Here's a generic answer;

The RME or the Yamaha Console will be set master for the wordclock ?

When using optical/digital inputs the clock should be set to the source, for analog, the soundcard.

I have read a document of Tascam on: Optimizing Windows XP for Audio. Is it a good way to configure Windows XP for use with Vegas 4?

I haven't read the Tascam suggestions but I suggest not making those types of optimizations until it becomes necessary.

What is the amount of RAM i need. 256megs ? 512megs ? 1gig ?

The more and faster RAM the better usually but not as important as CPU speed and a separate HDD for your audio.

A hard drive with 8 megs of cache (like Western Digital) is better than another one with 2 megs of cache or it doesn't matter ?

Generally yes.

Finally, lots of experienced users are on this forum, do you have some tips for the installation?

Install your OS and apps. (including Vegas) on the boot partition (IDE 1). Set the temp and project folders in Vegas to use a separated HDD (8 MB cash, 7200 RPM) installed on IDE 2 so the audio stream is uninterrupted by the OS communicating with the boot drive on IDE 1.

I may be wrong but I don't think you will be using many tracks (over 15) with many plug-ins so using common sense by not running anything unnecessary in the background including services, and doing the basic maintenance this should be a good start if not all you will need.

MJ

I agree with everthing MJ said. Also, for RAM I would recommend a minimum of 512Meg. I'm running 1.1 Gig and currently wouldn't run anything less than that, but 512 is good start point. I didn't read the Tascam literature you have either, but there's one critical thing it probably mentions. Install Windows XP in "Standard PC mode". It defaults to ACPI, which will assign all your hardware to IRQ 9 and you won't be able to change it. This will cause problem for DAWs because your sound card does not like to share IRQ's and you will be facing snap crackle and pops. You can change it to Standard PC mode after the fact, but I've heard this causes problems also. Here's how to do it.

Early on in the install process, you will prompted to press F6. Immediately press F5,(you only have a few seconds so be on the alert), then in the ensuing dialog box you will be able to scroll and choose the "Standard PC" option.

After you are in Standard PC mode make sure your Sound Card and Video card have their own IRQ.

One other eccential thing is to make sure DMA is enabled on all your hard drives. This will double your performance for audio applications. You can do this in the control panel, system settings.

This system will be in the commercial production room, and did not need to access live broadcast elements.

Serge

Thanks mjhig for your "generic" reply.

Thanks also RednRoll for your reply. Your suggestions are in the same thinking of the Tascam document for optimization of XP for audio.

By the way this file is available on this Tascam software web site: http://www.nemesysmusic.com/pdf/optimizing-xp-and-2k.pdf

Serge

Ok.

Then I would suggest to set the RME as the master clock.

Follow all of these optimizations for XP except #11

XP Tuning Tips

You'll need at least 512 Megs of Ram.

8 meg cache for drive.

Vegas when using DX plugins can quickly become very processor dependant. I would suggest to go with a PC 800 buss or a Xeon Processor (or dual Xeon) using DDR SDRAM with ECC and the fastest processor you can get. Also make sure that you're running at least a 400w supply for your machine.

If you have any questions you'd like me to answer directly concerning installation, you can contact me here:

Contact TMR

Well, Unfortunately I know this will start a flame war, but bad advice needs to be corrected.

Tmrpro said:
"Then I would suggest to set the RME as the master clock."

This is wrong information and you should not do this for all instances. Go back to MJHIG's advice which was correct.

"When using optical/digital inputs the clock should be set to the source, for analog, the soundcard."

Let me elaborate on this a little more for better understanding. If you are recording from an external device into the DAW digitally, the RME should be set to "External/spdif". That is because the master word clock for the material is being generated from the "source". Setting the RME to internal in this case means that the RME is using it's "internal" word clock, while your external device like a CD player, or DAT player is using it's own internal word clock. This means there is 2 seperate word clocks for the audio being transferred. The result is that the word clocks will not perfectly allign and data will be dropped resulting in pops and clicks in your audio. You need to set the RME to "external" so that it uses the word clock being generated by the external device, thus there's one clock and everyone is running together.

If you are playing back the audio from the DAW, and transferring to a device like a DAT player, then you would set the RME to internal and the DAT player to External. Again, this makes it so everyone is using the same word clock being generated from the "source".

If you are recording into the RME card through an analog input, then you would set the word clock to "internal" because obviously there is no word clock being generated from the analog audio.

You will NEED to switch the word clocks depending if you are playing back from the DAW or recording, you cannot put it in one position and leave it there if you are tranferring audio back and forth digitally. The only way to leave it without switching would be to have a master word clock generator in your studio setup, where all your hardware must have a "word clock input", then every device would be set to "external" and would be using the clock being generated from the master word clock generator.

Let me reiterate & specify for the less knowledgable High School Teachers in this forum.

The RME card you are referring to is the HDSP9632 which uses new & UNIQUE TECHNOLOGY called "AutoSync".

This allows what Hammerfall refers to as intelligent clock control according to operational mode and present/desired sample rate.

You want to activate AutoSync on the card and let the RME sound card determine proper clock source at all times.

Advice was given as to possibly building a dual processor system - at this point in time, this is a complete waste of time and money if you are going to use Vegas 4. Maybe Sony will get their act together with V5, but a duallie is worthless on V4 (but was advantageous with EARLIER versions of Vegas!!).

Also, IT IS NOT ALWAYS BEST TO DISABLE ACPI! In some circumstances, this method may be the only way to go, however, I am hearing that many of the newer motherboards/chipsets etc. are working better in DAW's with ACPI enabled than standard PC setup. I believe the best thing to do is install XP normally (ACPI enabled by default) and see how you do. I you end up having problems and suspect IRQ sharing issues, then try installing as standard PC. Technology is changing and improving - sometimes advice becomes outdated!

I am using ACPI have not had any issues - and I have 2 - UAD-1's, a firewire card and a 34 channel digital audio I/O card installed.

******Advice was given as to possibly building a dual processor system - at this point in time, this is a complete waste of time and money if you are going to use Vegas 4******

I was referring to the case of using direct x plugins, which results as another instance of another application or multitask by the system.

Whether V4 supports dual processing load balancing, multi-application or multi-tasking by using direct X plugins will load balance by default on a dual processor system.

Are you double talking now Tmrpro? We all just heard you say, set the RME to "internal", nothing about "autosync". I'm sure that little detail would have messed up some audio for the original poster. It's really entertaining hearing you call me a highschool teacher from Canton, but you should really get your facts straight for once. Whoever that person is you're referring too, it is not me. I find it even more entertaining that I get under your skin that much and you spend all this time searching to see who I am. It actually kind of scares me, it's really stalkerish behavior at it's best. I just hate to read the headlines in the Michigan newspaper about some poor inocent fellow teaching classes in Canton that got hunted down by your John Wayne Gacy like behavior.

You know I could really use someone like you in my studio. Here in Michigan it gets quite cold during the winter months. Having you in the studio could really cut down on the heating bill with all that hot air blowing out your mouth. You should really get back to spending more time doing those artist ripoff CD's, Vitamin records called me today telling me your CD made it on the top 40million list. Since you take suggestions, could you do some Skynard for me? We all can't get enough.....(ssssssssssp...cough..cough) FREE BIRD!!!!

*****We all just heard you say, set the RME to "internal", nothing about "autosync". ******

RednBoy ....Anyone who has used the RME HDSP series of cards (or read the manual) knows that setting the card to internal sync enables "AutoSync" feature. Setting the card to external clock source, disables the feature completely.

Actually my String Tribute To Rush has been selling better than the actual artist's latest release.

Face it, RednDork you are just wrong about everything.

I suppose you have something ridiculous to say about Jamie Slocum, the christian artist I produced for Curb records who's first single, "I Can Not Turn Away" spent 5 weeks at #1 on the Christian Inspirational charts.

I just got a really nice plaque from Curb for that last week.

This USED to be the case before Vegas 4. I had built a dual processor machine as I was told by SF that it would allow me to run more Direct X effects in Vegas. While I did not see an even load split between the processors, I was gaining a fair amount of Direct X DSP power using Vegas 2 (others saw the same with V3). When I upgraded to V4 I lost all or nearly all the advantage of my expensive SMP machine! SF/Sony responded by saying that some changes were made for the new ASIO interface which hindered the multi-threading....bla...bla...bla. It has been a year now and they evidently have no plans to fix this in the current version, though at the time they acted like it would be addressed in an update.

What really gets me is that I lost performance with V4 and we still didn't get features like auto-input monitoring!!! These issues among a few others have now forced me to switch to a different software package - which IMHO makes Vegas look like a toy. Sure is nice to have all my DSP power back (and then some), a working UAD-1 without CPU munching, and not to mention real tape machine style auto-input monitoring with punch-in on the fly etc. Don't get me wrong, Vegas has an extremely intuitive interface and some great things going for it, but it is a day late and a dollar short for real pro audio work. I guess I can at least get some use out of it now as a video editor.

******some changes were made for the new ASIO interface which hindered the multi-threading....bla...bla...bla******

Hmmmm. I may be wrong about this, & I'm sure if I am that somebody will respond with a definative answer.

I'm very confident that when you are using a direct X plugin with any application, you are multithreading by virtue of the fact that each direct X plugin is a program in itself. Therefore, the load balance will be occuring outside the ramifications of the primary application.

Perhaps with the introduction of V4, load balancing within the CPU requests made by Vegas were interfered with in the newer release, but it is my understanding that this would have no effect on how multithreading occurs at the multi-applicatory level for load balancing.

Believe me....using a duallie with V4 is a huge disappointment to say the least. What you are saying was true in versions of Vegas before V4. If you search the forums you will see the posts concerning this. All you need to do is open the task manager and watch the CPU usage of both processors - earlier versions of Vegas would run anywhere from about a 70/30 to a 60/40 load split between the CPU's depending on the amount of DX effects etc. With V4 it is more like 97/3 - so you will quickly peg one processor and the audio will stutter while your other processor is almost idle.

I raised a lot of hell about this yet it did no good. You and a few others have been raising valid issues about lack of auto-input for some time now....has that done any good yet? I'm sure that someday Vegas will have these things - it's just that I need them now and have grown tired of waiting. A year ago I thought for sure that V4 would have auto-input....boy was I wrong.

>>These issues among a few others have now forced me to switch to a different software package - which IMHO makes Vegas look like a toy. <<

fishtank: I'm curious about what you now are using as your primary multitrack app?

Thanks,

drbam