Hi Tim, another site you can get a lot of terrific info at is:

www.audioforums.com

Tim Clarke wrote:
>>Hi--please forgive my ignorance, but this info isn't
>>available elsewhere. I would like to turn my 733mhz
>>Pentium III into a pro-level multitrack machine, running
>>Sonic Foundry apps (of course!) to create audio for
>>multimedia, and soundtracks/sfx tracks for .avi files. I'm
>>up on the software but have no idea what is hot in the
>>hardware arena. I'm looking specifically for a nice sound
>>card and complimentary set of monitors (hopefully set up to
>>do 5.1 surround). Is there any value-priced equipment that
>>would allow me to accomplish this?
>>
>>Thanks!

Hi,

Try with the RME cards now are the best sound cards, www.rme-
audio.com, and a good external ADC/DAC like the RME, Lucid, Apogee,
etc.

A dual processor system is a good start (Abit VP6 plus 2 x P3), a
Ultra 160 SCSI host Adapter (Like a Adaptec 29160), and a pair of
Seagate's Chetaah (Best X15), a lot of RAM (Minimum 256 MB), a
Dualhead Video card (Like the Matrox G400) for use two monitors,
Windows 2000 Pro.

>>They're as good or better than
>>comparable size Genelecs (yup, A/B'd them too).

Sure?, what Genelecs?.

Of course, a very good nearfield monitors like Genelec 1030 (Are the
best, almost in Europe), and a good main monitors.

Bye

Hi Tim,

>>>>>>>>>>>>
Digital Audio labs has a nice 2 channel audio card. You can
install multiple cards and have them be sample synchronous for
multi-channel audio. Their drivers are a little flakey but the
D/A and A/D conversion is on par and measurably better than multi-
thousand dollar Apogee converters (I know, I measured them both).
I have a Card Deluxe in my dual 500 MHz PIII and it works pretty
well with Vegas (occasionaly problems, but tolerable).

I did have CardDeluxe in my system also (700MHz PIII), and had plenty
of flakiness with both Sound Forge and Vegas, such as just plain
stopping recording, failing to restart record after pause in Vegas,
and program exceptions killing Forge when hitting record at a
different sampling rate than the card had been set to by Vegas.

I recently replaced it with RME DIGI96PST card from www.jdsound.com.
RME is at www.rme-audio.com/english. Problems Forge and Vegas have
now disappeared.

I've also purchased RME products from www.sfb.net in Netherlands,
very reliable. Their Hammerfall series might be more what you're
looking for, re multichannel.

Regards,

Rick Z

I asked our system engineer about this, and he claimed that the
absolutely fastest affordable system would be 4 RAIDed EIDE drives.
Anyone feel like opposing that?

A little warning about Win2K: It's stable but slow. Also, if you wish
to use some sort of MIDI gear for MTC or whatever, make sure to pick
hardware that has specific Win2K drivers. NT drivers might handle it,
but dedicated Win2K drivers are safest.

Hello,

Try with the EES PC-MIDI ST , great product with real Win2K suport
(And NT), 2 midi in, 4 midi out and LTC in/out, MTC to SMPTE, and
cheap.
http://www.ees-musik.de/frames/gb/com_intf.htm

Bye

P.D. Forget of any USB to MIDI device for PC, read this:
http://www.rme-audio.de/english/techinfo/lola/usbkills.htm

Johan Althoff wrote:
>>I asked our system engineer about this, and he claimed that the
>>absolutely fastest affordable system would be 4 RAIDed EIDE drives.
>>Anyone feel like opposing that?
>>
>>A little warning about Win2K: It's stable but slow. Also, if you
wish
>>to use some sort of MIDI gear for MTC or whatever, make sure to
pick
>>hardware that has specific Win2K drivers. NT drivers might handle
it,
>>but dedicated Win2K drivers are safest.

The drivers can be troublesome, but the hands-down superior quality
of the A/D and D/A conversion was my driving factor. They really
do compare better than very expensive external Apogee converters.

Rick Zentmeyer wrote:
>>Hi Tim,
>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>Digital Audio labs has a nice 2 channel audio card. You can
>>install multiple cards and have them be sample synchronous for
>>multi-channel audio. Their drivers are a little flakey but the
>>D/A and A/D conversion is on par and measurably better than multi-
>>thousand dollar Apogee converters (I know, I measured them both).
>>I have a Card Deluxe in my dual 500 MHz PIII and it works pretty
>>well with Vegas (occasionaly problems, but tolerable).
>> >>
>>I did have CardDeluxe in my system also (700MHz PIII), and had
plenty
>>of flakiness with both Sound Forge and Vegas, such as just plain
>>stopping recording, failing to restart record after pause in Vegas,
>>and program exceptions killing Forge when hitting record at a
>>different sampling rate than the card had been set to by Vegas.
>>
>>I recently replaced it with RME DIGI96PST card from
www.jdsound.com.
>>RME is at www.rme-audio.com/english. Problems Forge and Vegas have
>>now disappeared.
>>
>>I've also purchased RME products from www.sfb.net in Netherlands,
>>very reliable. Their Hammerfall series might be more what you're
>>looking for, re multichannel.
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Rick Z

Hi

Brett Crockett wrote:
>>The drivers can be troublesome, but the hands-down superior quality
>>of the A/D and D/A conversion was my driving factor. They really
>>do compare better than very expensive external Apogee converters.

What converters from Apogee?, are you sure?, How do you test the
diferences between the ADC DAC? I think that you are in a big big
mistake.

>>D/A and A/D conversion is on par and measurably better than multi-
>>thousand dollar Apogee converters

How do you measure?, With your Event PS/8?.

Bye

Tim,

I'm sorta new to all this myself and if you are looking to do 5.1
stuff i'd recommend an echo audio card like the gina or darla for a
small budget. they have 2 ch in but 8 ch out. or you could splurge and
go for the layla. the delta 1010 from m-audio will work great also.
this way you with any of these you should be able to use some
softencode program to create a DolbyDigital stream and play it out the
digi outputs of the card to a 5.1 decoder.

And i'd really recommend checking out Steinbergs Nuendo. I saw an
hour long demo of this program at the AES show and it kicks ass. and
its only like $1200. A much cheaper and multiple card friendly option
than ProTools.

Hint to sonic foundry - it would really kick ass if you could
integrate 5.1 audio stuff into VegasVideo.

You figure for $5k you could get a nice $1000 audio card, $1200 nuendo
and spend the other $2800 on a nice set of monitors ~$2k, and an $800
receiver (onkyo, denon, pioneer, etc). That total is the price of
plugins for friggin doing 5.1 on protools.

drop me a line if you want to chat more. i'm into similar things as
you, I think, just don't have the cash for it all now.

jason
bigbad_j@yahoo.com

Tim Clarke wrote:
>>Hi--please forgive my ignorance, but this info isn't
>>available elsewhere. I would like to turn my 733mhz
>>Pentium III into a pro-level multitrack machine, running
>>Sonic Foundry apps (of course!) to create audio for
>>multimedia, and soundtracks/sfx tracks for .avi files. I'm
>>up on the software but have no idea what is hot in the
>>hardware arena. I'm looking specifically for a nice sound
>>card and complimentary set of monitors (hopefully set up to
>>do 5.1 surround). Is there any value-priced equipment that
>>would allow me to accomplish this?
>>
>>Thanks!

Hi Jesus,
I know it's hard to believe but as they say, "Don't believe the
hype." I tested the new Apogee AD-8000 (along with just about
every converter you can buy). A full suite of tests were done using
an Audio Precision tester. The Card Deluxe came out on top.
What can I say.
Brett

Jesus Ramallo wrote:
>>Hi
>>
>>Brett Crockett wrote:
>>>>The drivers can be troublesome, but the hands-down superior
quality
>>>>of the A/D and D/A conversion was my driving factor. They really
>>>>do compare better than very expensive external Apogee converters.
>>
>>What converters from Apogee?, are you sure?, How do you test the
>>diferences between the ADC DAC? I think that you are in a big big
>>mistake.
>>
>>>>D/A and A/D conversion is on par and measurably better than multi-
>>>>thousand dollar Apogee converters
>>
>>How do you measure?, With your Event PS/8?.
>>
>>Bye

Johan Althoff wrote:

>>I asked our system engineer about this, and he claimed that the
>>absolutely fastest affordable system would be 4 RAIDed EIDE drives.
>>Anyone feel like opposing that?

Yep. We tried RAID and ripped it out because it seriously degraded
the performance of Vegas Pro. With Vegas, the multiple audio streams
apparently increased seek time to each of the multiple RAID drives to
the point of seriously degrading performance. You might find that
RAID will work better capturing a single Video stream than with
multiple audio streams, but you will also likely do much better by
investing in a SCSI subsystem and foregoing IDE RAID for the proposed
type of system.

The upside is that if you should try RAID and find that it does not
work as you would expect ... and it likely won't ... the purchased
RAID IDE drives make nice, big storage drives. :)

>>A little warning about Win2K: It's stable but slow.

Not if you toss enough memory at it, and use Professional instead of
Server. With 256MB RAM, all my Win2K Pro machines are no slower than
the Win9x boxes.

>> Also, if you wish use some sort of MIDI gear for MTC or whatever,
make sure to pick hardware that has specific Win2K drivers. NT
drivers might handle it, but dedicated Win2K drivers are safest.
And beware of USB bus MIDI ports ... they can play hell with PCI bus
traffic and cause audio glitches with some cards.

The problem I see with this thread is that the original poster mixed
what are most often mutually exclusive desires/pursuits ... "pro-
level multitrack machines" and "value-priced equipment".

KAC ...