Some more audio PC questions.

[DC]

I was under the impression that you should hook your boot drive to the primary master and your audio drive to the secondary master. Then I read a Leoni article and he said to put boot drive on primary master and audio drive on primary slave. That a CD writer on a hard drive bus can slow it down. And also the two hard drives should be from the same manufacturer with the same mode capabilities and even from the same numbered series.

 

Which works best? And what if you use an older, say Maxtor UDMA 66 drive for boot and a newer 133 drive for audio. Is that gonna slow down the new drive noticeably?

 

I'm also trying to understand the newer ddr ram, in particular how it works in pairs (dual channel DDR). The Asus A7N8X mobo says if you load the two blue slots with say two 256 meg sticks instead of one 512 meg stick it's suppose to be twice as fast. Is this a very noticeable improvement in DAW speed?

 

What would happen if you had the two 256 meg sticks going and later added a 512 meg stick in the remaining slot? Would that negate the double speed advantage?

 

What is ECC and what does registered memory mean?

 

I read somewhere that the best memory for DAWs is Crucial/Micron but ASUS doesn't list it as compatible with the above mobo, although the Crucial sight says it is. Would you go with the mobo's recommendation or the ram's recommendation?

Is Kingston good for audio?

 

I'm looking into an Antec Sonata case. Is it quiet enough to use the regular CPU cooling fan or will one of the more expensive CPU fans make the whole computer quieter? Does this case need an additional case fan?

 

Thanks!

[Anderton]

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I think at this point you're dealing with relatively small improvements -- it's not like you're going to get 8 tracks maximum with one configuration, and 184 with the other.

 

I followed Pete's advice and have boot and data drive on the primary master, with CD-RW and backup/other stuff drive on the secondary, and it works fine.

[Dylan]

Dual Channel DDR is essentially like RAID, but for Memory. If you have two 256 DDR sticks running @ 400MHz each, they will act like one 512 MB stick running @ 800MHz when used in dual channel configuration. So yes, its much faster. Crucial/Micron will work fine for your Asus board as will Corsair. There should be no hit in running an older UDMA 66 HD drive on the same IDE bus as a UDMA 100/133 HD drive. Most drives today dont exceed UDMA 66 specs, FWIW. If you can, run both drives on primary master on their own IDE channel. One cool thing about Serial ATA is that you dont have to worry about Master/Slave configurations. Ideally, a screaming system would have 2 SATA HDs and each CD drive on its own IDE channel. Ive heard good things about the Sonata cases, but havent used one myself. Antec makes nice power supplies so Id imagine that this case would be nice. Enermax is also making some nice cases now as well that are pretty cheap.

[Rog]

Unless you're mixing using lots of 96kHz 32 bit files, disks these days are easily fast enough. I wouldn't worry

 

I'm using a pair of Kingston PC3200 DIMMs in my G5 with no problems.

[Hendmik]

Keep in mind that only one drive can transmit on a controller at any given time. Obviously the best solution is to have each drive on their own controller. But if you're forced into a position that two drives need to share one, pair the ones that most likely won't be needing bandwidth at the same time.

 

Additional IDE controllers for the PCI bus are only about $30, if you have the IRQ's to spare.

 

As for the RAM question, old PC100 RAM could be easily mixed and matched, but RAM for the P4 (PC3200/Rambus/etc) system needs to be paired.

 

ECC mean error correcting. Although it's more expensive than the non-ecc type, in the case of audio, it's not better. To facilitate the fault tollerance of error correction, you sacrifice some performance, although not significantly, IMHO.

 

Kingston is very good stuff. But they come in a few flavors. For the serious system nut or overclocker, the ValueRAM is not good enough and can cause crashes when you clock your P4 3Gb to 4.2GB. But for most applications (including audio), it's fine.

[jcskid]

Originally posted by DC:

I was under the impression that you should hook your boot drive to the primary master and your audio drive to the secondary master. Then I read a Leoni article and he said to put boot drive on primary master and audio drive on primary slave. That a CD writer on a hard drive bus can slow it down. And also the two hard drives should be from the same manufacturer with the same mode capabilities and even from the same numbered series.

 

Which works best? And what if you use an older, say Maxtor UDMA 66 drive for boot and a newer 133 drive for audio. Is that gonna slow down the new drive noticeably?

 

I'm also trying to understand the newer ddr ram, in particular how it works in pairs (dual channel DDR). The Asus A7N8X mobo says if you load the two blue slots with say two 256 meg sticks instead of one 512 meg stick it's suppose to be twice as fast. Is this a very noticeable improvement in DAW speed?

 

What would happen if you had the two 256 meg sticks going and later added a 512 meg stick in the remaining slot? Would that negate the double speed advantage?

 

What is ECC and what does registered memory mean?

 

I read somewhere that the best memory for DAWs is Crucial/Micron but ASUS doesn't list it as compatible with the above mobo, although the Crucial sight says it is. Would you go with the mobo's recommendation or the ram's recommendation?

Is Kingston good for audio?

 

I'm looking into an Antec Sonata case. Is it quiet enough to use the regular CPU cooling fan or will one of the more expensive CPU fans make the whole computer quieter? Does this case need an additional case fan?

 

Thanks!

i need alot more info on your system to suggest the right moves...

if its newer it dont matter where you stick your audio drive.

Micron /Crucial used to make great PC 133 memory

as far as DDR goes they kinda suck.

Samsung original or a 3rd party with samsung chips is best for DDR.

 

Scott

ADK

[DC]

Thanks Craig, didn't mean to nit pick but wondering how much difference these factors make.

 

Thanks for the ram tip Dylan PDX, I may use my older Maxtor UDMA 66 for boot and run a CD burner as slave on that bus, then get a newer drive as master on the 2ndary for audio.

 

Hendmik & Rog, thanks for the additional info.

 

Scott, what 3rd party ram brand names use Samsung chips?

 

The system I'm thinking of:

 

Antec Sonata case & PS.

 

Asus A7N8X mobo

 

AMD XP 2600 ( not sure about the fan but I won't be overclocking )

 

2 -256 or 1-512 memory stick (I don't use soft synths or loops, just audio)

 

My old Maxtor 30 gig UDMA 66 for boot OR a new Maxtor 40 gig UDMA

 

Maxtor 80 gig UDMA 133, 8 meg buffer for audio

 

ATI Radeon 9200 SE 8X video

 

My old Yammy CD writer OR a newer DVD burner

 

Already have a DAL Card Deluxe

 

No modem

 

May move up to Win 2K or XP Pro -and Sonar 3, still researching compatibility with my current software; Cake 9, plugs, Lotus, etc.

 

I don't care about the floppy, monitor, keyboard, mouse etc.

 

I never record more than 2 tracks at once at this point (although I plan to add another DAL card eventually) but need to play back quite a few.

 

My current system is the older Leoni design with the ABIT BE-6 II and Cele 600 @ 900MHz.

 

Thanks again for all the expert advice!

 

[Dylan]

A lot of guys here are fans of the Athlons (hell, I use 3 myself), but Id highly recommend a P4 with an Intel motherboard if you can swing a few more bucks. The 865Perl is a great board and a breeze to setup. Installing drivers is a snap and is completley automated as well. You should be able to pick up an 800MHz FSB P4 and this board for around $300. It seems that Ive had to do some sort of tweak with all of my AMD systems to get them up to par, but with the Intel boards Ive built they have all worked perfectly without any tweaking.

[DC]

Dylan PDX, what sort of tweaking on AMD systems are you talking about? BIOS or software?