[LAU] Configuration for a FREE professionnal studio : your minds about my proposal

[Thomas Ilnseher]

Am Donnerstag, den 20.03.2008, 09:52 +0100 schrieb Aurelien:
> Hi!
> 
> The FREE label AMMD in which I work is going to buy and build a
> professionnal studio based on free software and destined to produce free
> arts only.
> The project is quite advanced, but I'd like to know your mind about the
> configuration we think about, and if there are people already using this
> kinda material, any feedback would be welcome!
> 
> So , here it is:
> 
> - System : Ubuntu Studio and/or Debian self-customized for
>   audio-purposes. Does it have a big interest for such audio
>   applications to install a 64bits distribution? I suppose there will be
>   problems with some 32bits plugins, although there is the
>   ndispluginwrapper solution. It's bit like a troll, but it really
>   matters for us.
Why do you need flash in a studio ?
You will also have problems with java, as nspluginwrapper doesn't
support java. Blackdown has a 64bit java plugin, but it has some issues.

I use flash+nspluginwrapper on my big box without issues. On my
notebook, i use swfdec-mozilla, which works for youtube. (but there are
still issues ...)

> - Should work essentially with Ardour
> - Hardware (PC):
> 	. Proc: we were going on a dual core (Intel or AMD), but as we've
> 	seen that quadri-pro are not so expensive anymore, what do you think
> 	about it?
depends on your workload. I can't comment on ardour or that stuff (If
the app is multithreaded or not).

You should stay away from 9x00 phenoms, (taht means intel right now, if
you ar going to quadcore) as these chips are buggy. Bugfixed Phenoms
will be called 9x50.
> 	. RAM: 4Gb at least (if quadri-pro, much more)
If you are going to 32bit, each application can use a maximum of
probably 2 or 3 gbytes (don't know exactly the limit). If you start
multiple applications, you can still exploit your ram. as unused ram
would be used as page cache, 4 GB will make sense on a 32bit system, but
8 GB only if you are going to start multiple memory intensive apps in
parallel
> 	. Motherboard: we were thinking about using RAID (5 probably) in
> 	order to increase reading speed, but it's only based on an
> 	assumption (intuition?) that we could raise up the perf that way.
> 	Are we right?
I wouldn't say so. But i have nothing to proof my point. that's just my
intuition. The raid stuff will increase bandwith, but worsen latency
(eg. access time). I'd say that for TYPICAL sata hdds and usage
patterns, the access time is more important than the bandwith.

I got a new seagate hdd for my PC (7200.11 500GB), and it's bandwith is
>100MB/s !!! but the access time still sucks :(
If you need a lot of sequential bandwith, than raid will help.

also RAID5 will improve the reliability of your system.

> 	We'd like this motherboard not to have audio-embedded.
all modern mainboards i know of have audio onboard. but you can disable
it in the bios, or just blacklist the driver.
> 	. Graphics: We just want something easy to install (no proprietary
> 	drivers) that can driver 2 screens in Xinerama mode the easiest way
> 	as possible (my ATI Radeon X850 GTO 16 is not a fair example!). We
> 	don't have any idea about it actually, what about you?
My notebook has an i965gm, which works perfectly. BUT it's not fast
enough for serious gaming. (compiz-fusion works, and it's fast enough
quake 3). If you are going to use 2 Screens, this implications apply:
a) you need an ADD2 card for your mainboard
b) you can only connect ONE monitor per DVI, the other one needs VGA
c) as the driver only supports 2048x2048 textures, you can forget about
running compiz-fusion with an reasonable resolution per monitor.

If you get an Intel processor and need no gaming, I'd get intel onboard.

If you get an AMD processor, you should get an older ATI (like your
X850 :P). These are the easiest to get working with free drivers.
> 	. Hard Drives: we think about a SATA drive for system, and
> 	day-to-day life, and then think about an external SATA solution
> 	which allows to bring a new drive for every project (there will
> 	probably be something like 3 or 4 albums a year on this studio). Of
> 	course, if we want our assumption upon RAID5 to work, we need to
> 	have two identical eSATA drives for each record session.
Nope, for RAID5 you need at least 3 harddisks.  With 2 harddisks, you
have the choice between RAID0 (performance, lower reliability) and RAID1
(higher reliability)
> - Hardware (Audio):
I won't comment on that stuff.
> 	. PCI RME HDSP9532
> 	. two options for the recorders:
> 		+ 2 RME Multiface II (i.e. 16 tracks) linked with ADAT to HDSP9532
> 		+ 1 Alesis HD24 (i.e. 24 tracks and a hard drive) linked with
> 		ADAT to HDSP9532
> 	don't know what option is the best. The RME ADC and DAC are better
> 	than those of the HD24, but the amount of tracks is some way
> 	interesting, and I don't know in what measure the "poor" DAC/ADC of
> 	HD24 will penalize us (knowing the complete acquisition system).
> 	Another problem is that we plan to record some instruments using
> 	AES/EBU and/or S/PDIF and the Multiface doesn't propose it.
> 	There could also be a need to record MIDI parts (synth, machines,
> 	and so on), and I suppose it's not possible with both this
> 	solutions, is it?
> - External Hardware (that is quite off-topic with this list, but, by the
>   way, if you want to know):
> 	. 4x TL-Audio 5001 preamps
> 	. 1x Neumann TLM 103
> 	. 2x Neumann KM184
> 	. 2x Shure Beta 56
> 	. 2x Shure Beta 52
> 	. 1x Shure Beta 91
> 	. 1x Sennheiser MD421
> 	. 6x Beyerdynamic Opus 88
> 	. 1x EV RE20
> 	. 2x AKG C414 + susp.
> 	. 2x Genelec 8020 APM
> 	. stands, racks, and so on.
> 
> 
> OK, so here it is. It represents quite a financial thing, so we don't
> want to make it wrong. We're open to every advice, discussion, etc.
> 
> Thanks a lot.
> 
-- 
Thomas Ilnseher <illth at gmx.de>