4 Sep
2010
4 Sep
'10
11:52 a.m.
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:24 PM, Joshua Boyd <jdboyd(a)jdboyd.net> wrote:
On Fri, Sep 03, 2010 at 10:59:02AM +0200, rosea
grammostola wrote:
Right, for audio a dualcore with 4 GB will do imo, but I might need some
extra power for other work.
Another aspect of a pc for audio is noise. I was wondering, might it be
possible to use a long cable to my pc monitor and place my pc in another
room. Will there be any degradation of the quality of the visual display
with a long >= 5m. cable?
Regards,
\r
Hi,
I need a new workstation | DAW pc, would be nice to get some advise.
Silent
Energy friendly (relative...)
Good for audio work
Price: 300 - 500 euro
1. Which components are the most important? And which components might
be
good second hand as well?
2. How many cores, is a dualcore enough, or do I need a quatro core?
It
would be nice to be able to enjoy the computer
in the coming 3 years
(I
don't know how heavy computing will be in
3 years...)
3. Which computer case?
4. Motherboard
5. Monitor
6. Fans?
You could give more detail about exactly what you plan to do with it.
There are people who need massive power today (not to mention 3 years
from now), and there are people who don't need tons of power today, and
probably still won't in 3 years. The number of audio people today using
3-5 year machines is pretty darn high, and they aren't limited to
amatures either. That makes me think you probably don't have to worry
too much about machine performance.
4 Sep
4 Sep
12:18 p.m.
New subject: New workstation | DAW pc
On 09/04/2010 11:52 AM, rosea grammostola wrote:
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:24 PM, Joshua
Boyd<jdboyd(a)jdboyd.net> wrote:
You could also try finding a more or less silent PC. I don't have
experience on different hardware, I just use what I can get my hands on
that gets written off at my work, but I have very good experiences with
Dell PC's: they all work very well with Linux, they're pretty silent
(especially the business models like the Optiplex or Precision) and they
are reliable and solid. You could also try placing the PC in some sort
of silencing case.
Longer quality cabling shouldn't degrade the quality that much. Those
cables can be pretty expensive though.
When it comes to performance, I think the minimum for a decent set-up is
a dual core system with 4 Gb. That should allow you to do all the stuff
you'd like. With a less powerful system you might run into performance
issues, especially when you use it with one of the bigger DE's (which
you're not planning to do I think).
Best,
Jeremy
On Fri, Sep 03, 2010 at 10:59:02AM +0200, rosea
grammostola wrote:
Right, for audio a dualcore with 4 GB will do imo, but I might need some
extra power for other work.
Another aspect of a pc for audio is noise. I was wondering, might it be
possible to use a long cable to my pc monitor and place my pc in another
room. Will there be any degradation of the quality of the visual display
with a long>= 5m. cable?
Regards,
\r
Hi,
I need a new workstation | DAW pc, would be nice to get some advise.
Silent
Energy friendly (relative...)
Good for audio work
Price: 300 - 500 euro
1. Which components are the most important? And which components might
be
good second hand as well?
2. How many cores, is a dualcore enough, or do I need a quatro core?
It
would be nice to be able to enjoy the
computer in the coming 3 years
(I
don't know how heavy computing will be in
3 years...)
3. Which computer case?
4. Motherboard
5. Monitor
6. Fans?
You could give more detail about exactly what you plan to do with it.
There are people who need massive power today (not to mention 3 years
from now), and there are people who don't need tons of power today, and
probably still won't in 3 years. The number of audio people today using
3-5 year machines is pretty darn high, and they aren't limited to
amatures either. That makes me think you probably don't have to worry
too much about machine performance.
1:28 p.m.
New subject: New workstation | DAW pc
On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Jeremy Jongepier <jeremy(a)autostatic.com>wrote;wrote:
You could also try finding a more or less silent PC. I don't have
experience on different hardware, I just use what I can get my hands on that
gets written off at my work, but I have very good experiences with Dell
PC's: they all work very well with Linux, they're pretty silent (especially
the business models like the Optiplex or Precision) and they are reliable
and solid. You could also try placing the PC in some sort of silencing case.
Yeah I was thinking to buy just a decent Lenovo Desktop pc... at least one
of the possibilities.
What do you mean by such a case? Doesn't it harm ear flow when you put a pc
in an case?
Regards,
\r
9:31 p.m.
New subject: New workstation | DAW pc
On 09/04/2010 01:28 PM, rosea grammostola wrote:
What do you mean by such a case? Doesn't it harm
ear flow when you put a pc
in an case?
A 'case' like Kevin Cosgrove mentions in another mail. And air flow (had
to read that a couple of times, 'ear flow'? What's 'ear flow'? ;) ),
don't forget about that no.
Best,
Jeremy
7:44 p.m.
New subject: New workstation | DAW pc
On 4 September 2010 at 12:18, Jeremy Jongepier <jeremy(a)autostatic.com> wrote:
I got a bunch of AcoustiPack stuff for two computers. It's sold
through places like Quiet-PC USA. I got my computers to be under
30dBA at about 1ft.
Right, for
audio a dualcore with 4 GB will do imo, but I might need some
extra power for other work.
Another aspect of a pc for audio is noise. I was wondering, might it be
possible to use a long cable to my pc monitor and place my pc in another
room. Will there be any degradation of the quality of the visual display
with a long>= 5m. cable?
Regards,
\r
You could also try finding a more or less silent PC. I don't have
experience on different hardware, I just use what I can get my hands on
that gets written off at my work, but I have very good experiences with
Dell PC's: they all work very well with Linux, they're pretty silent
(especially the business models like the Optiplex or Precision) and they
are reliable and solid. You could also try placing the PC in some sort
of silencing case. Longer quality cabling shouldn't degrade the
quality that much. Those
cables can be pretty expensive though.
I use a 22" monitor and 5m keyboard and mouse cables for some
situations. The monitor would be far from me, with the keyboard and
mouse. This lets me be close to my instrument and far from any
remaining computer noise.
When it comes to performance, I think the minimum for
a decent set-up is
a dual core system with 4 Gb. That should allow you to do all the stuff
you'd like. With a less powerful system you might run into performance
issues, especially when you use it with one of the bigger DE's (which
you're not planning to do I think).
If you're going to do a lot of multi-track audio, then consider a
hard drive setup that's fast enough to keep up with the audio files.
But, there's a trade-off with disk RPM. 10k RPM drives are noisy. I
stick with 7200 RPM extra quiet drives. The large RAM can help the
drive situation by buffering up some of the audio data.
G'luck...
--
Kevin
12:33 p.m.
New subject: New workstation | DAW pc
On 04/09/10 17:52, rosea grammostola wrote:
Another aspect of a pc for audio is noise. I was
wondering, might it be
possible to use a long cable to my pc monitor and place my pc in another
room. Will there be any degradation of the quality of the visual display
with a long>= 5m. cable?
5m is certainly fine with a reasonable DVI cable, with VGA 30m is generally ok
if you can use it at both ends, but you will lose some quality compared to DVI
and it depends a lot on how good the VGA part of each end is. With luck you will
get better than these lengths, but that will depend a lot on your set-up.
Using a good multi-core co-axial cable, a properly wired plug for each end and a
decent VGA card will work to at least 50m, but the whole VGA system is old, no
longer supported and substantially lower quality for big screens .. really only
useful for movies and images, say when sending to a projector.
Repeaters or amplifiers are available for each, but they can be expensive.
There are various systems, with very varied qualities and prices, for sending
screen data over ethernet cables directly, or through a network. Some work very
well, with very high quality. They keep changing and improving every year, so I
am out of touch here.
Simon
12:54 p.m.
New subject: New workstation | DAW pc
Greetings,
My machines are not silent but they are nicely quiet. I have two boxes
here with Antec Sonata II cases, fanless video cards, and "smart" Antec
PSUs. You can get cases from Antec B stock at very reasonable prices. My
flat-screen monitors don't make any noise, nor do they interfere with my
audio in any way. Both boxes use Zalman fans for CPU cooling, also very
quiet.
Fans are noisy, and the fans on cheaper video cards are particularly
nasty. Drives are also noisy, but the Antec cases have "soft" drive
mounts that absorb most of the noise.
Btw, the video systems in all my machines are powered by the nVidia
proprietary drivers, because I need accelerated 3D for some of my work.
The audio hardware is identical on the two desktop systems (M-Audio
Delta 66 + preamps).
I keep the machines on the carpeted floor, each on its own piece of 2x4
to further minimize rumble, and I keep my sound system's power amp
(Alesis RA-100) in another room. The RA is quiet enough to keep in the
main room, but I got in the habit of keeping it apart from the other gear.
Make sure that everything in the vicinity of your recording area is
nailed down tight, nothing vibrating or rattling. It's axiomatic: If
something can make noise in the room, it will. Reduce the possibilities. :)
Best,
dp
2:03 p.m.
New subject: New workstation | DAW pc
On 09/04/2010 12:54 PM, Dave Phillips wrote:
Greetings,
My machines are not silent but they are nicely quiet. I have two boxes
here with Antec Sonata II cases, fanless video cards, and "smart" Antec
PSUs. You can get cases from Antec B stock at very reasonable prices. My
flat-screen monitors don't make any noise, nor do they interfere with my
audio in any way. Both boxes use Zalman fans for CPU cooling, also very
quiet.
Fanless video cards, good one, I only use fanless video cards too. Also
nVidia because they easily allow me to use the fairly high resolution
that I'm running. My flat-screens don't interfere either luckily.
Best,
Jeremy
4:49 p.m.
New subject: New workstation | DAW pc
On 09/04/10 05:52, rosea grammostola wrote:
Right, for audio a dualcore with 4 GB will do imo, but
I might need some
extra power for other work.
Another aspect of a pc for audio is noise. I was wondering, might it be
possible to use a long cable to my pc monitor and place my pc in another
room. Will there be any degradation of the quality of the visual display
with a long >= 5m. cable?
That depends on the video card, monitor, type of cable, and the
resolution you use. The lower the resolution the better it will work.
In one place, I drive about that distance using a VGA distribution
amplifier box, but I am only doing 1024x768, and it still isn't perfect
quality.
Several companies make boxes just for this purpose though, called
console extenders. Gefen seems to be one of the most respected brands.
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linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
8 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Dave Phillips -
Jeremy Jongepier -
Joshua D. Boyd -
Kevin Cosgrove -
rosea grammostola -
Simon Wise