18 Mar
2003
18 Mar
'03
6:19 p.m.
Hi guys! (and gals).
I am looking into building a new machine, and I want to do some home-studio
recording with it. I was hoping that some of you could lend some of your
expert advice.
It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these situations, true? What
I was wondering about in particular is if anyone has tried anything like
this: Setting up a machine with an IDE hard drive to hold the system files
(say an ata 133 7200 rpm...) and a scsi disk for the dumping ground of the
audio programs such as ecasound, audacity or Ardour. I think I would put
the swap partition on the scsi drive as well. Obviously I am trying to
save a little money here, and I am trying to minimize latency. (I think
that somewhere around the $2K mark is my limit.) I am accustomed to using
multitrack analog units, but digital/computer recording is still extremely
new to me.
Any thoughts on this?
I would also love to hear any suggestions regarding what disks,
motherboards, cases and heatsinks people recommend and have had luck with.
Thanks!
Chris
18 Mar
18 Mar
6:41 p.m.
Boy, I wish I had had $2K for my system. I'm using IDE drives with no
problems. If you've got the bucks spend 'em though. Check out my setup
at http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/ALSA_JACK_ARDOUR.html. It's in
the "Low latency, preemption, IRQs, hard drive tuning, and other arcana"
chapter, under "Hardware".
Jan
On Tue, 2003-03-18 at 16:10, Chris wrote:
Hi guys! (and gals).
I am looking into building a new machine, and I want to do some home-studio
recording with it. I was hoping that some of you could lend some of your
expert advice.
It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these situations, true? What
I was wondering about in particular is if anyone has tried anything like
this: Setting up a machine with an IDE hard drive to hold the system files
(say an ata 133 7200 rpm...) and a scsi disk for the dumping ground of the
audio programs such as ecasound, audacity or Ardour. I think I would put
the swap partition on the scsi drive as well. Obviously I am trying to
save a little money here, and I am trying to minimize latency. (I think
that somewhere around the $2K mark is my limit.) I am accustomed to using
multitrack analog units, but digital/computer recording is still extremely
new to me.
Any thoughts on this?
I would also love to hear any suggestions regarding what disks,
motherboards, cases and heatsinks people recommend and have had luck with.
Thanks!
Chris
7:28 p.m.
Hi guys! (and gals).
I am looking into building a new machine, and I want to do some
home-studio
recording with it. I was hoping that some of you could lend some of your
expert advice.
It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these situations,
true? What
I was wondering about in particular is if anyone has tried anything like
this: Setting up a machine with an IDE hard drive to hold the
system files
(say an ata 133 7200 rpm...) and a scsi disk for the dumping
ground of the
audio programs such as ecasound, audacity or Ardour. I think I would put
the swap partition on the scsi drive as well. Obviously I am trying to
save a little money here, and I am trying to minimize latency. (I think
that somewhere around the $2K mark is my limit.) I am accustomed
to using
multitrack analog units, but digital/computer recording is still
extremely
new to me.
Any thoughts on this?
I would also love to hear any suggestions regarding what disks,
motherboards, cases and heatsinks people recommend and have had luck with.
Thanks!
Chris
Chris,
Hi. I think you can do this for less money. I just built a new machine
last weekend for way less than half what your considering spending, but I
had a few bits laying around. Some of what I got is even a bit over the top.
You don't need to go so far. Try this for starters:
-Cooler Master Case $150
-Antec 365-FCA Power Supply (Manual Fan) $ 80
-Asus - A7V333-X $ 70
-AMD - Athlon Thoroughbred XP 2600+ $250
-DDR-SDRAM PC2700 - Crucial 512MB $ 80
-Thermal Take Technology - Volcano 9 CoolMod $ 26
-Lite-On 48x CD-RW $ 60
-Sony Floppy $ 16
-Radeon 9000-64MB $ 69
----
$801
-ATA-133 80GB (2MB Cache) System Drive $ 80
-1394 OHCI Controller $ 40
-1394 Maxtor DV rated external drive $200
-RME HDSP 9652 26 Channel + MIDI $450
----
$770
The stuff at the top I purchased. The stuff near the bottom (Or similar to
it) I already had.
This machine is running RH 8.0 and the PlanetCCRMA flow. Everything works
fine (so far) other than the current Planet kernel cannot enable DMA on my
system drive. I expect to have this solved later this week.
You can probably keep this down around $1K-$1.1K if you just go with a
second internal ATA-133 drive on the second IDE channel and share it with
the CD-RW drive. You can always convert it to 1394 later. Just by an ADS
Pyro drive case for $80.
7:48 p.m.
Hi Chris
I did the same thing a couple of months ago, and am happy with my setup.
Specs follow.
Asus P4PE Motherboard
Intel Pentium IV 2.4Ghz at 533Mhz FSB
2 x 512MB PC2700 RAM, (Total of 1GB)
Seagate 40GB ATA-100 IDE hard drive, for operating systems, mainly Linux
and Win2k.
Seagate 80GB ATA-100 IDE hard drive, for all audio and sample data.
Matrox Millennium G550 dual head AGP video card.
TerraTec DMX 6FIRe 24/96 soundcard, as I don't need a lot of ins and outs,
and wanted MIDI and digital interfaces.
With this setup, I am able to get very low latency in Windows, approx 1-3
ms, and a bit lower with Linux and ardour/softsynths via JACK.
hth
Luke.
At 09:10 AM 3/19/2003, you wrote:
Hi guys! (and gals).
I am looking into building a new machine, and I want to do some
home-studio recording with it. I was hoping that some of you could lend
some of your expert advice.
It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these situations, true? What
I was wondering about in particular is if anyone has tried anything like
this: Setting up a machine with an IDE hard drive to hold the system
files (say an ata 133 7200 rpm...) and a scsi disk for the dumping ground
of the audio programs such as ecasound, audacity or Ardour. I think I
would put the swap partition on the scsi drive as well. Obviously I am
trying to save a little money here, and I am trying to minimize
latency. (I think that somewhere around the $2K mark is my limit.) I am
accustomed to using multitrack analog units, but digital/computer
recording is still extremely new to me.
Any thoughts on this?
I would also love to hear any suggestions regarding what disks,
motherboards, cases and heatsinks people recommend and have had luck with.
Thanks!
Chris
10:57 p.m.
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 17:10:51 -0500
Chris <grooveman(a)comcast.net> wrote:
I am looking into building a new machine, and I want
to do some
home-studio recording with it. I was hoping that some of you could
lend some of your expert advice.
It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these situations, true?
So in other words, nobody, myself included, thinks SCSI is necessary for this type of
workstation nowadays.
---scott
19 Mar
19 Mar
12:23 a.m.
On Tue, 2003-03-18 at 18:48, Scott Thomason wrote:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 17:10:51 -0500
Chris <grooveman(a)comcast.net> wrote:
I don't. I'm completely 1394 based in both Windows and Linux for my
audio drives. It's way cheaper than SCSI, it more quiet than EIDE (in a
case and located in the closet at the end of a cable like SCSI), I Can
add more storage in a minute like SCSI, and it puts the drive power
supply outside the PC thus reducing load on the main box.
I certainly think EIDE drives are basically fast enough today for
smaller systems, and with 1394 drive kits, you can take an EIDE drive
and make it 1394 in a matter of minutes should you ever want to.
1394 is the lowest raw-throughput performance of all 3, but overall I
find it works very well for me. (FYI - I have not done enough Linux
based recording to tell people to ONLY go this way, but I Can say that
about 1394 under Windows.)
Mark
I am looking into building a new machine, and I
want to do some
home-studio recording with it. I was hoping that some of you could
lend some of your expert advice.
It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these situations, true?
So in other words, nobody, myself included, thinks SCSI is necessary for this type of
workstation nowadays.
---scott 
12:33 a.m.
Mark Knecht writes:
I certainly think EIDE drives are basically fast
enough today for
smaller systems, and with 1394 drive kits, you can take an EIDE drive
and make it 1394 in a matter of minutes should you ever want to.
1394 is the lowest raw-throughput performance of all 3, but overall I
find it works very well for me. (FYI - I have not done enough Linux
based recording to tell people to ONLY go this way, but I Can say that
about 1394 under Windows.)
As I understand it, Firewire drives are basically ATA drives with a 1394
adapter built in to them. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, although
I have heard of so-called "native" Firewire drives.
According to Apple, Jon Anderson is recording his next album using 1394
disks and a Macintosh. If it's good enough for him... :-)
-- Darren
12:48 a.m.
On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 09:25, Darren Landrum wrote:
Mark Knecht writes:
This is true for the vast majority of 1394 drives today, and I think
likely to be true for a long time to come.
I certainly think EIDE drives are basically fast
enough today for
smaller systems, and with 1394 drive kits, you can take an EIDE drive
and make it 1394 in a matter of minutes should you ever want to.
1394 is the lowest raw-throughput performance of all 3, but overall I
find it works very well for me. (FYI - I have not done enough Linux
based recording to tell people to ONLY go this way, but I Can say that
about 1394 under Windows.)
As I understand it, Firewire drives are basically ATA drives with a 1394
adapter built in to them. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, although
I have heard of so-called "native" Firewire drives.
According to Apple, Jon Anderson is recording his next album using 1394
disks and a Macintosh. If it's good enough for him... :-)
-- Darren 
5:45 a.m.
On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 08:39:14 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
But the firewire disk protocol is SCSI based? Or have I misunderstood that
part.
- Steve
As I
understand it, Firewire drives are basically ATA drives with a 1394
adapter built in to them. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, although
I have heard of so-called "native" Firewire drives.
According to Apple, Jon Anderson is recording his next album using 1394
disks and a Macintosh. If it's good enough for him... :-)
-- Darren
This is true for the vast majority of 1394 drives today, and I think
likely to be true for a long time to come.
9:27 a.m.
On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 01:36, Steve Harris wrote:
On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 08:39:14 -0800, Mark Knecht
wrote:
But the firewire disk protocol is SCSI based? Or have I misunderstood that
part.
- Steve
Yes, as much as I understand SCSI software today, they both run SBP2
protocols.
As I
understand it, Firewire drives are basically ATA drives with a 1394
adapter built in to them. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, although
I have heard of so-called "native" Firewire drives.
According to Apple, Jon Anderson is recording his next album using 1394
disks and a Macintosh. If it's good enough for him... :-)
-- Darren
This is true for the vast majority of 1394 drives today, and I think
likely to be true for a long time to come. 
4:31 a.m.
Yup, but you can get decent recording on linux even with just one drive if
you have the right combo of hardware. I was using an Audiophile card for
recording, but had some pci conflicts that caused random pops in
recording, but when I switched to the quattro on usb I'm now getting clean
recordings. I'll have to give 1394 a try under linux, I've got a firewire
card, but have only used it for digitizing video.
http://www.brianredfern.org
On 18 Mar 2003, Mark Knecht wrote:
On Tue, 2003-03-18 at 18:48, Scott Thomason wrote:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 17:10:51 -0500
Chris <grooveman(a)comcast.net> wrote:
I don't. I'm completely 1394 based in both Windows and Linux for my
audio drives. It's way cheaper than SCSI, it more quiet than EIDE (in a
case and located in the closet at the end of a cable like SCSI), I Can
add more storage in a minute like SCSI, and it puts the drive power
supply outside the PC thus reducing load on the main box.
I certainly think EIDE drives are basically fast enough today for
smaller systems, and with 1394 drive kits, you can take an EIDE drive
and make it 1394 in a matter of minutes should you ever want to.
1394 is the lowest raw-throughput performance of all 3, but overall I
find it works very well for me. (FYI - I have not done enough Linux
based recording to tell people to ONLY go this way, but I Can say that
about 1394 under Windows.)
Mark
I am looking into building a new machine, and I
want to do some
home-studio recording with it. I was hoping that some of you could
lend some of your expert advice.
It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these situations, true?
So in other words, nobody, myself included, thinks SCSI is necessary for this type of
workstation nowadays.
---scott 
1:13 a.m.
Hi,
--- Scott Thomason <scott(a)thomasons.org> wrote:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 17:10:51 -0500
Chris <grooveman(a)comcast.net> wrote:
I don't know if it's necesarry to have scsi drives. It
depends on your requirements.
I use an ICP Vortex four channel scsi LVD 160 hardware
controler with an audio array of eight 3.6ms seek
15,000rpm 18gig hdd. My studio will requre a second
channel that's the same as the current one. The scsi
controler is in a 64/66 pci slot.
I have done mastering of two track via LAN to a mac
while rysnc is running and the only person that knew
it was happening was me. I expect to run more
bandwidth expensive tasks concurrently and don't
believe it's going to be a problem. Of course, this
remains to be seen.
Obviously, I haven't built a personal workstation. I
own a small commercial studio and require performance,
hardware and data redundancy. I run ext2 with a hot
spare swap, 12/24 gig tape backup and rsync a mirror
via LAN to a large cheap ide drive.
I'm no expert on peformance but for a personal
workstation, I would consider it a must to investigate
ide drives.
ron
I am looking into building a new machine, and I
want to do some
home-studio recording with it. I was hoping that
some of you could
lend some of your expert advice.
It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these
situations, true?
So in other words, nobody, myself included, thinks
SCSI is necessary for this type of workstation
nowadays. ---scott
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com
5:47 a.m.
On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 09:04:41 -0800, R Parker wrote:
I'm no expert on peformance but for a personal
workstation, I would consider it a must to investigate
ide drives.
Yes, thats a good point. SCSI drives have historically been more reliable
than IDE ones, and my experices with IDE RAID have not been very good, so if
uptime is important to you then thats another aspect.
- Steve
5:52 a.m.
On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 08:48:43 -0600, Scott Thomason wrote:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 17:10:51 -0500
Chris <grooveman(a)comcast.net> wrote:
Some benchmarks I've seen recently (sorry, no refernce, it was linked off
slashdot IIRC) even suggest that IDE is better for these cases, because
its optimised for workstation use, not server.
- Steve
I am looking into building a new machine, and I
want to do some
home-studio recording with it. I was hoping that some of you could
lend some of your expert advice.
It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these situations, true?
So in other words, nobody, myself included, thinks SCSI is necessary for this type of
workstation nowadays.
9:53 a.m.
This may be what you were looking for :
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/1A37C1C69674D6D786256950…
Jan
On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 03:34, Steve Harris wrote:
On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 08:48:43 -0600, Scott Thomason
wrote:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 17:10:51 -0500
Chris <grooveman(a)comcast.net> wrote:
Some benchmarks I've seen recently (sorry, no refernce, it was linked off
slashdot IIRC) even suggest that IDE is better for these cases, because
its optimised for workstation use, not server.
- Steve I am looking into building a new machine, and I
want to do some
home-studio recording with it. I was hoping that some of you could
lend some of your expert advice.
It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these situations, true?
So in other words, nobody, myself included, thinks SCSI is necessary for this type of
workstation nowadays.
21 Mar
21 Mar
6:33 p.m.
Thanks everyone for your input.
I have some serious thinking to do here..., and I am absolutely releived
that it won't take $2k to do this! (I was under the impression this was
necessary -- may bad :0) ).
I may be back again before the credit card is used :0).
Thanks again,
Chris
At 05:10 PM 3/18/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Hi guys! (and gals).
I am looking into building a new machine, and I want to do some
home-studio recording with it. I was hoping that some of you could lend
some of your expert advice.
It sounds like SCSI is pretty-much a must in these situations, true? What
I was wondering about in particular is if anyone has tried anything like
this: Setting up a machine with an IDE hard drive to hold the system
files (say an ata 133 7200 rpm...) and a scsi disk for the dumping ground
of the audio programs such as ecasound, audacity or Ardour. I think I
would put the swap partition on the scsi drive as well. Obviously I am
trying to save a little money here, and I am trying to minimize
latency. (I think that somewhere around the $2K mark is my limit.) I am
accustomed to using multitrack analog units, but digital/computer
recording is still extremely new to me.
Any thoughts on this?
I would also love to hear any suggestions regarding what disks,
motherboards, cases and heatsinks people recommend and have had luck with.
Thanks!
Chris
7920
days inactive
7923
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
15 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
Brian Redfern -
Chris -
Darren Landrum -
Jan "Evil Twin" Depner -
Luke Yelavich -
Mark Knecht -
Mark Knecht -
R Parker -
Scott Thomason -
Steve Harris