On Thu, 2005-05-12 at 06:44 -0400, lanas wrote:
Hi all,
I'm plaaning to get a new home PC that could also be used (along with
software development) for creating and recording music.
What I'd like to do: sequence MIDI external sounds (synth module(s)),
add accoustic guitar and flute, record everything to wav and/or Ogg
Vorbis formats (using original external synths sounds). Optionally, to
be also able to choose from a palette of SoundFonts (as I did with
my current PC, using a SB Live! card and MusE).
What I'd like to get as PC: an Athlon 64bit based mobo, 2 GB RAM, some
250 GB disk storage. graphics card not that important as it's not used
to play games (why not on-board graphic ?). Operating system: in the
end most likely handmade Linux based on LFS (Linux From Scratch) but for
starters SuSE 9.3 64-bit, or any other that's good enough.
Now, is there some strong allergic reaction between a Linux Audio
setup and 64-bit CPUs ? Are 64-bits platforms recommended for audio
purposes or is it better to wait a few more years ? If it's OK, which
mobo would you recommend ?
If you want it to Just Work I would say wait a year or get a 32 bit
system. Many people seem to buy x86_64 systems and expect it to be 100%
as reliable as a 32 bit system. But of course this will not be so, as
32 but x86 has been around for 20-25 years, and x86-64 came out what, 6
months ago?
I would recommend avoiding 64 bit systems until there is a mature
pure-64 distro to run on it. AFAICT it does not exist yet.
You can get a 64 and run in legacy mode. The 64 is not much more
expensive than the XP counterparts. I have been using 64 for quite a
while now...between 1 and 2 years somewhere. Some stuff is not as
stable and my DVD burner just now started working with the newer
kernels. I run into few problems really though. There are several
full fledged distributions for the 64. I use Gentoo myself and they
now have a GRP for the 64 (when I installed stage3 was most pre-built
you could get).