Wewus432 Posted January 2, 2003 Posted January 2, 2003 Computer audio is so complicated. I hear conflicting ideas of what causes reduced or increased throughput on a system all the time. Here's something I read on the internet that you might find interesting. The writer says the UDMA 66 protocol can be faster or just as fast for digital audio as UDMA 133. I think this is from the Yahoo Sonar group. [quote]The true advantage of the faster UDMA controllers is that read operations that come from the drive cache will complete faster on the higher rate controllers. Since cache is only 2 - 8 MB on modern IDE drives anyway, and since music typically streams from the drive effectively killing the effects of the cache, this is a wash for digital audio for the most part. UDMA66 is probably just as fast as UDMA133 in an app like Sonar. In fact, going to a faster mode may even cost you some performance in CPU usage, so it's possible that UDMA33 or 66 is the optimal mode for audio applications that stream large files. In addition to what was covered above, you might be interested to know that UDMA66 also has another slight advantage - data integrity. UDMA66 uses an 80pin differential cable instead of a normal 40pin. This means that noise and interference play less of a part in bit mangling inside the machine, especially when using cables in excess of 12 inches. Error rate reduction means less retries means better throughput and increased reliability. [/quote]Comments? I'd really like to know how all the different parts of a computer system affect audio. Anyone know of a book or a site that addresses these issues?
Alndln Posted January 2, 2003 Posted January 2, 2003 In a nutshell,RPM is more important than access times because your reading steady streams,but that bodes well for sreaming and reading streams and not neccessarily everything else a DAW does nowady's(VSTi's ect).Ata 133 can be helpful in reducing CPU read communication tasks and leave more time/bandwidth for streaming.If all your doing is streaming you won't tell the difference between Ata 66 or 133,but since what were doing includes all kinds of reading I would think the higher 133 bandwidth would actually help matters to some degree.I haven't done any tests in a while and am still using ATA 100 and am happy. "A Robot Playing Trumpet Blows"
Wewus432 Posted January 2, 2003 Author Posted January 2, 2003 Alndln, you seem to be one of the MusicPlayer forum's computer experts. How much, and what effect, on digital audio, does using a 7200 RPM hard drive vs. a 5400 RPM hard drive have. If I use a computer just for playing soft synths could I get away with the 5400 RPM drive? The slower drives do seem to be quieter,BTW.
halljams Posted January 2, 2003 Posted January 2, 2003 [quote]Originally posted by TheWewus: [b]Alndln, you seem to be one of the MusicPlayer forum's computer experts. How much, and what effect, on digital audio, does using a 7200 RPM hard drive vs. a 5400 RPM hard drive have. If I use a computer just for playing soft synths could I get away with the 5400 RPM drive? The slower drives do seem to be quieter,BTW.[/b][/quote]Hay Wew. Say you have a tune with 30 tracks, a 5400 rpm drive might just barely play all those tracks at once in your multitrack software but any more than that, no matter how high your disk buffer is set, will probly cause it to drop out because it can only process so much info at once.. A 7200 rpm drive will comfortably run 40-50 tracks if your settings are right and the cpu is not over taxed. Soft symths require fast cpu's to get the low latency but if you are just running midi tracks to the synth you don't need the speed. A 350-500 cpu will do. I have a 500 and the latency for soft synths is just under usable for playing them live. Maby a 700 would do it. :) Check out SUPERVIBE
Dylan Posted January 2, 2003 Posted January 2, 2003 Actually, I'd argue that most drives out today can't even exceed UDMA/33 specs. I've used the same drives with ATA 33/66/100/133 controllers and I've never noticed a signifigant performance increase at any point.
Wewus432 Posted January 2, 2003 Author Posted January 2, 2003 originally posted by Hallman: [quote]Hay Wew. Say you have a tune with 30 tracks, a 5400 rpm drive might just barely play all those tracks at once in your multitrack software but any more than that, no matter how high your disk buffer is set, will probly cause it to drop out because it can only process so much info at once.. A 7200 rpm drive will comfortably run 40-50 tracks if your settings are right and the cpu is not over taxed. Soft symths require fast cpu's to get the low latency but if you are just running midi tracks to the synth you don't need the speed. A 350-500 cpu will do. I have a 500 and the latency for soft synths is just under usable for playing them live. Maby a 700 would do it. [/quote]Thanks Hall, that makes sense, soft synths are CPU intensive, hard drive speed doesn't even come into play, except I guess, with a sampler that streams audio from the disk, and even then I don't think a slower hard drive would have any effect. Correct?
halljams Posted January 3, 2003 Posted January 3, 2003 [quote]Originally posted by TheWewus: [b] and even then I don't think a slower hard drive would have any effect. Correct?[/b][/quote]Yeah plus i think some of them throw the samples to ram don't they?, so yeah. yeah. Uh huh, yeah, you know it dad. Check out SUPERVIBE
not Cereal Posted January 3, 2003 Posted January 3, 2003 i have NO IDEA what you guys are talking about.
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