Couple of newbie questions

jfolger wrote on 9/7/1999, 2:17 PM

Hey group - just bought Vegas Pro last weekend. Quick spec
rundown:

Windows 98 SE
Intel Celeron 466Mhz
Asus P2B-S Motherboard
128MB PC-100 Memory
MOTU 1224
IBM Deskstar 9GB IDE
Mackie VLZ1402 Mixer

My questions:

1) I certainly understand why you need to use a dedicated
hard drive for the audio. I plan on purchasing an IBM
Ultrastar 10,000 RPM Ultra2 for this purpose. The question:

Do I want the OS *and* Vegas Pro on, say, the IDE, and just
use the SCSI for my audio? Or do I want Vegas Pro (the
actual app) on this SCSI drive as well?

2) Do most folks run two soundcards? I pulled my cheap-o
SB64 out to avoid conflicts, and noticed I immediately lost
my system sounds. Which is fine, except I've also lost my
CD player, since it has that cable attached to the
soundcard. Is there any reason to run two soundcards, other
than that?

Lemme know if you need more info!

Thanks
Justin

Comments

pwppch wrote on 9/11/1999, 11:46 AM

See below:

Justin Folger wrote:
>>
>>Do I want the OS *and* Vegas Pro on, say, the IDE, and just
>>use the SCSI for my audio? Or do I want Vegas Pro (the
>>actual app) on this SCSI drive as well?

Keep any app and OS off the drive you using for audio. Not just
partition, but off the physical drive.

>>2) Do most folks run two soundcards? I pulled my cheap-o
>>SB64 out to avoid conflicts, and noticed I immediately lost
>>my system sounds. Which is fine, except I've also lost my
>>CD player, since it has that cable attached to the
>>soundcard. Is there any reason to run two soundcards, other
>>than that?
>>

Since the 1224 does not support the CD audio interface, leave the SB
in. The SB should work correctly as you Multimeida card just fine.
Use the 1224 for Vegas and you should be fine there.

This is a choice. There is no right or wrong.

Peter

jfolger wrote on 9/11/1999, 2:25 PM

Thanks for the response Peter.

>>Keep any app and OS off the drive you using for audio. Not just
>>partition, but off the physical drive.

Let me make sure I understand you. You're saying I'm better off with
Vegas Pro on a seperate hard drive than the audio files it
manipulates?

For example, my setup now looks like this:

Drive 'C' (IBM IDE, 7200RPM, 9GB) contains Win98 OS and MOTU.
Drive 'D' (Seagate SCSI LVD, 10K RPM, 9GB) contains Vegas Pro & Audio.

So you are saying I'm better off putting Vegas next to Win98? I
understand it'd most likely work fine either way, but what's the most
desirable?

Thanks again

pwppch wrote on 9/11/1999, 4:43 PM

Anything will work, but the idea is making reading and writing of the
Audio data to be independent of anything the app or the OS has to do.

You basically what all apps and OS stuff on a different physical
driver - can be different partitions - than your audio files.

You don't want your audio files on a drive that may be seeked to
another position because Windows or the app needs to read a file
unrelated to the actual audio. Remember, Windows can need to load a
portion from the application or a DLL used by the application that
does not happen to be in memory. Worse, it might need to read from
the "virtual memory" or the swap file.

Remember, the bottle neck now is not CPU or memory, though more
memory does help with DAW application. The weak link is disk access.

If you are in the middle of recording say 4 tracks of audio and
streaming another 8 tracks for playback (which could consist of many
files), you want the least amount of disk seek activity on the drive
as possible. If the drive can read contineously with out having to
seek to a new position on the drive, the better performance you will
get. Anything that causes the drive to seek could potentionally cause
gapping or worse, lost data during record.

Peter

Justin Folger wrote:
>>Thanks for the response Peter.
>>
>>>>Keep any app and OS off the drive you using for audio. Not just
>>>>partition, but off the physical drive.
>>
>>Let me make sure I understand you. You're saying I'm better off
with
>>Vegas Pro on a seperate hard drive than the audio files it
>>manipulates?
>>
>>For example, my setup now looks like this:
>>
>>Drive 'C' (IBM IDE, 7200RPM, 9GB) contains Win98 OS and MOTU.
>>Drive 'D' (Seagate SCSI LVD, 10K RPM, 9GB) contains Vegas Pro &
Audio.
>>
>>So you are saying I'm better off putting Vegas next to Win98? I
>>understand it'd most likely work fine either way, but what's the
most
>>desirable?
>>
>>Thanks again
>>

lilpizan77 wrote on 9/12/1999, 10:12 AM

1 ) use the scsi hard drive STRICTLY for audio... put ALL softwarte
programs on the ide... and partitiion the scsi hard drive to use 3 to
4 meg clusters for the auidio...which helps performance.. your ide
drive if clustered at around 400k i think ,which is optomized for
windows and software...

2 ) most people leave their first soundcard in place in their pc for
the typical windows sounds... if you have an extra pci or isa slot (
whichever your old card is ) put it your old card back.. and
configure settings/control panel/multimedia to use whichever card for
whichever purposes..

lilpizan77 wrote on 9/12/1999, 10:17 AM