Re: [LAU] Requirements for huge multitrack editing

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Asa Marco &lt;aesir.ml(a)gmail.com <mailto:aesir.ml@gmail.com>> wrote: Hello list, For the first time in my life I need to work with huge recordings, I would like to understand how much memory and computing power is required to handle it on a linux box with Ardour. The recording, retrieved from an Alesis hd24, will be about 1 hour and a half long, 24 channels, 44.1KHz, 16bit, What are the minimal requirements to work with it? If I choose sample rate and bit depth to be 48kHz/24bit, will it require much more resources (other than disk space)? you could record that on a 400MHz Pentium II (i.e. a box about 12 years old) - you don't need any big hardware to record data like that. now, when it comes to editing, the question is a bit different, but the *size* of the session in terms of duration is largely irrelevant. 24 tracks is manageable on just about any modern machine. if you edit it so that there end being hundreds or thousands of regions, that could cause issues, but by itself, the data size isn't really significant. what demands big resources are * disk i/o, but 24 tracks should be manageable on any modern disk * plugins, which use (potentially) lots of CPU while processing audio without knowing plugins you plan to use, it is hard to predict what you would need in terms of CPU power. with no plugins, it would be hard to buy a computer today that could *not* handle editing that session.