[RWP] good computer for recording?

[Chris Belle]

I used to think that but I learned better.

If you've not learned about dpc latency and just how windows works, you can make a costly mistake.

Go read up on defered protocol, and read the tons of messages on forums about crackling audio and drop-outs, etc.

There are fine machines out there which can eat the hottest games for breakfast but will suck on audio because the dpc latency is too high.

Think of this senario.

YOu have a big truck that comes by one a day, that's your computer.
or processor.

You have your hard-drives, interface, 
peripherals and such they all need attending to in a timely manner.
Let's call them the little delivery trucks that bring packages to the big truck your computer.

Now what if the big truck quit coming by once a day, but only every other day?

YOur packages would pile up.

That's exactly what happens when you get audio drop-outs, or you can't load very many plug-ins with out having to turn your latency way up on your interface, or any number of things.

If your dpc latency on your computer is higher than say 100, you will have problems.

Average is around 30,
my new daw runs in the teens,
I had a student who got impatient
and had his computer fixed by some local guy, and they didn't turn off hpet and do other tweaks in the bios and even though the machine was originally configured as a daw, it did not perform well, 
so you need the right parts, as well as the right settings,
specific motherboards will do well as a daw while others will suck.

Certain settings in the bios are not available on certain motherboards,
you might have issues with firewire chips, so it's not enough to say hey, just get an asio sound card and your golden, maybe if you have a mac you can, because 
it get's the blessing of one kind of hardware combo, and also apple's os is closer to a real time os than winblows, but don't count on great performance running a mac system on the windows side,
with an immulated bios you can't tweak.

ON the apple side, you don't have to deal with dpc latency, it's not the same deal with a unix based os.

but with windows, everything low level has to ask for permission in the kernel, and if it has to wait too long, then the whole house of cards comes down.

YOu might get lucky and get a machine which has low enough dpc latency where you can get some work done, but too many of us even old time cats who've been doing this for ever have made the sad mistake of buying an off the shelf laptop hoping to use it for audio, only to find out oh no, it won't handle it.

I will concede the point that as computers get more powerful, 
the margin for error get's bigger, but if you want performance for a daw, that error is still pretty slim.

YOu won't notice it just doing plain audio recording and not using lots of real time fx, if you are doing that, then just go ahead and use any old machine for basic tracking, but if you want to run real time fx, guitar chains, and drum modules that you can play with your asio card set to a nice low latency, and not have to bother freezing tracks all the time and such, then go get a daw built.

Save your best buy computer for skype and emailing your grandma, and your mp3 punk rock library 'grin'.

I'm here to tell ya, I bought lots of machines, went to custom shops even, but getting a purpose built daw is the difference between riding on the garbage truck, and going first class in a portche.

Because you see, it's not about the power, or ram or drives, though that plays a part, ok, even if you get your fast ssd, what good is it if the drives are waiting on the processor which is hung up on that errant video driver you don't know about from that Chinese company,
written by that first year computer programmer student,
but your daw maker knows that the driver that came out last year is a better match and won't spike the dpc latency.

If and when you find out and correct it, think how many hours you lost.
and how many hit song ideas went away.

Man, that's wort 5 bills to me for sure.

So don't believe me, go out buy a cheap machine and if you get lucky, call old Chris a liar, but if it doesn't work and you have issues and are right back here asking us how to solve an impossible problem remember old Chris told ya so.

 
----- Original Message ----- 
  From: yRylan Vroom 
  To: Reapers Without Peepers 
  Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2013 3:28 PM
  Subject: Re: [RWP] good computer for recording?


  It all depends on your pariferals these days. A good computer is less
  important than an ASIO equipped soundcard and whatever other midi
  equipment you use. I for one am using a crappy Acer throwaway box I
  got at bestbuy for $500, 12 gb of ram, quad core amd Processor, no GPU
  to speak of, but it gets the job done. I do notice that after loading
  10 or so VST's it gets a smidge laggy when you play a project, but
  that's about it. HTH

  Rylan

  On 10/8/13, Chris Belle <cb1963 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
  > Go see Jim Roseberry at
  > studiocat.com
  >
  > He builds the best daws in the us, for the best price, and you can get in to
  > a very mice machine that won't frustrate you for much less than you might
  > think.
  >
  > His project studio daw starts at a thousand.
  >
  > Don't get some bargain machine at tigerdirect or what-ever, you'll be
  > sorry.
  >
  > You'll have high dpc latencies, and other compatibility issues, these guys
  > are fine for gamers or office machines, but for a daw, do it up right you'll
  > be glad you did.
  >
  >
  >   ----- Original Message -----
  >   From: Matt Turner
  >   To: reaper
  >   Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2013 1:04 PM
  >   Subject: [RWP] good computer for recording?
  >
  >
  >   Hay there, folks.
  >   i am looking into getting a computer, that will be used mainly just for
  >   recording.
  >   I am not sure what i should get, as there are all kinds of computers
  >   ranging from 799$, and higher.
  >   I wood like a laptop, but i've heard there' not good for recording.
  >   Any suggestions?
  >
  >   _______________________________________________
  >   RWP mailing list
  >   RWP at reaaccess.com
  >   http://reaaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/rwp_reaaccess.com

  _______________________________________________
  RWP mailing list
  RWP at reaaccess.com
  http://reaaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/rwp_reaaccess.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://bluegrasspals.com/pipermail/rwp/attachments/20131009/ae75b8ba/attachment.html>