Couple of Q's from a noob!

I ordered DimensionPro and it'll be here tommorow. I have a question about the install. I have a newly built computer, about three weeks old, AMD Athalon64 3700+, 4g's of ram, and an 80g sata drive. The only software I have installed is Xp, GearBox(Line6 guitar modeling), SHS4, and JamStix(virtual drummer). I know that it's best to have a seperate HD for storing project audio, but I only have the one, right now. Should I just install DP with no modifications or should I try to create a seperate partition? Would it make a difference? I'm only asking because 7g's seems like a lot! By the way, that computer isn't, nor ever will be, online. Do I need it to be connected to internet or can I just register it with my internet computer?

Ok, here's another question. I hope you can help!

I'm relatively new to all of this, ecspecially the midi aspect. Up until now, the only midi type thing that I've used is JamStix. I'll insert JamStix as a Dxi and then record bass, guitar, and vocals. Last night I had the most awesome drum track(with JS) and slap bass groove, I added some clean guitar with a funky wah-wah, but then I got greedy and wanted to try to lay some Keyboard stuff on it, using the Dreamstation or VSC that came with SHS4, but when I inserted the Dreamstation as a Dxi, I couldn't hear any of the sounds, so I tried clicking around, only to accidently remove the JamStix application, for some reason there wasn't an auto-save copy, which there usually is every five minutes, needless to say, the whole thing was jacked up and I had to give up on it, which was fine, because it was just a jam for fun, but I don't want that to ever happen to me when I'm in the middle of a serious project. I know that this is long, but my question is, is possible to have more than one Dxi at a time. Are there some tricks that I should know, so that I can hear each new Dxi as I add them. Is there a way of protecting my work from accidental deletions? I read a little bit about freezing, in SonarPower, but I can't find that funtion in SHS4, I don't think it's in there.

In case you can't already tell, I'm really new to this, I started this journey into computer recording about three years ago, and got no where, until about three months ago, when I started to hang out and read the posts in this forum. I've learned so much just from reading. Also, I'm not a piano or keyboard player, and I have have absolutley no skills playing the keys, at best, I'm just a half-a$$ed guitar player. I only bought DP and an M-audio keystation61es just to add some extra ambient sounds, I think you call them pads, I might also try to play with the string sections.

I know that this is long, and if you actually took the time to read the whole thing, thank you. Any tips, thoughts, and answers that might help me along the way would be greatly appreciated. Of all the forums, here at Cakewalk, this one seems to be the smallest, but it also seems to be one of the friendliest!

You shouldn't have a problem running the library from the boot drive - esp. a sata. are you sure it is only 80 gigs? That seems awfully small.

I can't remember if SHS has Freeze - if it ain't in the drop down menu from the tracks then it doesn't have it. But Freeze is just a single-button solution for turning your CPU heavy virtual synth tracks into easy to handle audio. Just mute everything but the midi and associated audio track that you want to hear and bounce-to-track or better save it as an audio file. Then you need to Archive the midi/audio tracks. Your drive can handle a lot more tracks than any CPU can deliver.

ORIGINAL: THERAKED

I messed around a little more last night, and a had a little more luck using more than one Dxi. Do I have to insert a new app for each instrument? If I insert DP, and play a piano sound, do I then have to insert it again to play a synth sound, and so on? That seems like a lot. I tried adding an additional audio track, and then setting the ins and outs, but I couldn't quite get it right.

For a desktop machine it's not difficult at all to add another drive, the biggest challenge is cable routings/lengths. On one machine I had to get a new IDE cable because the existing one wouldn't reach where I wanted to install the second hard drive. On another machine, it's a small-form-factor box (Mini-ATX in an Antec Aria case) and while it can technically hold up to four IDE devices, the cable bulk makes actually fitting everything challenging. Not sure how SATA stacks up compared to IDE/ATA.

When you run out you can always use USB or FireWire drives - for multiple reasons I ended up going that route for the SFF box - the motherboard would only handle 128G drives, and the cables were a very tight fit.

As far as the question above, it depends on whether the synth is multitimbral or not, and how it uses its components. z3ta+, for example, is not multitimbral, so if you want three different sounds from z3ta+ you have to insert three instances. DimPro is multitimbral, you can set it up so that it can receive from MIDI channels 1-4 which get routed to element 1-4 respectively.

However, some programs (presets) shipped with DimPro use more than one element (Amorphous pad, for example). You don't want to use it multitimbral in that case, because you want all of the elements to work together. You'd want to insert a second instance for a second instrument instead.

Doug