5 Dec
2007
5 Dec
'07
4:07 a.m.
On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 10:00:08PM -0500, Rob wrote:
On Tuesday 04 December 2007 21:39, David Olofson
wrote:
Hell, I was recording and mixing 6 tracks of audio on a 75Mhz PowerPC Mac 10 years ago.
Be warned though; those VIA Cx and AMD Geode CPUs
found on most
fan-less boards aren't anything like workstation CPUs. Incredible
power *per Watt* - but you'd need to run one at several GHz to get
anywhere near the slowest Socket 775 Celeron you can find.
I was running the Vaz analog synth simulator and some Yamaha or Roland
software GM synth on a Pentium 100 almost a decade ago. The Via and Geode chips are pretty weak, and I'm sure Jack and
various Linux
background tasks add some overhead, but is Fluidsynth really that
much more CPU-intensive?
If I went that route-- a headless, fanless "box" synth running Linux-- it'd
be all samples and a couple LADSPA effects, no synthesis. Just fluidsynth and a 2GB SD
"drive", really.
And for what it's worth, you can get micro-ATX
boards that take
Celerons and Athlons. I'd stay away from that Via stuff myself if I
were doing anything other than a web surfing terminal.
I'd guess that anything capable of DVD and MP4 video recording and playback would be
plenty good for Linux Audio. In other words, if it can run MythTV, why couldn't it run
64studio instead?
-ken