New DAW - What do you think?

Hi.

These are the main specifications for the PC I'm thinking about getting (from www.pcspecialist.co.uk) to run Sonar 5 Producer.

(I know Cakewalk have a page that lists the recommended requirements but I'd appreciate your insight.)

CPU: AMD® ATHLON® 64BIT 4000 (San Diago) 1MB L2 Cache (939 pin)
Memory: 1024 MB DDR400 PC3200
Motherboard: ASUS® A8V DELUXE: SATA, FIREWIRE, 8x AGP, 5 PCI etc
Hard Drive: SATA 300 GB HARD DISK @ 7200rpm 16mb cache
Power Supply & Cooling: Silent 550W PSU + 120mm Fan + 19.2 dBA CPU Cooler

Is there anything you think I should add to enhance the performance?

(I will get a soundcard, audio/midi interface and midi controller later.)

Thanks.

J.

Thanks Joseph.

You don't specifically say how many hard drives. I would definitely have a seperate drive for the audio files - if cost is a factor you could live with a smaller system drive. Although 10K drives are faster it really depends on how many audio tracks you will want to stream in a single project. 7200 RPM drives should easily handle 50 or so tracks.

Main thing is to have fun with it all though! :<)

ORIGINAL: J7243

Thanks for your input.

I was planning to go for 1 large hard drive and partition it. Would it be better to have 2 separate hard drives?

Thanks.

Yes, separate hard drives are more efficient & faster than a partition. That's what we're doing, and it's MUCH faster than our last DAW. Also 2gb of mem seems to have REALLY improved performance over 1 gb.

I'm just about to put my first SATA drive in our machine... hopefully it won't be a problem. I've read that there can sometimes be issues with Audio on SATA drives...

Corey

Thanks for the advice.

More memory, 2GB at a mininum

Geeez... you guys and your crazy sample banks!


If your not using soft synths and samplers (I mainly track audio) that much memory is overkill. But then again, there's not really such a thing as too much as far as memory goes so if you've got the $.. go for it.

HI,
dont waste your money on the 10K Raptors total waste of money
also dont waste your money on the 4000, cant believe no one mentioned this
get the X2 3800 about the same with in a few $ and you get 2 x CPUs not 1

heres what i would do

X2 3800
2 x 1G ram
80G OS
250/300G 16meg cache audio drive (these benchmark as fast as the raptors. more space, less noise and heat less money. a no brainer
same again for samples.(if needed)

Scott
ADK

ORIGINAL: AV_Matt

ORIGINAL: bigwayne56@earthlink.net

Yes 2 seperate hard drives without a doubt. One for OS and Prog's and the other for data.

Do you mean have all programs including windows and sonar on one drive then tell sonar to do everything on the other drive?

I just store my projects on the other drive i did not know there would be a speed advantage to setting the drives up this way, can you explain how to get the max out of 2 drives and maybe why?

FROM ohhey

That's easy. Sonar should be installed on the Windows XP drive in the default location. Then when you get it installed set the default for new projects to use "per project folders". Then make a folder on your second drive from Sonar projects and set the default location for new project to that location. Each time you start a new project the name of the project will become the name of the sub folder and each one will also have a sub folder called audio that all the recorded and imported clips will be stored in.

For backups you should use Ghost or similar product to backup your Windows XP drive before each new install of software or change to configuration just in case it goes bad. Your projects can be managed like any other Windows files. You can back them up to a USB or Firewire drive for near line backup and from time to time you should also burn DVD-Rs of them and store them off site.

Also, if you import any file make sure you check to box to copy them to the project folder so it contains all the files needed to play the project even if you more or delete the one you imported. Do not attempt to delete or rename any files in the project audio folder. Let Sonar manage them and use Tools / Clean audio folder to get rid of clips that have been removed from the project.

< Message edited by ohhey -- 11/28/2005 10:05:12 PM >

Thanks for the input everyone.

If your not using soft synths and samplers (I mainly track audio) that much memory is overkill.

I agree. I'm using 512MB and still have physical RAM spare. But, then, I don't use samples. That said, the new DAW will still have 1 GB since RAM is so much cheaper now.

To Scott:

heres what i would do

X2 3800
2 x 1G ram
80G OS
250/300G 16meg cache audio drive (these benchmark as fast as the raptors. more space, less noise and heat less money. a no brainer
same again for samples.(if needed)

Are those audio drives SATA? I'm nervous about using SATA drives for audio, but they seem to make more sense overall as a better, more efficient drive.