PC questions

The place for general discussion of Cakewalk Pro Audio.
MagusCT
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2003 8:56 pm
Location: Long Beach, New York

Post by MagusCT » Sun Feb 22, 2004 1:23 am

hey, I'm in the process on buying a new pc for SONAR. The one I have now is barely holding up. Anyway, i was wondering what the best operating system would be to use. I've heard that Windows XP can cause some problems but some people I've talked to also say that it is fine for SONAR. Also, should I purchase wo hard drives? One person on this forum said that having one hard drive for games and everything else and one for SONAR. If I should get tehse then how many GB should they each be? Sorry for such a long post, thanks to anyone who can answer. :)


andychap
Posts: 685
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2003 7:26 pm
Location: UK

Post by andychap » Sun Feb 22, 2004 10:20 am

I used to use Win 98 for my audio and it was always alright but now I am using Win XP Pro and it is rock solid. It is also a lot quicker to navigate around and some of the features do help out a lot. Make sure you optimise it though.

Two hard drives is always the best with audio. You are always more likely to have problems with the drive that has you OS and internet connection on so if you keep all you recording data on a seperate drive then if you have to restore or reformat then you will not lose any data and you can always just back up to the second drive.

I have found a great improvement since I put in a second HD. I use a 40 GB 7200rpm Maxtor drive for my general system drive. This I have partitioned into 2. The primary partition has Win XP with all my general applications and internet and the kids games. The second partition has all my Audio applications, Sonar, Soundforge and T Racks etc. I also try and install as many of my plugins here as possible but I have found a few that always default to the C drive but it has made no duifference to performance.

The second HD is a Western Digital Caviar 120 Gb 7200rpm. This is solely for my audio data from Sonar by routing it through audio options. I save it all in per project folders so I don't have to delete anything at all untill I know the track is definately finished and I back it up to CD. Samples go onto this drive as well as MP3 and wave files. I also have a folder for backing stuff up from the C drive before I do any major installation (I don't trust system resore).

Get your drives as big and as fast as you can afford. Audio data takes up a lot of room and it will save you updating in the future.

MagusCT
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2003 8:56 pm
Location: Long Beach, New York

Post by MagusCT » Sun Feb 22, 2004 5:11 pm

wow thx for all the info....ill definately take all that into consideration when I decide on a PC. One question though, this may sound stupid but if I'm just recording MIDI and converting it to audio later on and either putting it onto a CD or an MP3 player then do I need a 120 GB second hardive? If not then would 80 be good for my recording HD and 40 be good for all the other things like games and school work?...thanks again for all the help

andychap
Posts: 685
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2003 7:26 pm
Location: UK

Post by andychap » Sun Feb 22, 2004 8:10 pm

An 80 and 40 would be fine. The only reason I went with a 120 is that I want to leave my projects on the HD for quite a while. I still go back to things I was doing a couple of years ago to try and improve them when I learn a new trick or get a new instrument which I think would sound better.

I was always having to load the bundles back onto the hard drive and it took forever. At the moment I have 14 projects on the 120 Gb hard drive and I have used up neraly 40 Gb.

I am also wanting to start using samples in my music soon so I am collecting different samples and filing them away. Those files have grown to over 15 Gb now.

I just thought I might as well get the most I can afford and when you see the price difference between an 80 and 120 the extra 60 gb cost very little. Also remember that by the time you have formatted the disk and created a file system you will lose somewhere between 5 and 10%.

A 120 Gb HD is not in fact a 120 Gb but 12 million bytes or something and it doesn't equate to 120 gb. By the time I had set mine up it registered as a 112 gb hard drive.

Try to think of the future and what your requirements might be if your technique or attitude to the way you record music changes. I was always happy with the sounds on an AWE 64 Gold card but as softsynths and virtual instruments became more popular then you want to try and re create better sounding instruments. I now don't use midi drums. I still program my drums in midi but use it to trigger the sounds of my drum machine and record them into Sonar.

The track I am working on at the moment has 9 different drum parts each recorded on it's own mono channel at just over 4 minutes long. Each track is just over 40 Mb in size, multiply that by 9 and we are looking at 360 mb just for the drums. :D You can see how it builds up can't you.

MagusCT
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2003 8:56 pm
Location: Long Beach, New York

Post by MagusCT » Mon Feb 23, 2004 1:31 am

thx again for the help....ill prob end up getting a 120 and 40

guruaziz
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2004 11:43 am
Location: Malaysia

Post by guruaziz » Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:22 am

Hi Mr andy,
first of all, i would like to thanks you coz your answers give me myself knowledgeable even i didnt improve used kind of solfware like pro audio.
Can u please help me to make decision before i buy a new pc for mini home studio.
Below is 2 pakej about my coming pc.Can u give ur opinion about its.

Pakej 1: MS1 K7N2 (dual ddr 400/8x)
western digital 80gb 7200 rpm HDD
apacer 512mb pc3200 ddr ram
winFast a36 fx5700 128 mb (8x) tv-out
samsung 52x cd-rom
liteonn cdrw 52x24x52x
sony 1.44mb 3.5" floppy drive
prodkeys dm( balck ) keyboard
crystal optical scrolling mouse
atx casing ( usb /transparent wind. & fan )
viewsonix 17" flat screen

AMD XP 3000 PROCESSOR( Athlon XP Gamers system )
or
INTEL PENTIUM 4 3.2 GHz ( pentium 4 perfomance system)

Can u recoment the item above, please ?

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