Hi Walterius
Are you selling your MOTU? Please let me know.

George Ware


Walterius Till wrote:
>>Hi! I have to speed up my system and I thought of 2 ways:
>>1.Change motherboard and Cpu(PIII500-->K7 1GHz)
>>2. Use my motherboard (asus dual P3b) with 2xPIII600
>> install win2K and change audiointerface(motu2408-->
>> mixtremecard)
>>
>>so what is the better thing and how can i use the dsp from
>>mixtreme with vegas,
>>with the normal pack you do not get many fx for mixtreme is
>>that correct?
>>Is the mixer in mixtreme easy to use?
>>
>>it is all a question of how many days my studio has to
>>close for the "speed up".
>>Thanx for helping.
>>
>>
>>

Walterius,

After upgrading from Vegas Pro to Vegas Video it became painfully
apparent that one of our problems, and probably the biggest one, was
that we didn't have enough horses under the hood to take advantage of
the program ... operating system (Win98) issues notwithstanding.

AAMOF, we had likely been skirting on the edge with Vegas Pro ...
even though it seemed to perform well enough for our purposes prior
to the upgrade, I don't think I made a secret of the fact that Vegas
Video did NOT run well for us on our old machine in a studio
environment.

Still, finding that Vegas fit our needs to a "T" for multitrack
editing (which is 99% of our use for it), was incentive enough ... so
we decided to focus on those areas where it seemed from our previous
experience that Vegas needed the most beef: cpu/RAM, disk throughput,
and operating system robustness.

You don't say what you have in the way of disk drives, but we went a
long way to beefing up disk throughput with an Ultra 160 controller
and 10,000 rpm SCSI recording drive. (Considering the steps that we
were taking in the other areas, anything less would have been like
putting an Indy car on the track with three tires, IMO.)

>>2. Use my motherboard (asus dual P3b) with 2xPIII600
>> install win2K and change audiointerface(motu2408-->
>> mixtremecard)

Looks to me like you have the other important bases pretty well
covered.

A dual processor machine would appear to be a definite advantage
given that the Vegas is advertised as written to take advantage of
dual processors with the proper operating system.

I am also a firm believer in matching the operating system to the
application ... IOW, find the application you want to run FIRST, and
then get the operating system that runs it best.

That fact accepted, it is obviously in your favor to go with NT or
Win2K as it covers two of those critical areas with one blow - being
able to handle the dual processors, and being much more robust than
Win9x.

I will say that after having experienced the difference with Vegas
Video, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the dual processor/Win2K
route to anyone whose budget allows.

The downside, of course, is as Aaron pointed out, the driver issue.

Since we have DA-88's in our arsenal of recorders, I really liked the
versatility and all-in-one compactness of the MOTU system and wanted
to stay with them if at all possible. But getting WinNT/2K drivers
out of MOTU is not something I wanted to hang my hat on ... nor did I
want to risk not being able to handle the needs of current ongoing
client projects in a timely fashion, as was starting to happen under
the old system with Vegas Video and MOTU.

So, in order to put the rest of the plan into effect, MOTU obviously
had to go ... for lack of drivers if nothing else.

And, considering the DA88's, Mixtreme with its TDIF architecture, was
a resounding fit.

The Mixtreme cards installed here with little or no trouble. The
routing may actually be a bit easier and more intuitive than with the
MOTU. They sound as good if not better than the MOTU. The
Mixtreme "mixer" can be a simple router for Vegas, or as complicated
as you want or need, and it complements Vegas very well ... even if
you use it simply as routing tool, a la the MOTU console app).

I am admittedly not a big fan of DirectX ... I view the architecture
as a kludge at best and marginally tolerable, even on the fastest
machines. The DSP effects that are available to take advantage of the
Mixtreme are hugely better sounding than their DirectX counterparts
in my experience ... athough much more expensive.

Also, the ability to share some of the processing load using the
built-in DSP processor on the Mixtreme card woud be an obvious
advantage to those without a console and a complement of outboard
effects.

This ability to "load balance" your effects between the Mixtreme
mixer and Vegas certainly allows Vegas the freedom to shine without
bogging down the cpu(s) with effects processing.

If you go with Mixtreme, consider getting the Power Pack 2000 ... it
comes with Mixtremes "Audio ToolBox" and the Wave's Mechanics reverb
plug-in which, compared to our outboard gear like Lexicon, is a very
nice sounding reverb. There is some more ash and trash included that
I didn't even look at, but the above two are worth the price if you
need effects.

You are right, the basic card comes with nothing but "demos" as far
as I can tell.

The downside is the modular nature of the Mixtreme system ... analog
I/O and S/PDIF I/O have to be purchased separately, and is not all
that cheap. Of course, if you have DA-88's or similar, their
converters can double as AD/DA through the TDIF quite easily.

>>Is the mixer in mixtreme easy to use?

Yes and no ... it can be extremely simple or very complicated,
depending upon what you need to do.... but the components themselves
are fairly basic and are in the nature of "plug-ins" that can be
inserted in the channels to increase the complexity of the mixer. It
is definitely one of the most configurable pieces of software I've
ever seen ... and very stable, if the past couple of weeks are any
indication. As an old programmer from many years back, I would have
to say the *functionality* and configurability of the mixer is one
hell of an *elegant* accomplishment, although the interface is a bit
clumsy ... but then I've never seen a GUI mixer that wasn't.

Let me know if you need more input. It is tough choice to give up
MOTU's proven ability for something sight unheard, but I am glad that
I had Aaron to query in that regard and can't thank him enough for
taking the time to personally answer the questions that made the
decision easier.

Even if you decide to go another route than Mixtreme, whatever it
takes to get you up and running Vegas on a dual processor capable
operating system would be worth it, IMO.

KAC ...

Hi mextreme friends - thank you for repleys!
today i have ordered mixtreme 2000 DPP and 2nd PIII 500.
so i have make win2k run on my machine.
Did you make any special experience installing evething?

Again: thank you very much , you made my decision very easy.
Gods blessings
Walterius