Yo Red... -Sound Forge - PC - MAGIX Community Forums Archive

Subject:Yo Red... Posted by: larryo Date:9/29/2004 10:12:40 AM Not wanting to cause controversy over at Vegas forum, and knowing you hang over at Forge these days, I thought I'd solicit you for the age old opinion. My P3/1 gig/dual drive box tanked, hoping my files still live on D. I'm thinking about updating all my Sony programs (vegas/forge/cd arch), os (98se to xp), cdr's etc to this centuries stuff. Trusting your expertise, what would you reccommend? 1 man show over here, eventual ambition to expand 4 input to maybe 16, likely 8. Appreciate your thoughts...
Subject:RE: Yo Red... Reply by: larryo Date:9/29/2004 10:19:25 AM ...basically, the only thing I'll be keeping are my 2 drives (7200 rpm ide's)...
Subject:RE: Yo Red... Reply by: Rednroll Date:9/29/2004 12:28:26 PM Not 100% sure of what you're asking but I'll give a stab at it, and please feel free to ask further questions if I miss anything. Your hard drives are probably sufficient. I personally use 3 drives. 1 is a 7200rpm EIDE partioned into 2 drives. Partition 1 has my OS, partition 2 has my installed programs. The second drive is another larger 7200 Rpm EIDE drive connected on the same EIDE cord. This I use for temporary storage space and backup. The third drive is a SCSI 10K RPM drive, which needs a seperate PCI SCSI controler card. This drive I use exclusively for recording and working on audio. I'm getting ready to build a new system in the not so distant future, and after comparing the SCSI vs the newer EIDE drives, I'm not seeing as much of a performance difference as I use too and might be considering elliminating the SCSI drive in the new system. But anyways in updating the OS and moving the drives to a different PC, you should be fine in leaving all your data on the seperate drive. I would reformat your OS drive and install XP to that drive, don't do an upgrade install. All your programs will need to be reinstalled if they're located on a seperate drive, since all the registry information associated with them gets whiped out when you reformat. As far as Sound card options, I'm sold on the Echo products. When I purchased my first Echo Gina card, I had the same idea as you to later add more I/O. I later bought the Second Echo Gina card, and they have worked pretty much flawlessly together on the same system with all the Sony apps. So my I/O went from 4in/10out to 8in/20out. I have heard nothing but good reports with different Echo cards installed on the same system. People have used the Echo Layla, with a Mia, or a Gina on the same system, so your I/O expansion possibilities is really only limited by the amount of PCI slots you have available and your budget. I'm actually considering adding a third Gina to my new system. The important part is to whoever you choose for your first sound card purchase, you'll want to remain with that same manufacturer when adding additonal sound cards and be sure their drivers support multiple sound card options. With that also in mind, when you get a new system try to get as many PCI slots as possible and check to see how many of them are "shared" slots. A "shared" slot will cause some performance issues when you start pluging hardware into both slots that share an IRQ. I recommend a mother board made by either Asus, or Abit. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, when it comes to PC's for audio work, I prefer the "roll your own" method. Don't go out and buy a Dell, HP, or Compaq. Getting one of these almost guarantees you will run into upgrade limitations later down the road. I'm not sure what your technical capability is as far as building your own PC, but even if you know nothing about building PC's I would recommend building your own. I didn't know anything about building PC's either when I built my first one, but there's plenty of information to read on the net that will practically give you a step by step guide of how to do it. You basically start with a Processor choice then find a good motherboard that works with that processor and read then just follow along in the Motherboards owners manual in getting the rest of the parts to fit it. Read through this post that I put in the Vegas Video forum trying to assist another Vegas user who seemed to be having some system issues. There are lots of tips on setting your system up for optimal audio performance in that thread. http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=317808&Replies=23&Page=2
Subject:RE: Yo Red... Reply by: larryo Date:9/29/2004 1:53:40 PM Thanks, Red for the in depth response. My current box is a "roll your own" and has served me well. My intention is to keep only my 2 IDEs, delta 44 soundcard (for now), and tower if possible. So essentially I'm looking for recommendations on motherboard, processor, amount of ram, and monitor that'll serve the upgrades in all my Sony products, as well as expandability for future upgrading such as moving into the echo layla. My home facility is mainly for songwriting purposes, but I do find myself stretching out into 20 tracks or so with plugs. That in mind, I really want the mobo/processor that won't choke on that much activity. Thanks again for your expertise...
Subject:RE: Yo Red... Reply by: rraud Date:9/29/2004 4:00:27 PM Be sure to take noise into consideration. There are many new quiet products available; fans, cases, power supplies, drive mounts, ect. Doing a Google search for "Quiet PC" will yeild a lot of sources for info and parts.

Not 100% sure of what you're asking but I'll give a stab at it, and please feel free to ask further questions if I miss anything.

Your hard drives are probably sufficient. I personally use 3 drives. 1 is a 7200rpm EIDE partioned into 2 drives. Partition 1 has my OS, partition 2 has my installed programs. The second drive is another larger 7200 Rpm EIDE drive connected on the same EIDE cord. This I use for temporary storage space and backup. The third drive is a SCSI 10K RPM drive, which needs a seperate PCI SCSI controler card. This drive I use exclusively for recording and working on audio. I'm getting ready to build a new system in the not so distant future, and after comparing the SCSI vs the newer EIDE drives, I'm not seeing as much of a performance difference as I use too and might be considering elliminating the SCSI drive in the new system.

But anyways in updating the OS and moving the drives to a different PC, you should be fine in leaving all your data on the seperate drive. I would reformat your OS drive and install XP to that drive, don't do an upgrade install. All your programs will need to be reinstalled if they're located on a seperate drive, since all the registry information associated with them gets whiped out when you reformat.

As far as Sound card options, I'm sold on the Echo products. When I purchased my first Echo Gina card, I had the same idea as you to later add more I/O. I later bought the Second Echo Gina card, and they have worked pretty much flawlessly together on the same system with all the Sony apps. So my I/O went from 4in/10out to 8in/20out. I have heard nothing but good reports with different Echo cards installed on the same system. People have used the Echo Layla, with a Mia, or a Gina on the same system, so your I/O expansion possibilities is really only limited by the amount of PCI slots you have available and your budget. I'm actually considering adding a third Gina to my new system. The important part is to whoever you choose for your first sound card purchase, you'll want to remain with that same manufacturer when adding additonal sound cards and be sure their drivers support multiple sound card options. With that also in mind, when you get a new system try to get as many PCI slots as possible and check to see how many of them are "shared" slots. A "shared" slot will cause some performance issues when you start pluging hardware into both slots that share an IRQ. I recommend a mother board made by either Asus, or Abit. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, when it comes to PC's for audio work, I prefer the "roll your own" method. Don't go out and buy a Dell, HP, or Compaq. Getting one of these almost guarantees you will run into upgrade limitations later down the road. I'm not sure what your technical capability is as far as building your own PC, but even if you know nothing about building PC's I would recommend building your own. I didn't know anything about building PC's either when I built my first one, but there's plenty of information to read on the net that will practically give you a step by step guide of how to do it. You basically start with a Processor choice then find a good motherboard that works with that processor and read then just follow along in the Motherboards owners manual in getting the rest of the parts to fit it.

Read through this post that I put in the Vegas Video forum trying to assist another Vegas user who seemed to be having some system issues. There are lots of tips on setting your system up for optimal audio performance in that thread.

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=317808&Replies=23&Page=2