Want to get setup correctly from the start

[halfsoul]

Hi all,
I'm here because I am hoping to find some info about setting up reasonable expectations for what the software can do with the hardware I have so that I get things setup appropriately, because I don't have a lot of time/money for trial and error.

In other words, I don't want to start buying hardware for a 12-24 track DAW if my hardware will only support 2-4 simultaneous tracks. At the same time, I want to select the appropriate distro for getting the most out of my recycled computer. Should I post a question in the "System Tuning and Configuration" forum?

Looking forward to chatting with everyone.

Thanks.

[Capoeira]

I don't want to start buying hardware for a 12-24 track DAW if my hardware will only support 2-4 simultaneous tracks.

kind of confusing this sentence

with simultaneous tracks you mean simultaneos recording? silmutaneos multitrackrecording depends on the sound-interface, than your HD has to be fast enough.

clarify what you want AND what you have, so we can help

[halfsoul]

clarify what you want AND what you have, so we can help

Thanks for replying -- I wasn't planning to provide details until I knew I was in the right spot.

What I want: 8 simultaneous recording tracks. 12-16 total processing tracks (playback & record, mix, etc)
--> My goal is to know if this is realistic, and if there is a particular distro that would be best (AV Linux, for example, promotes their distro for re-using old comps)

What I have: Pentium 4 3.2GHz, 4GB RAM
Don't remember the HD details, 7200 RPM, maybe. Was expecting processing power to be the limiter.

Thanks!

[brummer]

Hi all,
. . .
In other words, I don't want to start buying hardware for a 12-24 track DAW if my hardware will only support 2-4 simultaneous tracks. . . .

The fasts (and cheapest) way is to install AV Linux and check out Ardour. If you could record 8 simultaneous Live Tracks depend on your Sound Carte , if you could record 8 Synth tracks produced on your PC depend on the used Soft Synth's, but Ardour isn't limited in this.
At least you can do that with any available Distro with a LightWight Desktop Manager, RT-Kernel and proper rt-settings.

[Capoeira]

Was expecting processing power to be the limiter.

CPU-power isn't realy involved in this. CPU-power you need if you run 20 softsynths or 20 heavy effects simultaneously but than you have a lot of CPU-power.
You need a 8channel-firewire-sound-device wich is supported in Linux and any distro with realtime-kernel (if you want to do overdubbing). If it's for recording a liveband in one take, EVERY distro can do that with the right sound-device.

[halfsoul]

Thanks guys. What kind of Hard Drives are people using? SSD? RAID?

[Capoeira]

Thanks guys. What kind of Hard Drives are people using? SSD? RAID?

The thing about HD ad multitrackrecording is that it is recomended to record on a other HD than the OS is installed. But I have no pŕactical experience with 8-chanel-recording

In theory a simple HD would be enough if I calculated correctly:
32bit (Ardour records in 32bit) and 44.100Hz give you 176.4 KByte/s per chanel = 1411.2 KByte/s

[halfsoul]

Okay, so you mean a separate physical disk (instead of a partition) right?

Also, is there a filesystem preference? I thought ext4 was supposed to enable better performance than ext3, but then I saw something about not using ext4 for audio, don't remember the reason though. Is that outdated? What's the filesystem recommendation?

Thanks again.

[Capoeira]

Okay, so you mean a separate physical disk (instead of a partition) right?

Also, is there a filesystem preference? I thought ext4 was supposed to enable better performance than ext3, but then I saw something about not using ext4 for audio, don't remember the reason though. Is that outdated? What's the filesystem recommendation?

Thanks again.

yes separate physical because the OS will access the HD during recording so stream could interrupt, but man - thats what I heard, I have no practical experience with 8 chanels.
Never heard of recomandations for file-system, but any FS of Linux is better than NTFS (lol) and it works

[zwenny]

The fasts (and cheapest) way is to install AV Linux and check out Ardour. If you could record 8 simultaneous Live Tracks depend on your Sound Carte , if you could record 8 Synth tracks produced on your PC depend on the used Soft Synth's, but Ardour isn't limited in this.
At least you can do that with any available Distro with a LightWight Desktop Manager, RT-Kernel and proper rt-settings.

I agree totally with that. When i started recording, i used a program called "GoldWave"
on windows, but soon i realized that i have to look for another solution. Since i've
switched to linux i was (fortunately) almost forced to use open source programs.
I started with audacity, but as i discovered hydrogen for drum tracks and created tracks
per drum part the limits where reached quickly with a standard kernel.
So i read many forum threads and documentation about jack, ardour and rt-kernel until
i got it setup on my system. Now i never want to go back.
Conclusion: It's worth to spend time in this issue if you want to have a stable DAW.

[dizzyheadmusic]

Okay, so you mean a separate physical disk (instead of a partition) right?

Also, is there a filesystem preference? I thought ext4 was supposed to enable better performance than ext3, but then I saw something about not using ext4 for audio, don't remember the reason though. Is that outdated? What's the filesystem recommendation?

Thanks again.

If I recall correctly, GMaq (AV Linux) told me that ext3 on a separate SATA drive was the best. 7200 RPM would be the best as well.

[halfsoul]

Never heard of recomandations for file-system, but any FS of Linux is better than NTFS (lol) and it works

Ah ha, I found where the ext3 suggestion came from... this board's wiki!
http://wiki.linuxmusicians.com/doku.php ... figuration

Filesystems

For audio use, it is desirable to use a filesystem that favours few big files over many small files and low-latency over long-term thoughput.

It is said that ReiserFS and fuseblk are bad choices from this perspective, while ext3 is good. ext4 is not recommended with kernels >= 2.6.32 because of possible regression issues.

not sure if this is still current for 2.6.35 though....

[autostatic]

Yeah, I put it there after reading some articles on Phoronix. Not sure about 2.6.35 though. Still I think its best to stick with ext3 for music production, it is probably more bug free and less error prone than ext4. Probably. But then I'm not a filesystem expert either