Subject:I think I might have found my DAW nirvana!

Posted by: billybk

Date:11/2/2006 6:01:27 AM

Well, I received all of my new DAW parts yesterday afternoon @ 1PM (thanks newegg!). I spent the rest of the day putting my new rig together (took a 2 hour dinner break) and had all my hardware & drivers(including my UAD-1's & Delta 66) , OS and even a few apps ( ACID Pro 6 & SONAR PE 6) installed by 11PM. Everything went pretty smoothly and I did not lose anymore of my hair. I did a few stress tests (Sandra 2007 & memtest) and everything appears to be working as it should. I was a little concerned about my 450W PS in the Antec Sonata II case (from some of the reports I've read in various forum threads), but it was not DOA and it has been working like a champ thus far (knock on wood). I just realized reading back through this thread that I installed my RAM incorrectly. I did not install them according the the color code. I put them both in A1 & A2. I'll make that change when I get back home. I paid extra for the PC6400 Dual Channel so I might as well get some benefit out of it, right?
I elected not to install a legacy floppy drive. I permanantly disabled the floppy drive capability in the BIOS. One less device to power and one more free IRQ.
I paid an extra $15 bucks for the on-board firewire capability in the P5B-E over the vanilla P5B. I plugged my stacked 1394a IDE firewire enclosures in and they were immediately recognized and the Sandra hard drive test had them performing data transfers at normal IDE 7200RPM speeds. Well worth the extra $15 clams and I don't have to use up another PCI-E slot.
I am still breaking my baby in and have a lot more apps & plugins yet to install, but thus far I am elated over how well my DAW build went and how much improved performance is compared to my old PIII 1Ghz/512MB DAW. A SONAR 6 project (16 audio tracks, multiple buses and 12 UAD-1 plugins/60%DSP on 2 cards) that was using 70%-80% native CPU on my old DAW is now barely moving the CPU (2%-7%). My UAD-1 plugins don't appear to be using much of any native CPU! Project looping was glitch & drop out free. I got similar results in ACID, as well. Thanks to ACID Pro 6's dual core CPU compatibilty. I think I might have finally found my DAW nirvana.
During my DAW build I put my (2) UAD-1 cards in PCI slots 2 & 3 and my Delta 66, in PCI slot 1. So far I have not noticed any performance problems on playback or export. I still have some more testing to do so this is just preliminary, but so far so good. A Conroe Duo Core/ASUS P5B-E seems to be a great combo for a DAW build especially if you have UAD-1 cards and an existing PCI audio card.

Cheers,

Billy Buck

Subject:RE: I think I might have found my DAW nirvana

Reply by: ricknote

Date:11/2/2006 9:16:19 AM

Billy,
Sounds like a smokin' system. 20 years from now when we're buying 100ghz computers at Walmart for $500 I thinks we'll look back at this time period as the "Great Old West" of recording.
It's a truly exciting time to be doing this!

If you don't already know this, check out "www.musicxp.net" and go to "Tuning Tips" for excellent tweaks for Pro Audio PC's.

All the best,
Rick

Subject:RE: I think I might have found my DAW nirvana!

Reply by: Jeff_Smith

Date:11/2/2006 9:43:37 AM

Was your concern about the PS that it was underpowered or quality control issues? Did you add any acoustic insulation to the case?

Subject:RE: I think I might have found my DAW nirvana

Reply by: pwppch

Date:11/2/2006 10:00:45 AM

In general, we do not support the types of "tweaks" at www.musicxp.net.

Most are fine - turning off menu animation and such- but there are many recommendations that we do not support.

Just a warning, so be careful and document what you do so you can undo what you have done.

If after "tweaking" you run into problems, you should consult our FAQs as many of them will tell you to turn on somehting you turned off.

Peter

Subject:RE: I think I might have found my DAW nirvana!

Reply by: billybk

Date:11/2/2006 10:25:37 AM

Was your concern about the PS that it was underpowered or quality control issues? Did you add any acoustic insulation to the case?


There have been some reports of the Antec PS in the Sonata II's having reliabilty issues recently. But so far my Sonata II 450W PS is working as quiet as a mouse. I did not bother with any extra insulation for the case, as it is rather well built and quiet, as it is.


Cheers,

Billy Buck

Subject:RE: I think I might have found my DAW nirvana

Reply by: billybk

Date:11/2/2006 10:29:23 AM

In general, we do not support the types of "tweaks" at www.musicxp.net.


I agree, with the power of today's dual core CPU's an extra 1% won't make much difference and there are a lot of pitfalls if you go too far. I remember disabling a service several years ago, from a DAW tweak tip site and I could no longer open ACID Pro. I later found out that the Window;s service that I disabled was needed to run ACID. I just stick with the basic DAW tweaks and then leave it be.

Cheers,

Billy Buck

Subject:RE: I think I might have found my DAW nirvana

Reply by: Vocalpoint

Date:11/2/2006 11:20:24 AM

"There have been some reports of the Antec PS in the Sonata II's having reliabilty issues recently."

My Sonata 450 W PSU up and died about 6 weeks ago....it was annoying....one lesson I learned was to not scrimp on the PSU AND have a bloody spare stashed away somewhere. My PSU failure ground my main DAW to a halt for a full two days while I pinpointed the problem.

Your new DAW is gonna draw a lot of power in the coming weeks...might be a good idea to get a real good 550W or higher and stash the 450 Sonata for a spare. Trust me on this one - I have never had a PSU go in 6 years of DAW building - but man - when it did go - it was by far one of the most annoying troubleshooting scenarios I have had to deal with.

Good looking rig BTW!

VP

Subject:RE: I think I might have found my DAW nirvana

Reply by: ATP

Date:11/2/2006 2:31:07 PM

nice rig!

of course, over time you will discover new things you can do in your music that weren't possible on your old system, and eventually you'll run into the ceiling of this new machine's capabilities. then it's upgrade time again. :)

i recently upgraded from an amd xp3000 / audiophile 2496 to an amd x2 4800 / hammerfall 9632 and double the ram. so i'm also still feeling the bliss of newfound power! ;)

Subject:RE: I think I might have found my DAW nirvana

Reply by: nutrapuppy

Date:11/3/2006 1:03:05 PM

I just bailed out of my Dell 9100 Laptop yesterday (too many unexplained issues, IRQ BS, not performing to spec, too heavy to tote around, etc.) and built a new tower rig in a heavy duty old-school case with a P4 Core Duo 1.86 and XP Pro. I came in this morning to test ACID and saw that the new update is available. What are the odds? :)

We also are installing a new server with 1.7 terabytes of storage in a RAID 5 array via gigabit ethernet. Aside from the obvious improvement in performance and workflow with regard to backups, this means the only noise in my studio will be the low-speed ventilation fan, the processor fan, and the C-drive, all of which are remarkably quiet in this fat-ass case.

In short, a lot of welcome improvements in a very short time here. We are so lucky.

BTW, what speed is your new processor, Billy?

Subject:RE: I think I might have found my DAW nirvana

Reply by: billybk

Date:11/3/2006 4:17:08 PM

BTW, what speed is your new processor, Billy?

I have the low end budget Conroe. The E6300 Core Duo is rated @ 1.87Ghz. But even then, with most of the Sandra 2007 CPU performance benchmark tests I've done, the only thing that routinely out performs it are the other higher end Conroe CPU's. Man, these Conroe Duo Cores are blazling fast.

I've got more CPU than I know what to do with! ;-)

Cheers,

Billy Buck

Subject:RE: I think I might have found my DAW nirvana

Reply by: nutrapuppy

Date:11/3/2006 9:35:08 PM

Yeah I got the 6300 on the advice of my tech, and the thing just rips.
Acid crashed the first time I ran the new updated version and opened an old project. I restarted and tried again and it played back nicely. We have a big week of work ahead so I'll be putting the new build through its paces and reporting back dutifully.

One other question...what are we running for video these days? I put an older GeForce2 MX in this box for the time being. Is there anything else recommended for solid 2D performance with low heat and noise?

Subject:RE: I think I might have found my DAW nirvana

Reply by: billybk

Date:11/4/2006 4:47:32 AM

One other question...what are we running for video these days? I put an older GeForce2 MX in this box for the time being. Is there anything else recommended for solid 2D performance with low heat and noise?


I purchased a Sapphire X550 256MB(not shared) PCIE video card.
It is only around 60 bucks or so (newegg) and is extremely quiet (fanless). It has been working great with my ASUS P5B-E MB and the picture is clean & crisp on my 19" LCD monitor using various apps like ACID & SONAR.

Cheers,

Billy Buck