stable acid setups: post your specs -ACID Product Family

ACID Product Family

Subject:stable acid setups: post your specs Posted by: groovewerx Date:6/7/2002 1:18:15 AM perhaps a thread like this may help folks buy/build a stable system. besides, i'm curious to see how many folks are really successful with common soundcards compared to pro audio interfaces. My PC: 4U Rack Case (Silent Air Cooled) Enermax 500W PS Abit VP6 Dual P3-1G/133 2GB Crucial (2x512/PC133) ATI Radeon VE AGP EgoSys WamiRack24 Audio Linksys 10/100 NIC Tekram DC315U SCSI Iomega 1GB Jaz2(Project Backup) Sony 24x CDRW & 52x CDROM IBM 20GB 7200 (System) IBM 40GB 7200 (Work) IBM 40GB 72004 (RAID/Storage) Dual 21" LCDs My Software: ACID Pro 3 Cubase 5.1 Nuendo ProTools 24 Reason 2 Rebirth 2 WaveLab 4 My system is rock solid.
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Spirit Date:6/7/2002 1:59:16 AM P4 1.8 512K L2 Northwood Asus P4B266 512Mb DDR SDRAM 300w generic power 40Gb Seagate Barracuda IV 80Gb Seagate Barracude IV 100Mb USB Zip Iomega 32x CDRW + Nero XP home (tweaked) PulsarII + plugins AcidPro3 SoundForge6 VegasVideo3 Fruityloops3.4 Kontakt 1.01 Beautifully smooth :) ps: nice system Groovewerx, especially those twin LCDs !
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: ATP Date:6/7/2002 3:45:54 AM lol! this looks more like a "check out my l33t system" thread to me. small wonder ACID works on your system. i'd worry if ACID wouldn't work on that.
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Spirit Date:6/7/2002 5:28:15 AM This is standard practice in audio forums. You should get out more.
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Vocalpoint Date:6/7/2002 9:05:05 AM Sure! Why Not... PC: 4U Antec 3426B Rack Case Antec Truepower 430 PS ASUS TUSL-C Intel P3-1G/133 512 MB Kingston PC133 Matrox G450 AGP M-Audio Delta 66 with Omni Studio 3Com 3C905-TX-M NIC Yamaha 24x CDRW ASUS 52x CDROM Maxtor 20GB 7200 (System) Maxtor 40GB 7200 (Work) Maxtor 60GB 7200 (Storage) Dual 19" Sonys Software: ACID Pro 3.0g Soundforge 6.0a Vegas 3.0a Cubase 5.1 Nuendo 1.53 Like butter... Cheers, Cuzin B
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: MacMoney Date:6/7/2002 11:49:39 AM Cool Studio A P4 1.7Ghz w/1024mb ECC PC800 ram GeForce MXX400 Video w/64Mb Ram Intel D850GB 2Ghz Motherboard Adaptec Ultra 160 SCSI card 29160 Seagate Cheetah Ultra 160 SCSI 15,00rpm HD 18.4Gb (FAT32 Rec) Seagate EIDE 80Gb (NTFS OS) Sony DVD+RW/CD-RW Yamaha 24x10x40x40 CDRW 3200ez MOTU-1296 v2 w/1ea. I/O MOTU-2408 v2 w/2ea. I/O's MOTU Midi Timepiece AV PC Win2k Pro sp2 PIII 800E w/512Mb PC100 PCI S3 Video w/32Mb Ram Delta MP2-BX-X 100MHz Buss PCI/ISA Motherboard AdaptecAHA-2940 Ultra PCI SCSI Card Seagate 80GB Seagate EIDE & SCSI Hard Drive Creative DVD Ram 40X AKUE-IDE CD Rom Yamaha 16x10x40 CDRW 2100e Darla 20 5.06 MOTU FastLane USB PC (to MTPAV port 8) Win98se Studio B P4 1.7Ghz w/512mb ECC PC800 ram GeForce MXX400 Video w/64Mb Ram Intel D850GB 2Ghz Motherboard Adaptec Ultra 160 SCSI card 19160 Seagate Cheetah Ultra 160 SCSI 10,00rpm HD 18.4Gb (FAT 32 Rec) Seagate EIDE 80Gb (NTFS OS) Sony DVD+RW/CD-RW Yamaha 24x10x40x40 CDRW 3200ez MOTU-2408 v2 w/1ea. I/O MOTU Midi Timepiece AV PC Win2k Pro sp2 Studio C P4 1.7Ghz w/1024mb ECC PC800 ram GeForce MXX400 Video w/64Mb Ram Intel D850GB 2Ghz Motherboard Adaptec Ultra 160 SCSI card 29160 Seagate Cheetah Ultra 160 SCSI 10,00rpm HD 18.4Gb (FAT 32 Rec) Seagate EIDE 80Gb (NTFS OS) Sony DVD+RW/CD-RW Yamaha 16x10x40 CDRW MOTU-24i v2 w/1ea. I/O MOTU Midi Express XT PC Win2k Pro sp2 Software Pro Tools 5.1 w/882-24 Vegas Video 2.0h Vegas Video 3.0a Acid Pro 2.0b Acid Pro 3.0g Cakewalk Pro Audio 9.03 Cakewalk Sonar XL 1.3.1 Cubase VST/32 5.0 Nuendo 1.53 Sequoia 5.92 Sound Forge 6.0a Preset Manager 1.0 Batch Converter 5.0b Osmosis PC v1.3 AS1 and DS1 PC ReBirth 2.01 ReCycle 2.0 Pro-52 2.5 B4 1.1.1 FM-7 1.02 Absynth 1.3.2 Kontakt 1.02 Lounge Lizard 1.0 Reason PC 1.01 Reason PC 2.0 Generator PC 2.05 My DVD Nero 5.5.8.2 Plug-Ins from Waves Platinum Bundle, Sonic Foundry, Cakewalk, Sonic Timeworks, Hyperprism Dx v1.5.5, Free Filter v1.0, Izotope Vinal v2.0.0.12, Ozone DX 1.01, Prosoniq Mix Citer, Prosoniq Pi Warp, Free Filter v1.2 Synchro Arts VocAlign PC 2.7 Wave Arts Roland VS-880 and 1680 Adat XT-20 DX 8.1
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Chienworks Date:6/7/2002 12:33:01 PM OK, y'all can laugh now ... Hardware: P3 866MHz ABIT BX-133 motherboard 256MB PC-133 RAM ATI Rage Fury Pro, 32MB Sound Blaster PCI-128 C: WD 20GB 7200 IDE, D: & E: WD 40GB 7200 IDE Lucent OHCI compatible 1394 Creative PC-DVD 8x / Encore Dxr3 MPEG decoder card Sony 24x/10x/40x CD-RW Generic 10/100 NIC Lucent 56K modem Software: Windows 98SE, pretty much vanilla out of the box, Windows scripting disabled, recent updates installed. MSIE 6.0 ACID Pro 3.0g Vegas 3.0b Sound Forge 5.0f SIREN 2.0c Batch Converter 5.0b VideoFactory 2.0c also Microsoft Office 97, Netscape 4.79, Micrografx Webtricity 2 ... etc. not germane to this topic. Very stable; never a hitch with any SF software.
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Maruuk Date:6/7/2002 1:52:38 PM Well, this is the problem. The power users are all, "I have this pristine system that cost me $4k+ and you're a fool if you don't have this level of equipment and configuration and expect 3.0 to perform well!" And Sonic Foundry is all, "...Unlimited audio tracks for all..." and the forum is full of normal guys with normal systems glitching and futzing all over the place. I've got a 1G Athlon T-bird with 512Megs and an Echo Mia, which is a really nice little card with pro-spec converters and the latest drivers, and I get all kinds of awful glitches after optimizing and defragging and all the OCD crap you have to do. A few guys with crap CPU's (but pristine configs) like chien have no trouble. Why? Maybe a lucky combo of mysto components or a dedicated HD, a daily prayer to the God of audio and video A/Vishnu, I don't know, nobody does. The fact is Acid is usually really buggy and glitchy with N0RMAL, real-world average-joe rigs and that's not acceptable. If Sonic Foundry were really honest with customers about the minimum rig and configuration guaranteed to avoid nasty glitching, dropouts, track sync nightmares and crashing, they'd scare off 3/4 of the market. My god, if you tried to do anything with their minimum config, your tracks would sound like an industrial speed metal band getting hit by a train. Hopefully, when SoFo announces 4.0 in July, this will all be a fading nightmare scurrying back to sonic hell.
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Vocalpoint Date:6/7/2002 3:10:06 PM Maruuk I hear ya - it's called software advertising - I have discussed this topic with umpteen guys/gals in here with so-called "normal" albeit slightly under-powered rigs and I usually ended up getting blasted by these Soundblaster users for also making suggestions that will cost them money. Unfortunately - as with anything worthwhile - there is a cost for creativitity - if your creativity with SF apps calls for rock solid performance and zero technical issues, ya gotta lay out the bread for a decent rig. Truth of the matter is right in your words - if SF was straight up with their user base and actually described their true hardware test bed (Do ya really think they are testing their latest products on a 400 MHZ Windows ME box with 128 MB of RAM - dream on!)and published that for the customer, we probably would have less people complaining about glitching and futzing. Cuzin B
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: groovewerx Date:6/7/2002 5:47:01 PM i agree and to add another point. computer comanies like compaq, sony, dell, gateway etc. are selling weak pcs for $600 or so. you can take that same $ and build your own power box. thats what i did. in parts my box cost me $600 (less audio/mons/hdds). i'm sure the same parts cost less now with mons/hdds. my point being that this thread can be used as a shopping list for those who need to know what works. sure my setup may be above average but i'll never have to upgrade it. if and when technology changes i'll just build another box.
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Maruuk Date:6/7/2002 6:55:14 PM Yeah, the bottom line is you really do have to invest way beyond min/specs to get useable performance. Acid is somewhat worse than other apps I've tried in this respect, but audio is demanding and you have to have some firepower to get in the game. Video's even worse! I really do believe, though, that with all the performance complaints from folks with midrange setups that with 4.0, SoFo will dig down into machine language and give us a clean code rewrite of the engine to improve playback efficiency. That's the decent thing to do.
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Spirit Date:6/8/2002 3:43:54 AM All audio software companies quote ridiculous specs. Sure it's possible to run the apps, but you wouldn't want to try to actually do anything halfway serious. The problem with being honest is that suddenly your product's minimum specs are way above everyone else and then people assume "well, if this is the usual BS spec and I need double that, I'm in trouble..."
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: MyST Date:6/8/2002 11:10:03 AM If you plan on making a living using Acid, wouldn't you expect to invest a certain amount of $$ into your business. If you can earn +/- 100K$/year using this software, a 15K$ investment seems acceptable. If you plan on using Acid as a sideline for extra income (say 10-15K$/year), doesn't a 3K$ machine seem like a good investment. The fact is people buy this software, install it on a family PC and expect it not to be buggy. People will have programs running in the background (automatic updates for anti-virus, check for e-mails every 5min set in outlook express) and wonder why they're getting glitches. You have to be ready to invest if you want to get a good return. I'm strictly a hobbyist with this software, that's why I'm not going to invest more than I have already. 850 T-Bird 512 Ram Echo Mia Turtle Beach Montego 20Gig HD 7200 RPM 40Gig HD 7200 RPM 6416 SCSI Yamaha CD-R This PC is for the whole family. There are games, audio, word processor, recepies software...you name it. But I accept this because all I do with Acid is for me only. I have yet to go past a dozen tracks with no more than a couple effects each. Never a glitch. If I was planning on marketing what I did with Acid, I would invest accordingly. I could have bought a system like MacMoney's, but I elected to buy a house instead. :) Bottom line is, I wouldn't expect to get pro results with my current PC. If I wan't pro results, I'll invest (of course, I'm talking equipment only, talent is a whole other ballgame!). ¢¢
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Maruuk Date:6/8/2002 12:34:05 PM MyST--Whereas I have a system very similar to yours, same soundcard and CPU, 512, etc. and have glitches all over the place. That's the problem, Acid is very inconsistent from machine to machine. Fortunately all the zaps and dropouts and pops go away in the render so I just have to use my imagination in the submaster playback. But as I say, 4.0 will have to be more stable and reliable for mid-performance machines. Plus eventually all us poor guys will eventually HAVE better machines anyway. I would say that Acid is in general better implemented and more robust than many other competitors--it just falls down on playback performance compared to the others. Heck, I've even had zaps and glitches on a 3-4 track loop song. Then the next one with 12+ will playback ok for a while, then start glitching. Very inconsistent. Very unstable, CPU-intensive engine, comparatively. For instance, if you look at the efficiency of the Reason engine with a whole stack of loops, the CPU is barely breaking a sweat. But even as we speak, SoFo code monkeys are crunching numbers to bring us "a new, more efficient audio engine" in 4.0!
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: MyST Date:6/8/2002 12:50:36 PM Hey Maruuk, Just so we're clear... I also get pops on playback. I was talking after rendering that I get clean sound. Also, if I modify a track during playback, I get glitches. I guess I just never let it bother me because the end product was OK. Also, as I mentioned, my system isn't optimized for audio work, so I wouldn't be on solid ground if I was to come here and complain about it. So, to keep in line with the thread... For what I use Acid for, my system is rock solid (post-rendering). ¢¢
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Maruuk Date:6/9/2002 2:02:01 PM MyST--Yeah, thanks be to the audio gods for that! Once we've all got 3Gig .13 micron CPU's and 10k drives with terabytes of memory all this noisy playback stuff will seem as silly as Lear Jet 8-track carts. Imagine if you had to configure and tweak your CD player extensively before you played back a CD so it wouldn't zap and pop like crazy. Or only $1200 Denon CD players could play clean music. We haven't quite got out of the digital audio Dark Ages yet.
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: djtricky Date:6/10/2002 9:34:34 PM Dell Optiplex GX1 P-III 600 mhz running Win 98SE 256 MB RAM 3 internal SCSI 10,000 rpm drives (9 GB boot, 9 GB audio, 18 GB audio) but my ACID projects & loops are on my 40 gig external Firewire 7200 rpm(Oxford 911 chipset) Event/Echo Layla 20 bit soundcard Just finished a project with 40 + tracks using DSP-FX plug ins (about 10), and XFX 1,2,3 Sonic Foundry plug ins (about 6) With DSL, Microsoft Word, Excel, Wavelab, Cubase, Cool Edit, Vegas, VPN, Norton, PC Anywhere, Nuendo installed. (despite the caveats, you just gotta know what your doing) My system is ROCK SOLID, 5 YEARS RUNNING. It's the centerpiece of my studio and the computer is ALWAYS ON. djtricky
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: xxFT13xx Date:6/12/2002 6:33:27 AM Asus A7M266 mobo 512 PC2100 DDR Memory Terratec EWX 24/96 sound card Voodoo 3 3000 AGP video card 2x40 gig 7200rpm Seagate hard drives Athlon 1.2gig cpu Lite On 32x12x40 cd-rw Antec 400w psu lovely.. -Sin
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Iacobus Date:6/12/2002 8:35:15 PM (Assembled by me:) Intel Pentium III 800EB MHz ASUS CUSL2-C motherboard 384 MB PC133 SDRAM ATI Radeon 32 MB DDR Linksys LNE100TX 10/100 LAN Card Maxtor UltraATA 100 45 GB Hard Drive M-Audio Audiophile 2496 M-Audio USB Duo DigiTech GNX2 Guitar Effects Processor ACID Pro 3.0 Sound Forge 5.0 Windows XP Home Edition Iacobus
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: groovewerx Date:6/12/2002 10:03:53 PM i dont see many sb live, platinum, audigy, or the other creative ilk. thats good
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Jacose Date:6/13/2002 11:37:48 PM 1700mhz/400 1 gig RAM 80 gig HHD partitioned to: 50 gigs to My documents, Videos, Music(10.8 gigs of mp3s) 30 gigs to samples and loops (7 gig left!!!) 30 gig 7200 RPM RECORDING ONLY
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: aress Date:6/15/2002 11:12:46 AM p4 1.4 asus mb- 512m 400meg rambus 2 73gig 10000rpm cheeta drives Event mia sound card 4 73gig 7200rpm firewire drives matrox dual head running 2 monitors waves plugins this machine rules the western world! but i can tell you that i also have acid3 on my old 400m pentuim II, with a soundblaster live card and it works great!
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: aress Date:6/15/2002 11:13:55 AM p4 1.4 asus mb- 512m 400meg rambus win2k pro 2 73gig 10000rpm cheeta drives Event mia sound card 4 73gig 7200rpm firewire drives matrox dual head running 2 monitors waves plugins this machine rules the western world! but i can tell you that i also have acid3 and vegas on my old 400m pentuim II with win2000pro, 2 7200rpm ibm drives, ati allinwonder TV card and a soundblaster live card and it works great!
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: Maruuk Date:6/15/2002 2:14:31 PM My PC: IBM PS/2 Model 50Z i286 @ 10 MHz Memory: 2 Mbytes IBM 8514/A Graphics Adapter Operating System: Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 20MB MFM hard drive 85 ms access time Sound card: SB 1.0 Original price: $4,800.00 I always run 100 to 200 8 minute one-shots with a few dozen MP3 tracks for ambience and all EFX on all the time. No problems whatsoever. Stable as a brick shirthouse. I don't know what all this whining is about from these troubled loners obviously out to drive down the price of SoFo stock. The published minimum specs are a joke! They're way too high. My buddy's got 65 tracks with EFX on Acid running on his TRS-80, and his kid sister scores films with it on her Atari 400. My brother-in-law is just ON acid so, okay, he doesn't count. So the question isn't what's wrong with 3.0--no--the real question is, who needs 4.0???
Subject:RE: stable acid setups: post your specs Reply by: MyST Date:6/15/2002 7:12:50 PM Hey Maruuk... See what you can accomplish by disabling the anti-virus and defragging the hard drive!! (Sorry, the wine was really good tonight.) Later.

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