Dave Phillips wrote:
Greetings:
Many thanks to all who responded to my orginal query. I just purchased
a brand new Delta 66 on eBay, for a very good price, with cables and
breakout box included. I'm looking forward to finally having some more
professional recording capability here.
I'm still undecided about the mobo. Is it possible for me to continue
using an 800 MHz machine for recording ? I have 512 MB RAM, which seem
like it should be plenty, and I have a fair amount of free drive space.
Money's tight, so I'll stave off buying the mobo if my current system
will do for small-scale multitracking. Any & all advice will of course
be galactically appreciated !
Best,
dp
Dave,
Well, obviously an 800MHz machine will at first glance seem
underpowered compared to all the newer stuff out there, but my thought
is that for just recording/playback you'll probably be fine if you pay
close attention to the rest of your hardware. Good optimization, a good
audio drive, etc. and you'll probably be fine up to a somewhat limited
track count. (8? 10? 12? 14? just guesses...)
Get other people's inputs, most especially those who really depend
on Linux, but instead of a new MB, new processor, new memory, etc., and
all that money, consider adding a second drive (or maybe an external
1394 hard drive) to this machine for audio. Internally it's pretty
cheap, and for 1394 this is probably no more than $150 for a 60GB drive
in a 1394 case. Add a 1394 adapter and off you go. It's the way I work
on Pro Tools. Really consider 1394b if you want to protect your monetary
investment, but be advised that there hasn't been all that much
Linux-based 1394b testing done yet and the 2.6 series kernel support is
very much in flux.
When you do eventually get a new system you just plug the drive in
and off you go, even with a new laptop should you go that way.
Good luck whatever you do. You're an amazing credit to this whole
Linux audio movement.
Cheers,
Mark