Setting Up Your First 64-Bit Digital Audio Workstation

[jbrandonbb]

[citation][nom]isadobereaderfree[/nom]Instead, it feels like something the neighborhood punk cooked up to record him and his friends.[/citation]

Whew, good. That was what I was going for.

 

[jbrandonbb]

[citation][nom]ProDigit80[/nom]If you are so picky about making the least fan and disk noise etc.., and the least latency, then why the hell did you use Vista????Vista is known for lots of latency bugs and issues![/citation]

Mainly because the only other option was recommending XP. It is an interesting discussion. I know Vista has a bad rep, and I am not going to defend it here. What I will say is that I was uncomfortable recommending a very old OS for this because, more and more, software, plug-ins, drivers and such are Vista 64-bit, not XP 64-bit.

[citation][nom]ProDigit80[/nom]Also, a single 7200 or even a modern 5200rpm HD is fast enough for recording several tracks at a time!I use a seagate HD, which is very silent, has 1TB of diskspace, and can read/write upto around 20MB/s (which is the fastest my old computer can handle). That's good enough for about 10 tracks recording in 48Khz 16 bit, or 6 tracks recording in 48khz 24bit, while you can have an additional 20 or so midi tracks playback rythms or other things.If that's not fast enough, I'm sure 2 of these in RAID will give you more than enough![/citation]

I agree, invest in several options for HDD. I have already run out of space on my primary drive.

 

[jbrandonbb]

[citation][nom]siunit[/nom]Disappointing article! There is no direct 32-64 bit comparison for each sound card, so how are we supposed to compare performance? Plus you could have tested so many more things such as total loadable plugins, offline processing times for processes such as normalisation and dithering, input latency for multitrack recording and maximum track count to name a few. Could be a good article with more technical exploration! Plus the interface's used are cheap at best. What about pro hardware such as a Digi 192?Mac is king for audio though, just go to any professional recording studio around the world and you will see a Mac Pro & Pro Tools rig. I have both an uber gaming desktop [i7 920 + GTX 295] and a Mac Pro [Octo core 2.26 12GB RAM] and both aren't without their issues. The main reason I stick with the mac for music is epic software support [Logic ], solid drivers and industry standard software/hardware. Every single audio professional in the world chooses them for a reason, not just because they are pretty. that_was_a_fail is talking nonsense! Show me any PC that can handle 16 threads simultaneously and I'll eat my hat. If anything they were inferior as G4's I've had a G3, G4, G5 and Mac Pro and the relative performance jump is insane now they have switched from crappy IBM to Intel chips. Rant over[/citation]


Just did not have time to test everything. Your benchmark suggestions sound good. Mac, I agree --- but too expensive.

 

[jeffunit]

"Every expert I have talked to has said 64-bit has a wider path for memory, runs a bit faster, and can access a lot more RAM."

Your experts are clueless.
1) memory path is a hardware thing. Some processors and chipsets
support 64 bit paths, independent of the os. My c2d notebooks only support 64 bit paths, but my desktop amd phenom II supports either 64 or 128 bit paths, which is selectable via the bios. Most xeons and opertons support 64 or 128 bit memory
paths, via bios settings. Nothing to do with the processor being in 32 or 64 bit mode, or the OS being run.

2) As for the "run a bit faster", it is true if you recompile your code for a 64 bit OS, using a 64 bit compiler, then you will have twice as many registers to use, and will often see speed improvements. Though the generated code is also bigger, which will slow things down a bit.

How many commercial apps come compiled for a 64 bit OS?

Personally, I write much of my own software, and I recompile it on 64 bit linux and see performance improvements. But saying "run a bit faster" is bull in general.
If you are going to claim it is faster, I expect to see benchmarks backing up the claim.

3) It is true that it is easier for a 64 bit system to access over 4gb of ram. There are ways for 32 bit windows to access lots of ram (since the pentium pro days, using PAE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension, though it is a bit slow. But, who needs 4gb of ram for DAW?
If the most you need is 1 or 2gb, it simply doesn't matter.

 

[darley]

How will Windows 7 effect latency. I just got a new system that has Vista. I am wondering if I should wipe it and install Windows 7 RC or just downgrade to XP. I would really like to use all 6GB of my RAM.

 

[pocketdrummer]

[citation][nom]wotan56[/nom]Audio recording on a PC? Fail. a Mac has far better software support for Pro Audio applications. Far better. Plus it's already fully 64 bit - no guessing game as to whether or not a piece of hardware will work, or if the drivers are 64 bit or not.Further, they are whisper quiet from the factory, have all the necessary firewire ports already, and OS X has a far better audio driver stack implementation than Windows could ever dream of.Heck, even Linux is a better choice than Windows for pro audio applications lol!! Several pro audio vendors have released their apps on Linux now, and even sell Linux-based recording stations.[/citation]


Have you honestly tried recording on linux? What programs are available? What Plugins? You can't honestly think that linux is a more viable solution than windows for recording...

 

[pocketdrummer]

[citation][nom]gufz[/nom]this is all wrong you guys. i've been waiting a long time for toms's to take a little care of systems built for pro audio and recording studios and this isn't that at all.please, use some REAL audio interfaces, you can't play a rig whit 13ms of lag and you can get 2 ms whitout any glitches. It's not about windows audio subsystem, is abuot the ASIO drivers of the audio interface. you can use a little information there.you could also give some benchs related for example, to do an audio mixdown in cubase, and how much time it takes in a phenom, c2d, i7, etc.please take it seriously. use people who really work whit DAWsthanks for everythingAugustowww.mclrecords.com[/citation]

Ha, someone actually thumbed this down. Ugh, fanboys.

He's right. This review doesn't give you any information at all about the real performance this setup would offer. The recording setup just doesn't make sense. What exactly was the purpose of connecting to the Great River MP-500NV? Just to get your hands on an $800 preamp that is irrelevant to the review?

Such a disappointment Tom.

 

[Guest]

Good initiative to see an article about Pro audio/DAW.
Many criticize the writer, but as he sad, this is an article about how he set up his DAW. But that type of informaton can be had from other places.
I'm eagerly waiting for the stuff that has been pushed out from many test here at Toms: Including benchmarks for pro audio stuff when benchmarking CPU;s, memory and motherboards. It's mainly about benching loads of games, some office stuff and some video and mp3 encoding mostly.
The people who really need benchmarks are the ones using the PC to record music with loads of effect and virtual instruments. Sometimes we combine it with real-time video effects and when doing that it is the most system hungry thing in the world.
As an amateur musician I really feel that we are left out when it comes to benchmarks, which is strange since we benefit infinitely more than a gamer or normal consumer, who doesn't really need to use a Quad Core CPU!!!

 

[jrfc]

"Several pro audio vendors have released their apps on Linux now, and even sell Linux-based recording stations."

Name it please. Digidesign? Steinberg? Waves?

Come on, get real.

 

[jrfc]

I really don't know if software requirements are so high these days. I used to work with Cakewalk ver. 5 when it was only for 8 audio channels. I had a GINA / Echo Audio 8 channel audio card. Had a Pentium II. And everything worked fine. Right know, i have a Protools setup, working with a recent upgraded AMD 64X2 processor, 3 SATA drives and 3 GB of ram. The previous processor was an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ barton-core processor, an i had a wonderful time using it.

The point is, audio hasn't changed that much in all these years. Still a lot of people work in 44.1 - 48 KHz / 16 or 20 bit recording environments. Unless you want to record at very high sample rates for high-resolution audio, say 96KHz /24 bit, AND use some plug-ins at THAT sample rate, you can work with any actual and decent PC or MAC config. Of course, the more you have, the more you can do with it.

Also, people often tend to buy or want lots of processing power, or ram because they have wrong technical skills when it comes to mix or edit music. If you can't use 12 reverbs in real time, unless you really need it, you can always work by doing some offline procesing, bouncing tracks, etc.

 

[Guest]

"Also, people often tend to buy or want lots of processing power, or ram because they have wrong technical skills when it comes to mix or edit music. If you can't use 12 reverbs in real time, unless you really need it, you can always work by doing some offline procesing, bouncing tracks, etc."


Epic fail. I buy a DAW with lots of processing power because I don't want to have to bounce or freeze tracks, ever... Yes, I did it in the single core CPU days because I had to, but since the inception of the quad, I haven't had to ever bounce or freeze a track. So why wouldn't I buy a quad, they're not even that expensive? In the year 2009, the difference between a dual-core and quad-core setup is about $100...

 

[Guest]

Oh, and in regards to CPUs and latency, here are some benchmarks:

http://www.adkproaudio.com/benchmarks.cfm

Please bare in mind, this guy has barely updated these benchmarks since I first saw them in like 2005(check out Pentium Ds being benched at the bottom). Do you notice that faster and more modern CPUs can achieve lower latency and/or more VST plugins in real-time without dropouts? Do you notice that nothing else is really even a factor other than CPU power? It would be awesome if Tom's would do some benchmarks like these, since this guy's list is far from comprehensive, and I have no idea what's up with all-Intel chart at the top. The 2nd benchmark is the only one that includes modern AMD CPUs, and it shows them doing quite well, at that.

PS: That guy is a boutique builder for audio PCs, I'd still recommend you build your own, but I'd recommend him over a Mac

 

[basken]

A few comments. You can forget about linux entirely if you are on the "pro" side of the business. Lack of plugins, no support for DSP cards and sparse driver-support for pro-audio cards simply rules this out no matter how much better and superior it looks on the "specs" page. For a little bedroom recording it might be fine, but for real work, it simply doesn't cut it .. sorry!

The windows audio system isn't an issue, since all pro-audio applications bypass this entirely, running an audio api call ASIO. All decent audio machines should be able to obtain a latency of 128bytes / 3ms @ 44,1khz - anything above that, and the feel of playing software instruments will be off - at least thats my experience as a professional piano-player (professional as in working in the industry and records, ect).

Your primary concern is selecting tried and tested hardware and tuning your system so no services / drivers will interrupt the flow to and from the audio-card. A single glitch cause by a pci-bandwidth-greedy netcard can ruin a perfect recording, that might never happen again.

I wish Toms Hardware would include a pro-audio test in their standard reviews of motherboards - that would be a very generous gift to the audio community.

Testing latency and stability with a pro-audio card (perhaps an RME Fireface or RME 9652(e) or something similar). Often its a massive gamble to assemble an audio workstation that will run smoothly, and alot of the times it boils down to how the mobo-manufacturer laid out their IRQ lines; which components share IRQs and did they pick the right firewire chipsets, NICs, ect ect ..

/Rune/

 

[ossie]

Another amateurish article (at best)... in tone with the newer TH "traditions".
Even if "latency" appears in both RAM and audio subsystem characteristics descriptions, there really isn't any connection at all. The rest of this so called DAW(?) assembly description isn't even worth commenting.
Probably the only criteria to publish such rubbish was the windblow$ usage as rt"o$".

How about an article about DMCA "copyright protection circumventing" by shortcutting the vi$hta DRM with low latency third party ASIO drivers?

 

[Guest]

@basken: Linux is suitable for pro audio if you're using Reaper in WINE with a Alsa-compatible soundcard, and nearly all VST plugins work in WINE. Ableton Live works in WINE if you install the Mono framework(Windows version) into WINE first. I haven't tried any other hosts, but those 2 perform quite well, no complaints here. As far as native Linux, you're right, there's just not enough out there...

 

[basken]

@linux_can_do_proaudio: I'm sure what you describe is possible, but is there any advantage in virtualizing a windows enviroment under linux, rather than running reaper in its "native" world? It smells like trouble to me, and trouble is not what you want in a studio when working with clients and such .. Also - there is still no support for UAD-1/2, Powercore, Duende, ect ect ..

The ideology of free software is sympatethic, and if it was up to the task i would definitely jump on it, but i don't feel its quite ready for primetime just yet .. just my 2 cents

 

[Guest]

Baken: WINE stands for

Wine
Is
Not an
Emulator

It's not virtualizing anything, it does run Windows applications natively by recreating the Windows System32(and etc...) dlls in Linux. If you compile wine yourself with the "--native" flag, it can actually run slightly faster than windows, since the new faux Windows system folder will be optimized for your exact processor, whereas only certain parts of the Windows system folder are JIT compiled and optimized. You can also compile your own kernel for your CPU's architecture, as well as enabling real-time kernel, which is superior to Windows or OSX for the ability to generate low latency(picking the right kernel version to compile can be tricky, it's always a crapshoot).

It does come down to user ability to set it up, as well as hardware compatibility, but I assure you it's rock solid, reliable and can perform similarly or even better than Windows/OSX, the only caveat is that it's harder to setup.

 

[knutjb]

Some of the commentators missed the point, who is the audience, entry level and nothing more. Concept is ok, implementation is obviously debatable. He did use what HE had available to him. So what, it's an entry level home thing not a pro studio operation.

I would like to see more advanced audio/video stories instead of just gamers but that is costly. Toms would need to see if there is a base to justify those expenses, I think there is but I'm not footing the bill.

For the any video card will do guy, how many monitors do you use? I prefer 2 at a minimum 3 or 4 is even better when properly set up, try it. Also if you were writing stuff for TV you could pass an all digital signal to a HDTV, your vintage S3 can't do that.

Reality, the world is going 64 bit and I wish companies would get over 32 bit, not just the music industry. Because 32 bit has been around so long and programmers are so use to having to be frugal with memory, 64 bit radically changes that paradigm and people don't like to have to change, they like what they know.

I don't think you can have too much storage, memory, cpu and gpu power for any job given the available capacities at such a reasonable cost, even those on a tight budget.

 

[Guest]

@knutjb: I think alot of the people in the comments section feel that his choices were bad because he could've easily saved money on the unnecessary bits(the gamer motherboard and aftermarket heatsink), and spent the money on a better CPU, and wound up with a superior system for the same price. Quad-core was shunned by all but the "bragging-rights" crew when it first came out, but the audio world saw it as a holy grail, for the first time ever, no need to bounce or freeze tracks to free up CPU. There's nothing more "pro" than spending an extra $100 on a CPU so that you don't spend countless hours of your studio time bouncing and freezing, whilst your CPU is always on the verge of dropping the audio buffer.

If an entry level person can get either an adequate and future-proof machine, or just a borderline machine, are you suggesting that they should get the borderline machine just because they're entry level? Why not get something that's essentially future proof?

 

[mitch074]

[citation][nom]to-pse[/nom]> has zero latencyThat's bull - no system has zero latency - not even DSP-based ProTools.All soundcard-hardware has at least 32 samples of latency.[/citation]

I meant, zero latency caused by the OS - of COURSE you'll always have latency caused by various system elemens! However, harware latency is usually stable with little or no latency (don't forget to fine-tune your PCI bus latency in BIOS if your sound card is PCI-based, for example), so it can be compensated for (that's what fine tuning is about). However, while there's no way to completely remove hardware latency (if only for physical reasons), there's a way to remove software latency - by allowing real time access to the hardware.

The NT kernel is NOT real time capable: even XP, which allowed direct access to the hardware, didn't preclude kernel preemtion. Vista, which does not allow such access without dedicated drivers and APIs, introduces far more latency for purely software reasons, and also doesn't preclude kernel preemption.

But Linux can be made to PREVENT preemption on a process requiring real time access! Real time means that the process has full access to the CPU and other devices and won't be forced to relinquish these accesses even if other processes require CPU time (yes, this is inherently a kernel process' schedulerproblem, see); this is where a quad core actually makes sense, in that Linux cal allow a process to run in real time on a CPU and piece of hardware, and let the three other cores ready to deal with the rest:
- audio filters and processors
- memory and hard disk controller
- GUI
Now, hardware may have 32 samples of latency, but stop me if I'm wrong, 32 samples on 96,000 Hz single channel audio is a 1/3000th of a second, or a third of a millisecond.
Windows' kernel latency is around 13 millisecond, to be added to whatever latency the software running on top of it is.
Linux' -rt latency is zero.

While not all plugins run on Linux, there are enough professional-grade mixing software there that people actually use it professionally - if only because it has the lowest latency broadly available out there, without costing an arm and a leg: in fact, it's free.

One doesn't look at a given horse's mouth; but when said free horse is in perfect health and runs faster than a paid-for horse, then maybe one should.

 

[tomernatorII]

vista 64-bit over XP-64 bit? RAM support is up to 16 GB.

 

[Corporate_goon]

[citation][nom]jbrandonbb[/nom]Whew, good. That was what I was going for.[/citation]

Yes, actually, I've recorded two albums with it under Vista x64 and had no issues at all.

And your statements about 64bit software and hardware wasn't "there are lots of options out there, but some of the support is flakey", it was "these things don't exist".

Emu's 64bit drivers are fine. Reaper x64 works well. Sonar has been 64bit for ages and works OK, but 32bit is generally more reliable. Again, you weren't talking about reliability, you were making broad statements about these options not existing.

 

[Corporate_goon]

Sorry, I quoted the wrong post. I was replying to: "Have you tested that interface? Because I tested it quite a bit and it definitely does not work very well with Vista 64-bit."

I've used the 0404 and 1820 under Vista 64. Emu has 64bit drivers available for all of their current hardware.

 

[Computer_Lots]

Man, this artical seems written for a much less tech-savy person than the typical Toms crowd.

 

[noobinberg]

Umm...for some reason I have no option to quote so I copied the text.

"Audio recording on a PC? Fail. a Mac has far better software support for Pro Audio applications. Far better. Plus it's already fully 64 bit - no guessing game as to whether or not a piece of hardware will work, or if the drivers are 64 bit or not.

Further, they are whisper quiet from the factory, have all the necessary firewire ports already, and OS X has a far better audio driver stack implementation than Windows could ever dream of.

Heck, even Linux is a better choice than Windows for pro audio applications lol!! Several pro audio vendors have released their apps on Linux now, and even sell Linux-based recording stations."

While it's true that Macs have been in the DAW game for a long time...they're just too expensive...considering the thousands of dollars already required for hardware and instruments I'd cut that $3,000+ price tag for the Mac down to 1/3 by using windows or linux...speaking of linux I am attracted by the $0 price tag however, I use Waves Diamond plugin bundle and would be concerned about not being able to run it...I'm going to install Ubuntu Studio and test Waves on Ardour maybe it will work. they say they can handle VST plugins so I'll cross my fingers...if not I still have Sonar Producer Edition and Windows XP and have not had any problems yet...well, aside from the occasional crash when I use AutoTune...LOL.

Thanx for the DAW article Tom's,

berg records