[LAU] Help finding parts for building a hardware system

[Jonathan E. Brickman]

My personal PC is my live musical instrument and DAW; perhaps my
thus-fars will help.

1.  I was pondering laptop, but I don't like the heat-sensitivity,
price-point, repairability, upgradeability, nor tweakability.  I do lots
of high-CPU software synthesis using Yoshimi, so heat would be a terror
on a laptop.  I am using an all-black tower with a GearGrip.com harness,
and a black screen onstage.  If I do more stage work I'll eventually get
a 9" LCD, but for now I'm fine using a very old 14" CRT.  It gets lots
of startled looks, and Yoshimi produces such profound tones to match.

2.  The tower (AMD64 9950 quad, 2.6GHz, 4G midrange RAM) cost me $350
from directron.com , those people have done much good for me.  I added
the GearGrip separately, and also later added two laptop SATA hard
drives from Hitachi, the laptop hard drives are far more resistant to
vibration.  The latter has been a just-in-case so far, my very old 110M
IDE is still running in the box as a backup.  I am probably going to do
RAID-1 eventually, but am also probably going to wait for BTRFS for
this.

3.  I don't do graphics beyond the occasional personal YouTube or mpeg
or whatnot, so I am using the motherboard (nVidia chipset) graphics.  I
have to disable the nouveau driver manually in some distros, but Fedora
13 went right in.

4.  Sound card.  This was a very difficult decision for me.  But the
decision was helped a lot by mechanics, pricepoints, and recent industry
impressions.  


        a.  I started out using my motherboard audio.  Worked great,
        2.something ms latency.  But as I thought would happen, the 1/8"
        stereo output jack wore out on the front within six weeks.  So
        while using the back jack, I hunted for something better.
        
        b.  I spoke about it with our sound guy (I do run sound at need,
        but he has the dedication and the muscles), running through
        options, and he suggested RCA jacks.  I was shocked, I had never
        heard of RCA jacks on the back of a PC, but I had to admit it
        made sense.  They are mechanically far stronger than anything
        else appropriate in size, they are spring-held and so don't
        create jiggle-static, and are extremely reliable in general.  
        
        c.  But I had never ever seen an RCA jack on a PC sound card
        before, and a great many Google searches weren't getting me
        anything.  After a large amount of Googling I found just one or
        two PC casemod suppliers who could (at amazing expense) supply
        me with difficult do-it-myself parts to use my motherboard audio
        or a header off a PCI sound card, with new external RCA jacks;
        but I didn't want a complex and possibly fragile build; I wanted
        something built of stock replaceable parts.
        
        d.  I found RCA jacks on USB and Firewire devices first.
        Firewire was just too expensive.  The reports I received about
        USB 2 seemed to indicate kludginess and compatibility issues,
        and a Windows setup job I had done two years before tended to
        agree.  PCI-E was new and expensive in sound cards then.  So I
        decided to look for PCI.
        
        e.  I did a large number of Google searches.  Found zero.  This
        didn't make sense to me, because I had just visited a local
        gamer-oriented PC store, and had seen an under-the-TV PC box
        shaped like a thick VCR which had RCA jacks for audio.  So I
        decided that I had to go beyond Google.  I first checked the
        Creative Labs web site's full line, and although RCA jacks
        weren't in any description (!), they were visible (!!!!) in two
        of the pictures!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.  So I knew they existed.  As
        with most things Creative Labs which are not cheapies, the ones
        I found there were rather expensive.  So I did some research
        using past reports on Linux Audio lists, found a make appearing
        to do very well (AudioTrak), found a model with RCA jacks using
        the photographs of cards, found a very good supplier
        (floridamusicco.com) of my chosen card (AudioTrak Prodigy HD2),
        put it in, and found that it works beautifully.  Not only does
        it work beautifully, but the quality of its electronics are
        visibly extraordinary.  I have been working off and on in
        hardware since 1981, and this card reminds me of some of the
        real beauties made years ago.  DIP sockets for op-amps.  Thick
        sturdy board, white in color to expose any issues.  Big strong
        capacitors, no cheapies.  And the price is very good considering
        its capability.  The card can do 192 kbps :-)  I don't use it at
        more than 96 kbps, and usually 48 kbps, because more takes up
        CPU!


4.  The CCRMA RT kernel registers crash errors on my F13 a lot.  (I
imagine it's just one of the four CPUs crashing.)  I don't use it
anymore.  I'm using the just-updated stock F13 kernel, with Jack2 in
realtime+soft mode.  This combination used to not work at all, but under
F13 on this hardware it runs rather nicely.  

5.  Jack2.  I find that jack2 (the optional jackd package at version
1.9.5 in F13 right now) in synchronous mode (-S on its command line in
qjackctl) gives by far the best results on this hardware.

On Sat, 2010-07-10 at 15:25 -0400, Mike McGonagle wrote:

> In continuing my search for information on building a computer, I
> found this website ( http://www.build-gaming-computers.com/ ). While
> this site says it is about building a gaming system, I would imagine
> that the information is applicable to building a system for using as a
> Digital Audio Workstation, too.
> 
> I guess I should move on to other questions that are more related to
> specifics about a DAW system. Things such as how the software would
> take advantage of a multiple processor machine. Would something like
> that require a custom compile for that particular machine? Or are
> there builds that already exist? How about the system kernel? Would
> that require a custom build for these things to be advantageous?
> 
> I would be interested in hearing anyone's experiences in putting
> together their own systems, and how they decided what things to
> include, AND exclude, and why?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mike
> 
> On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Mike McGonagle <mjmogo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I recently have started having some issues with my current computer,
> > an old Mac OSX laptop, so I want to build a computer (desktop or
> > otherwise) to replace this older system. I pretty much have a list of
> > some specs that I would like in this machine, but in starting a search
> > for these things online, I feel I am getting nowhere fast.
> >
> > I am looking to building around some Linux distro, but I am not
> > "married" to any particular system. My only hardware requirements are
> > the ability to connect up my USB midi interface. I would also like to
> > be able to capture digital audio from my external synths.
> >
> > If anyone could possibly give me a handle on some direction of where
> > to start looking, it would be greatly appreciated. It just seems that
> > there is so much information out there, and Google doesn't seem to be
> > helping sort out the things I would need.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Mike
> >
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> Linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org
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