Category: Geeks r Us
Hi, I was wanting to get some input on how this desktop configuration would work with Sonar... I am going to a career center for music, and I was wanting to make sure that this PC would be fast enough to record from just me laying down tracks, to a full band. Also, with this configuration, does anyone know if I will have the full capabilities as some one using pro tools on a mac would? Also, is voice over compatible with proTools?
Specks are below...
Desktop Computer
Components
1. Case: Silverstone PJ07 (Quiet, has four ninety millimeter fans for cooling, and vibration resistant. If your recording, you want to have everything as quiet as possible…)
2. Intel QX9650 Processor 3.0 GHZ (Fast processor, that can handle recording equipment running in to it.)
3. Asus Maximus Extreme Motherboard. (Has several ports, and has PCE 2.0 Support.)
4. Any four GB Memory Kit.
5. 7200 RPM 200 GB Internal Hard drive (Multi Track Recordings take up a large amount of space)
6. Use motherboard video card
7. DVDRW drive
8. Secondary soundcard for jaws
9. Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse…
Windows XP Pro
Audio Interface:
Mackie 1604-VLZ Pro 16-Channel Mixer
Features
• Comprehensive mixing, automation, editing and navigation tools for DAWs
• 8 x 100mm motorized touch-sensitive channel faders, one master fader
• Dedicated controls for pan, solo, mute and select functions on each channel; tactile control for four bands of parametric EQ
• Shortcut keys for various popular audio software applications
• 8 balanced XLR analog mic/line inputs with high quality mic preamps
• Phantom power and inserts on every channel
• 24-bit/96kHz A/D and D/A converters; full 96kHz operation on all analog I/O channels with compatible DAW software
• 8 channels of ADAT lightpipe, stereo S/PDIF inputs and outputs.
• 8 analog outputs, allowing connection of L/R and 5.1 surround matrices
• Dedicated headphone output
• 4 MIDI inputs, four MIDI outputs
• Word Clock in and out jacks
• Assignable footswitch jack
• Up to 18 simultaneous inputs
• Compatible with a wide variety of popular DAW applications
• Also available: FE-8 (8-channel sidecar) expands FW-1884 with 8 additional channel control strips
Thanks, your opinions would really be appreciated.
Chris Harrington
The only thing I'd likely change is number 5 5. 7200 RPM 200 GB Internal Hard drive (Multi Track Recordings take up a large amount of space) Absolutely agree, and because hard drives are so cheap these days why not go with a 500gb drive to save having to move things around later. I do a good bit of recording, and will tell you I put a 400gb drive in this machine a year ago, and had to purchased an external drive within 8 months. Other wise looks good.
Looks great, but I agree with the poster above. Hard drives aren't that expensive, and 200 GB really isn't that big of a drive.
You can get a 2tb external storage for around $200 and it'll take care of your storage needs for a long time to come. There might be a slight performance boost from getting a 10000 RPM hard drive, although I think the buffer whilst writing to hard drive should not be too much of a concern for you with 4gb of ram. What is the FSB speed of the processor and is it single or dual core? I'd go with a quad core and we had better experience with AMD whilst recording, due to its high Frton Side Bus speed. That being said, I think you'll find this adequte for your needs. Once you ahve 15 or 20 tracks though you may run into trouble, we've had some crashing issues with Sonar, but we think it is the drivers for the Firepods (our audio interface) rather than a Windows or hardware related issue. Make sure your firmware for the audio interface is up-to-date, it can save a lot of head aches.
good luck
-B
Ok. I'm with Wildebrew on this issue, except I'd do a second internal drive, since you're running a desktop. In otherwords, keep the 200GB for the operating system, and all software, and the second drive, preferably a 1TB drive, you would use for audio. Partition the first 700GB for your projects, 200GB for mixes, and the rest, simply for incidental stuff that you might want to store. Put this second drive into a removeable caddy, that way you can easily swap another out if you want to. Do not record audio on the same disk drive as your system, no matter what you do.
Also, the Tascam 1884 is a decent interface, but the preamps in it aren't so hot. Consider buying a Presonus FireStudio and, if you want a conrol surface, you can buy one of those as well, but I'm not a big fan of the way the Tascam sounds.
Also, make sure you get decent nearfield monitors for your system. I like the KRK Rockets. You can get the 5-inch model if space is a concern.
Don't keep the stock cooler on the cpu - try to watercool things if you can.
I'm with jessie on the drives; have a nice system drive for the os and vst's (one of the bigger raptors or something like that) and then get as was said before a 1tb storage drive.
I would get one of those caddies that slot into 3.5 bays so that you can remove the drive with out having to open the case - hooking it up via usb / fw just makes more mess.
As to which 1tb drive, i've just bought 2 samsung spinpoints which I love.
When buying the ram and the board, think about the future: can the board take 8gb? when looking for memory, try and get 2 2gb sticks so you don't have to ditch all the memory when you upgrade; although if your concerned about the speed of the newer memory this might not matter that much.
Talk on msn if you have any questions or post here.
Hi,
I am rather new at the whole recording thing, so sorry if I sound like an idiot. I'm not trying to... Can you use a macky board for an audio interface? Tanks!
No. You cannot use a Mackie board for an audio interface. Also, I have to differ with B3N. Don't water cool your computer. Those systems make more mess than necessary. I've recorded vocals in the same room with my Mac laptop which is running Windows while the computer was running with the fan at full throttle. It was fine. Save your money.
Get a Firestudio as your interface. Good stuff.
yes you can use a mackie board as an interface you have to get the additional firewire card for it though which if I am not mistaken is another couple hundred dollars. As for HD space i say if you can get one of those 74 GB raptor disc for your os and programinstalls and use the second (preferabley bigger than 200 gigs) for the data drive .. 1TB drives are under $100 now and 2 TB are around $200. Also def go quad core if you can on th eprocessor. If you can swing it go for one of the newere intell I7 processors but then you will have to re do the ram scheme and go with 6 gigs in stead of 4 as those processors requires ram in sets of 3's and not 2's like current processors . if you stick with the 3.0 GHz though make sure you can add more ram down the road. and try to get your ram speed as close to the speed of the FSB as possible for maxinum performance. also as an interface/control surface solution check out the edirol M 16DX and Cakewalk just announced the V studio 100 that looks nice but I can't remember if its 8 ins or 16. Either way both work with sonar out of the box and the Edirol M 16DX canbe had for under $300 .
The only Mackie boards which you can use as interfaces are the smaller format Onyx boards, not the VLZ3 series.
the onyx boards are interfaces out of the box. the vlz series are standard mixers but i do believe you can by a firewire add on card for them to convert them into audio interfaces.
No. There are two onyx lines. One line is actual mixers which you need to buy a firewire card for, such as the Onyx 1640, and the other is straight up audio interfaces, like the Onyx Satilite, and Onyx 800. There are no mixers on these interfaces.
I don't have a clue about recording, but as an owner of a raptor drive, while I love it, it sounds like there's a hamster in there running on it's wheel, that would likely cause too much extra noise if you're going to be recording. I do however agree that you're best having a small system drive separate to any data storage drive. the OS works far better with as little data as possible on the drive.
Hi all, Thanks for all of the suggestions. lol. My school district decided to get me sound forge to use for professional recording. I've gotta laugh at that one... Butt Oh well.
Thanks a lot...
Sound Forge is great if you just want to do stereo recording, for that price they might as well gotten you adobe Audition. Atleast then you could of done multi tracking and stereo recording
You'd think, but then again my school districts cheap as hell anyway... lol. I've been using the same laptop for five years...
a 5 year old laptop .. lets hope you wont be trying to do much with the latest version of sound forge on that lol
Yeah. The latest is a dog!
Very nice, I'd agree with post 2 that 200 gb is nothing howadays. I have a 320 in this laptop and have hardly any free. It is good that you ahve a workstation that has xp pro, quite a pain to find xp pro operable on a newer machine. If that box is going to be stationary, then no problem, but if you are going to setup a studio type setting, that sounds good. Secondary sound device sounds like a good idea as well, but for now my macky acts like that and jaws doesn't interfear anyway.
I use the macky pro fx 12 12 channel mixer and love it. Can pretty much do everything from the board without hardly any software intervention other than to mix down my tracks :p. If running xp pro I'd use adobe audition but when using vista there really is no good option. Cakewalk is very spotty at best even with the old jaws scripts. I never could get sonar to work and there is another app called sonic something, I have yet to try that.
I'd love to know if anyone can help me pinpoint a few select soundfonts. if you are interested, please contact me because I can't seem to get in contact with the original author.
I'd also agree with post 2, and get a larger hard drive.
To Post 19:
I disagree, you can indeed find XP Pro systems, its just not easy, as you said. You have to get a system from a smaller vendor such as Puget Custom Computers, whose url is: http://www.pugetsystems.com. I'm unsure if they'll put in more than one soundcard for the machine, but they might, if you ask.
If you're using a firewire interface, or USB2, ya'll are gonna hate what I have to say, but here goes. Windows Vista actually handles those busses better han XP does. It is closer to how the Mac handles audio, although not quite as wonderful, however, don't be afraid of Vista for audio. Just don't be afraid to tweak it.
I'd say, if the original poster is gonna have an external hard drive, move to ESATA. It offers transfer speeds of 2-3 gbps, if the hard drives are fast enough. Keep in mind, that a drive with the 2-3 connections, usb2, firewire 800, and ESATA is gonna be expensive.
But I feel its worth the money, I'd say get a 1-2 tb drive, if you can aford it.
2 things
to post 19.. Sonar works great but its one of those that you need a second soundcard for if you are using jaws. Sonar basically grabs the sound card its assigned for it self and wont let other apps use it at the same time while Sonar is in focus hence why it probably didn't work great for you when you tired it. So i could see why it may not had worked well for you if you are using a mixer hooked up to your soundcard for stereo mixdowns. What i and pretty much everyone else that uses Sonar does (whether using a screen reader or not) is have their windows sound and screen reader use the built in soundcard that comes with their system, and have a separate recording soundcard or aka interface, that sonar uses exclusively. Audition and Sound Forge isn't as unfriendly about sharing the soundcard with other apps when they are in focus hence why jaws works fine with these without out their own dedicaded sound card.. but trust me the performance goes up with dedicaded soundcard especially if multi tracking in audition for example... Oh and that program named Sonic something... I think you may actually be thinking of Sound Forge as it was originally made by a company called Sonic Foundry, before it got bought out by Sony.
To post 22
I agree about vista but you also should optimize your XP machine as well for recording. And you get even better performance by going Vista 64 than you would using regular Vista 32. I think once the JSonar scripts goes 64 bit i will make the jump myself as Jaws and Sonar are already 64 bit compatible.
Definitely. Me too! MacBook Pro and Vista are a winning combination, so Vista64 will undoubtedly scream it's head off!
To post 24, what I was refering to was hyper sonic...just couldn't think of the name. I think I may get an external soundcard. My kick ass laptop is nice for recording line in, but I'd probably do this anyway if I was doing any sort of audio mixing. I just hadn't had the need or money to do so. One day I'll buy me a nice ass machine with boat loads of ram and a nice sized hdd and 2 or 3 sound cards lol.
lols for all!