thinking about going back to pc after many years of mac usage

[Hi-Lo]

wow... I mean... f_ckin WOW!!!


Y'all must not have been around for too long. You can comfortably fly 24 tracks of audio off of a 5400RPM drive as long as the interface you're using is fast enough. To give you an example, my first serious DAW machine was a Pentium 233MMX machine with 128MB RAM, Win95b (later upgraded to Win98SE), Adaptec 1520 SCSI card, pair of Seagate 4.3GB SCSI-2 hard drives, Pinnacle 4x external SCSI CDR drive (that's burn only y'all, no RW), Event/Echo Darla, and Cubase VST 3.7. Even though I had other machines before this one, I consider this to be the first serious one 'cause it had everything you needed to fly 24 tracks off ya PC.


And that's what it could do. 24 tracks of audio without a hiccup. Couldn't use much in the way of fx back then 'cause I was still on a Pentium MMX and not a P2 but it didn't matter much 'cause I was running a hardware-based studio and had a rack full of fx.


So... 7200 RPM ISN'T mandatory, it's just nice to have. What matters more is your sustained data rate; not RPM speed. My old SCSI disks had great sustained data rates and these days even an old ATA100 drive will too.


As for 1.5GB not being enough, I scoff at you. My main DAW (Athlon XP 2000+) has 1GB of RAM, what WAS my second DAW(P3-850/100) has 512MB RAM (I just gave it to my wife to replace her old PC). My current backup DAW, known as Three-66 for it's Celeron 366, has 256MB of RAM.

a lot of sessions i've been in recently have had close to 75 tracks. so 24 doesn't exactly cut it for a lot of producers now. you ask any pro audio person about hard drives and see how many of them recommend 5400rpm scsi drives. its not 98 anymore man. there is better technology out there for cheaper now, so I don't really get your attitude. 500gig 7200rpm fw800 drives can be bought for 150 dollars.

most modern productions are done for the most part with a lot of ITB plugins and vst instruments which are ram hogs especially in pro tools. 1.5 is really going to strain a computer if you're running 5+ vst's (especially kontakt or battery) and ITB native effects. i just got 2 gigs of ram for my mac laptop for 70 dollars. what are you getting so upset over when huge performance boosts are that cheap? this isn't even just about audio- ram is the cheapest and most important upgrade for any computer.

if scsi drives and 1 gig of ram works for you great but you also are using a lot of otb hardware which many people do not do anymore, or at least not as extensively. ash started a thread asking for advice for improving his pc performance so i identified a couple of weak links in his computer setup. why you get so upset over computer advice tho is your own issue.

 

[konceptG]

most sessions i've been in recently have had close to 75-100 tracks. i was in a major session where i was just watching where a major r&b record was being made and the vocals alone were nearly 75 tracks in pro tools. so 24 doesn't exactly cut it. you ask any pro audio person about hard drives and see how many of them recommend 5400rpm scsi drives. its not 98 anymore man. there is better technology out there for cheaper now, so I don't really get your attitude. 500gig 7200rpm fw800 drives can be bought for 150 dollars.

most modern productions are done for the most part with a lot of ITB plugins and vst instruments which are ram hogs especially in pro tools. 1.5 is really going to strain a computer if you're running 5+ vst's (especially kontakt or battery) and ITB native effects. i just got 2 gigs of ram for my mac laptop for 70 dollars. what are you getting so upset over when huge performance boosts are that cheap? this isn't even just about audio- ram is the cheapest and most important upgrade for any computer.

if scsi drives and 1 gig of ram works for you great but you also are using a lot of otb hardware which many people do not do anymore, or at least not as extensively. ash started a thread asking for advice for improving his pc performance so i identified a couple of weak links in his computer setup. why you get so upset over computer advice tho is your own issue.

I know it's not '98 anymore. This is my current motherboard: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/K7_Master266.htm

MSI K7 Master-S. That's an Ultra 160SCSI on there. I have a pair of 18GB Fujitsu U160 drives on it (10K RPM, but that's all I could find). It's old as shit, but still runs circles around a lot of stuff out there thanks to the drives throughput. And, for the record, there's STILL nothing better than SCSI. Cheaper? Yeah. Faster, with better reliability? Nope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

Scroll down to find the "eSATA compared to other buses" and "SATA vs SCSI" sections. You'll find why I still pay more for SCSI for my audio and video work. It's simply better. (I know, a lot of people don't trust wikipedia, but you can find this data all over the internet)

I just get annoyed when I see misinformation going around. That's where the "attitude" comes from. If 1.5GB isn't enough, you have a problem. 7200RPM drives, while recommended, are not 100% necessary.

My current rig relies 100% on VSTi's. My sample based tracks rarely go over 16 tracks, my composed tracks might peak at 20, MAYBE 24. If I were running vocals, I'd allow for another 16 tracks, but even that's overkill.