work with my Sony Vaio laptop (512Mb RAM, 1.75G CPU).
So, I have three choices...
(1) return the Mbox
(2) upgrade the laptop with more RAM
(3) get a newer PC
options 1 and 2 are pointless, so I'm left with having to fork out for a new PC. problem is that I'm fairly clueless as to what the best features are these days. My budget is £500, though I could stretch to £600 at a push.
Whats the deal with all the various CPUs these days? - Core2, Dual Core, Centrino etc... Are these budget versions of a 'proper' Pentium CPU? (bear in mind that the last time I was up on PCs was when I built a PC with a PII 450).
From what I've seen in PC World and Currys this afternoon, I can get the following within my budget...
* 2.2G CPU
* 4Gb RAM
* 500Gb HDD
Also, whats the deal with Windows Vista? - is it just the next generation of Windows after XP? I think the home editions of these are generally a problem with recording software - go for the Pro Edition?
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Are you looking for a PC or Laptop?
My girlfriend got a new PC for £550 ish and it is really good (I can't really emphasis how good it is) but it's better than my recent laptop purchase (grr..), she got hers from PC World too, the HP one.
Plus if you need extra gig space, you can always buy externals. She has four already.
If you play games I'd stick to XP for old games, if you got recent games then Vista cause they'd then be compatible. If you're going for performance I'd go for XP but that's secondhand knowledge there.
PS. Your pedals look the cats pajamas.
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Get a Core 2 duo, the fastest you can afford, with 4Gb of the fastest RAM you can afford. in a 500£ budget I'd spend 100 on processor and 50 to 100 on ram. Mobo to match and a sturdy 500W PSU. Fast HDs are a big deal for audio, get some baracuda 11s or WD caviars. Use 2 - one for OS and one for all audio data. If youre feeling lucky get 4 and make 2 raid 0s.
Plus case, opticals, decent mobo that should bring you to 600 ish.
Oh, I'm talking base unit here, no monitor keyboard and mouse. If you really wanted to you could spend your whole budget on those, or if you look around you can get them all for very little.
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Personally I'd try and avoid Vista if possible (and it looks like its on its way out already) - ask if you can downgrade to XP Pro - at least everything will work with it.
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Mark does a Core 2 Duo have a lot more power than a P4 3.2ghz :?:
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Mark does a Core 2 Duo have a lot more power than a P4 3.2ghz :?:
Far more.
The C2D architecture is much more efficient with higher throughput per clock-tick, so dont take any notice of the clock speeds when comparing the different chip-types. The slowest C2Ds you can get today are faster than the fastest P4s. i7s are to C2Ds as C2Ds are to P4s, but a PC based on one is pretty expensive. I was gonna get one, but my C2D E6600 is still holding up pretty well.
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With Protools, it's quite processor dependant- i think your laptop will still struggle- my 2GHz Core 2 Duo (MacBook) with 2GB ram sometimes struggles, you'd probably have to put the hardware buffer at it's highest, but then you've got really bad latency which is impossible to work with. Unfortunately you'll have to get a higher spec machine to cope with it.
EDIT (would help to read the OP properly!!): i'd say that you can run protools fine with 2 or 3 gigs of ram, but maybe get a 3GHz Core 2 Duo (or there abouts), the 2GHz might be a bit low when running with windows.
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Never. Ever. Buy into Digidesign/Protools. Never. Ever!
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Never. Ever. Buy into Digidesign/Protools. Never. Ever!
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Never. Ever. Buy into Digidesign/Protools. Never. Ever!
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Because they (ab)use their market position of having been the studio standard for a long time, they aren't open and force you into using their software with their hardware. I don't agree with such tactics and rather get stuff that uses standards that leave it up to me which hardware/software to combine as I wish.
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Never. Ever. Buy into Digidesign/Protools. Never. Ever!
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Because they (ab)use their market position of having been the studio standard for a long time, they aren't open and force you into using their software with their hardware. I don't agree with such tactics and rather get stuff that uses standards that leave it up to me which hardware/software to combine as I wish.
On the flip side of that argument, you have other applications which are expected to support thousands of 3rd party interfaces flawlessly. If you buy a piece of hardware, buying a separate piece of software to work with it is a bit of a pain, so why not have the two bundled together?
The standard for ProTools has come about because back in the day (when computers weren't powerful enough to handle multitracking and sequencing), the TDM system provided a solution- as the software (and hardware) developed, it was natural that people were going to stick with a system that they knew. If Digidesign decided to allow Protools to use any 3rd party hardware, then there would be so many more problems with it, and the software itself would be really heavily bloated- in fact, one reason why ProTools continues to be a favourite for engineers, is that when they have major revisions (version 7 to version 8, for example), all the code is looked at, streamlined, and anything that is not needed is taken out, so it stays as a slick, fast functioning and desireable system, as you don't have constant support for legacy systems.
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Never. Ever. Buy into Digidesign/Protools. Never. Ever!
?
Because they (ab)use their market position of having been the studio standard for a long time, they aren't open and force you into using their software with their hardware. I don't agree with such tactics and rather get stuff that uses standards that leave it up to me which hardware/software to combine as I wish.
On the flip side of that argument, you have other applications which are expected to support thousands of 3rd party interfaces flawlessly. If you buy a piece of hardware, buying a separate piece of software to work with it is a bit of a pain, so why not have the two bundled together?
The standard for ProTools has come about because back in the day (when computers weren't powerful enough to handle multitracking and sequencing), the TDM system provided a solution- as the software (and hardware) developed, it was natural that people were going to stick with a system that they knew. If Digidesign decided to allow Protools to use any 3rd party hardware, then there would be so many more problems with it, and the software itself would be really heavily bloated- in fact, one reason why ProTools continues to be a favourite for engineers, is that when they have major revisions (version 7 to version 8, for example), all the code is looked at, streamlined, and anything that is not needed is taken out, so it stays as a slick, fast functioning and desireable system, as you don't have constant support for legacy systems.
Sure, to each his own. I stay "open source" and on the Mac, never any issues and always very powerful and slick system, especially with Logic. Oh by the way, some studio guys I knew changed to Logic a few years back, as I think it was the only other (and better) option to run a TDM system.
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Never. Ever. Buy into Digidesign/Protools. Never. Ever!
?
Because they (ab)use their market position of having been the studio standard for a long time, they aren't open and force you into using their software with their hardware. I don't agree with such tactics and rather get stuff that uses standards that leave it up to me which hardware/software to combine as I wish.
Thats what I thought youd say. I'm down with that - its why I dont have any. RME + whatever DAW i like at any given time FTW!
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Get a Core 2 duo, the fastest you can afford, with 4Gb of the fastest RAM you can afford. in a 500£ budget I'd spend 100 on processor and 50 to 100 on ram. Mobo to match and a sturdy 500W PSU. Fast HDs are a big deal for audio, get some baracuda 11s or WD caviars. Use 2 - one for OS and one for all audio data. If youre feeling lucky get 4 and make 2 raid 0s.
Plus case, opticals, decent mobo that should bring you to 600 ish.
Oh, I'm talking base unit here, no monitor keyboard and mouse. If you really wanted to you could spend your whole budget on those, or if you look around you can get them all for very little.
+1 on those specs
An E8400 at 3GHz is a great processor for value at around £120 (shame it used to be cheaper
I have found Hitachi drives to be really quick and great value for money at times. I would avoid raid drives without redundancy as it massivly increases the risk of failure go for really high capacity vertically encoded drives which have a huge areal density (since almost all drives spin at 7200 the amount of data passed under the head in one rotation influences transfer speeds a lot)
Vista uses more memory and on any machine speced with 4Gb RAM or less will be slower than XP. There is no real difference for most applications between XP-home and XP pro other than interaction with corperate networks and servers.
Do a regular drive defrag the assesments are never right as the volumes of data are so large now the system thinks most of the drive is unfragmanted but if 2% on a 750Gb is frag thats 15Gb which is probably all your current work.
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Why not just put some more RAM in the Laptop for now? RAM's pretty darned cheap. The laptop should be able to handle up to 2GB with 1GB in each RAM slot. It's probably got two sticks of 256mb in there at the moment.
At least then when you do get around to buying a new PC, you have a Laptop that can also run your DAW when needed, even if it isn't all that powerful at least it could run it.
Also, don't even think about buying a new PC yet. Wait for Windows 7 to come out.
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PS. Your pedals look the cats pajamas.
cheers, I'll be putting more pictures on there soon and also updating the site to show all the amp stuff I do too.
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Why not just put some more RAM in the Laptop for now? RAM's pretty darned cheap. The laptop should be able to handle up to 2GB with 1GB in each RAM slot. It's probably got two sticks of 256mb in there at the moment.
At least then when you do get around to buying a new PC, you have a Laptop that can also run your DAW when needed, even if it isn't all that powerful at least it could run it.
Also, don't even think about buying a new PC yet. Wait for Windows 7 to come out.
Just to clarify, I'm looking at getting a desktop PC as I now have a fixed location for a PC and can get a better spec'd desktop than a laptop with my budget.
The quote I got to install 2Gb of RAM was £97.00. My laptop has 8Gb HDD space left on my main C: partition after SERIOUS pruning and defragging, while my D: partition has 37Gb free. Could I install ProTools on the D: partition without any problems?
The main reason I'm thinking it would be a waste of money upgrading my laptop is that it's already 4+ years old and it probably ain't got much useful life left. I also think that ProTools will run really slow with this CPU and the fact that the HDD is WAY too close to being full. I'm also getting 'Windows Virtual Memory Full' messages at the minute and the laptop vitually crawls to a halt.
Getting a new PC will bring me up to date, run ProTools faster, give me shiteloads of HDD space (though I have a USB drive for backups).
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Never. Ever. Buy into Digidesign/Protools. Never. Ever!
I agree, not worth the hassle. Our computers at uni use it and even the high end mac pros are so $%&#ing slow with pro tools, its ridiculous. I'm sounding like a broken record now but I dont think for home use that you can beat a good interface and reaper on a half decent machine.
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not buying into ProTools isn't an option now - got the mbox2 mini already. I wish I'd known the crazy amount of specific compatability criteria ProTools requires... http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?langid=1&navid=54&itemid=36859
I'm seriously pissed off with all this and am on the verge of returning the mbox as the sales guy said sweet FA about system requirements when I told him what laptop I was using.
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Why not just put some more RAM in the Laptop for now? RAM's pretty darned cheap. The laptop should be able to handle up to 2GB with 1GB in each RAM slot. It's probably got two sticks of 256mb in there at the moment.
At least then when you do get around to buying a new PC, you have a Laptop that can also run your DAW when needed, even if it isn't all that powerful at least it could run it.
Also, don't even think about buying a new PC yet. Wait for Windows 7 to come out.
Just to clarify, I'm looking at getting a desktop PC as I now have a fixed location for a PC and can get a better spec'd desktop than a laptop with my budget.
The quote I got to install 2Gb of RAM was £97.00. My laptop has 8Gb HDD space left on my main C: partition after SERIOUS pruning and defragging, while my D: partition has 37Gb free. Could I install ProTools on the D: partition without any problems?
The main reason I'm thinking it would be a waste of money upgrading my laptop is that it's already 4+ years old and it probably ain't got much useful life left. I also think that ProTools will run really slow with this CPU and the fact that the HDD is WAY too close to being full. I'm also getting 'Windows Virtual Memory Full' messages at the minute and the laptop vitually crawls to a halt.
Getting a new PC will bring me up to date, run ProTools faster, give me shiteeeloads of HDD space (though I have a USB drive for backups).
I'd have enough room around for plenty of wavs and drum samples at least. We're talking >100Gb min, 500 to be comfortable. One song with all the layering andsuch can easily be >500mb in your DAWs audio folders. Good drum sequencers (sup 2, BFD2) are 25 to 50gb of samples.
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I've narrowed my search down to this desktop PC, seems like it will do the job BUT I'm not sure about the integrated graphics card - the digidesign website states that ProTools requires a dedicated AGP or PCIe card...
http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/store/cur_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1502705574.1242577242@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccceadehfelkljicflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&fm=1&sm=3&tm=0&sku=507583&category_oid=-35432
What do you PC-techies think?
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I stay "open source" and on the Mac
I don't want to pick a fight but Apple is about as closed as you can get.
I agree with your agruments, but sometimes a closed system isn't a bad thing, the only reason Apple have been able to make mac's the way they are is because it's a closed system.
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I've narrowed my search down to this desktop PC, seems like it will do the job BUT I'm not sure about the integrated graphics card - the digidesign website states that ProTools requires a dedicated AGP or PCIe card...
http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/store/cur_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1502705574.1242577242@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccceadehfelkljicflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&fm=1&sm=3&tm=0&sku=507583&category_oid=-35432
What do you PC-techies think?
I wouldnt get that. Reasons being it states the amount of ram but not the speed (very important - you need the cas latency and the clock speed to work out how long it takes it to process one bit of data to get the best approximation of its true speed), and its a small case, so it propably wont have room for much in the way of extra cards, it may well not have a PCIe slot at all, probably only a couple of PCI slots, I'll bet it comes with an underpowered PSU and will have zero room for upgrade on its likely stripped down to all hell and back mobo. I'll bet the HD is slow as hell as well.
The only thing thats certainly good about it, and suitable for audio, is the CPU.
Try
same CPU, or the now well tried and tested Q6600
4gb x 1333mhz CL8 ram
2x500gb (or better) seagate barracuda
Not sure about what mobos are good now - P45 chipsets a good bet, maybe a P5Q?
Just specced this out as a first draft for a bang-for-buck audio (i.e. cr@p graphics card, enough to render a DAW, and no soundcard or speakers)
Intel Core 2 Duo
Computer Case Black & Silver ATX Tower Case
CPU Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 (4 x 2.66 GHZ) 1333FSB - 4 MB
Motherboard ASUS P5Q 1600FSB (Intel P45)
Memory Corsair XMS2 4GB PC-6400 800 MHZ (2 x 2 GB) - Lifetime Warranty (DDR2)
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS - 256 MB - VGA/DVI/HDMI (Palit)
Power Supply 600W PSU
Hard Drive 1 500 GB SATA-II HDD UDMA 300 7200 16MB
Hard Drive 2 500 GB SATA-II HDD UDMA 300 7200 16MB
Optical Drive 1 Samsung (SH-D162D) 16x DVD-ROM Black (IDE)
Optical Drive 2 Samsung (SH-D162D) 16x DVD-ROM Black (IDE)
Floppy Drive Floppy Disk Drive 1.44 MB - Black
Sound Card Motherboard Integrated 5.1 Sound
Networking Motherboard Integrated Ethernet Lan (Broadband Ready)
USB Ports 4 X USB 2.0 Ports
CPU Heatsink Speeze QuadroFlow VIII - Low Noise
Operating System Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-BIT (Genuine DVD & COA Included)
Office Software OpenOffice 3.0.1 (Unlimited PC License)
Backup Solution Standard Operating System Backup
Monitor Asus 19" (VW195S) Widescreen TFT Black - 5MS
Keyboard Logitech Black Value Keyboard (PS/2)
Mouse Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse (USB)
http://www.computerplanet.co.uk/custom/core2duo/step6.html
Its about £750, a bit overbudget, but getting anything by the likes of HP is false economy - they skimp on mobo, RAM speed, PSU, HD speed and you end up having to upgrade with a whole new PC in short while. With a something like this you have room for expansion and upgrade, largely because of the good motherboard. Motherboards should never be skimped on. Ever. They're the key to upgradability and an expensive one now ultimately saves you money.
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Get a Core 2 duo, the fastest you can afford, with 4Gb of the fastest RAM you can afford. in a 500£ budget I'd spend 100 on processor and 50 to 100 on ram. Mobo to match and a sturdy 500W PSU. Fast HDs are a big deal for audio, get some baracuda 11s or WD caviars. Use 2 - one for OS and one for all audio data. If youre feeling lucky get 4 and make 2 raid 0s.
Plus case, opticals, decent mobo that should bring you to 600 ish.
Oh, I'm talking base unit here, no monitor keyboard and mouse. If you really wanted to you could spend your whole budget on those, or if you look around you can get them all for very little.
Totally! I'm using a quad core 8200
Never. Ever. Buy into Digidesign/Protools. Never. Ever!
Never. Ever. Buy into Digidesign/Protools. Never. Ever!
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Because they (ab)use their market position of having been the studio standard for a long time, they aren't open and force you into using their software with their hardware. I don't agree with such tactics and rather get stuff that uses standards that leave it up to me which hardware/software to combine as I wish.
Morals are a great thing to have but for me it's not worth being unable to work with most people and studios. Logic is fine but underused. Besides PT8 pretty much just eclipsed the only advantages Logic8 had over PT :/
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2x500gb (or better) seagate barracuda
I'd change the barracuda to the Spinpoint F1's they are much faster. The barracuda .10s were good but the Spinpoint F1's hold the current crown even outperforming the old 10k rpm raptors. Also iirc the .11's had bugged firmware and quickly replaced with .12's
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Faster dual cores are generally better than quad cores as most software is not fully parallel enabled, quad cores are generally better at doing a lot of tasks at once. Generally the dual core at the same price will be cloked faster and for a lot of apps will be faster. Many of the benchmarks use applications that do utillise the quad cores fully bit in RL most don't yet.
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Faster dual cores are generally better than quad cores as most software is not fully parallel enabled, quad cores are generally better at doing a lot of tasks at once. Generally the dual core at the same price will be cloked faster and for a lot of apps will be faster. Many of the benchmarks use applications that do utillise the quad cores fully bit in RL most don't yet.
But they will, and its not true that dual cores are better - architecture for achitecture and clock speed for clock speed the quads are faster, moreso if you have a 64bit OS, which handles multithreading better (well, vista 64 does anyway - I wouldnt recommend XP 64, its got a lot of compatability problems).
Plus, you lose very very little with a quad. They are very similar prices to duals now. Pretty standard stuff.
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Is there any point to 2x500GB drives unless you have a huge music/film collection?!
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Is there any point to 2x500GB drives unless you have a huge music/film collection?!
You could drop one to 200 or so for the installation drive, but:
- You should know by now how much space all the wavs in recordings take up, and the samples for drums
- Theres little point getting anything smaller when HDs that are both large and fast differ so little in price to ones that are small and slow. Youre talking 20 or 30 quid. May as well.
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But they will, and its not true that dual cores are better - architecture for achitecture and clock speed for clock speed the quads are faster, moreso if you have a 64bit OS, which handles multithreading better (well, vista 64 does anyway - I wouldnt recommend XP 64, its got a lot of compatability problems).
Plus, you lose very very little with a quad. They are very similar prices to duals now. Pretty standard stuff.
The E8400 is similar price to the Q8200 clock speeds 3Ghz vs 2.33GHz, and on level 2 cache 3Mb per core vs 1Mb per core although it is shared so most of the time would be 6 vs 4. I would agree with vista 64 I would prolly go quad core and 8Gb RAM but with 32 bit XP it would be dual core for me everytime. Running something like mote carlo code I would run 4 instances on the quad core and utillise all cores.
If you are video processing most of them use multiple cores really well but I am not sure about the software in use here.
Is there any point to 2x500GB drives unless you have a huge music/film collection?!
Larger drives are usually faster as well
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Yeah, but he isnt running monte carlo sims or video. This isnt a generalised PC discussion, he wants audio.
DAWs have been using 64 bit for a while, and sonar 7 and up and reaper at the very least have been making better use of the quads. 8G of ram wont do anyone (thats not running an obscene amount of VSTs) any good for a few years yet, 2 is enough, 4 is enough to make certain.
A fast quad with 4 gig of fast ram and 2 fast hard drives and a sturdy and unfussy MOBO is the general format for a modern audio PC with a dose of future-proofing thrown in.
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Was relating the fact that quad cores are great for speciallist video and monte carlo which you just said he isnt running supporting my point? Also since cache is one of the most important factors in general processing unless you can afford the Quad cores with 12Mb cache the dual core will be faster if you run 32 bit OS.
The RAM is not an issue of space but speed, as RAM access is around many times faster than HD access even if only a small percentage of acitivity is on drive it has a huge impact on speed. More cores = more demand on RAM.
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Thanks for all the help/suggestions so far. However, before anyone gets carried away with spec, I'm pretty much tied to whatever I can get on 'buy now/pay later'. Specing a PC down to the last nut and bolt is out of the question and lets not forget that I'll probably only ever be using a few tracks at a time. Seems like the bar gets raised all the time - my last HDD recording setup used a PIII 450 with 500Mb RAM and Logic Audio - I could record 8 tracks at once and run 24 tracks with plugins on each one with no problem.
Also, Digidesign don't advise using a 64-bit OS, so it'll be 32-bit all the way.
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There are component suppliers that do by now pay later on orders over a certain amount so the build option is still possible.
My apologis for getting into too much detail on spec any mid priced (c£100-£120) intel or AMD processor will do the job fine.
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Thanks for all the help/suggestions so far. However, before anyone gets carried away with spec, I'm pretty much tied to whatever I can get on 'buy now/pay later'. Specing a PC down to the last nut and bolt is out of the question and lets not forget that I'll probably only ever be using a few tracks at a time. Seems like the bar gets raised all the time - my last HDD recording setup used a PIII 450 with 500Mb RAM and Logic Audio - I could record 8 tracks at once and run 24 tracks with plugins on each one with no problem.
Also, Digidesign don't advise using a 64-bit OS, so it'll be 32-bit all the way.
Well if theres to be no 64 bit you may as well go with 2Gb of ram too. 32bit windows can only index 3gb of ram (some will say its 3.5 or 4 but I've had 4 in 32 bit XP and it registered only 3).
There are quite a few places where you can build a PC from the ground up (or at least a selection of there high-volume, high-turnover items) and pay later. I think PC specialist do it, and computer planet.
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I upgraded from 2gb ram to 4gb (well, just over 3 technically) ram on 32-bit Vista and didnt really notice much difference. No difference with Reaper anyway but loading games was a little bit better. Other than that, not really worth it!
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Yeah, I didnt get any noticable improvment from going from 2 to 3 (i.e. 4 but crippled) on XP32
Going from 2Gb of 533mhz, dont know what CAS, to 4Gb of 800Mhz CL4 with vista 64 was entirely another story, though. World of difference in everything.
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thanks for the help gents, I'm spying a couple of Dell PC's that look interesting.