Thanks for all the "new computer" input

Softy wrote on 3/4/2004, 4:40 AM
Thanks everyone, who replied to my post about what computer gear is working stably (with Vegas) for you. After reading through a lot of the replies, I can see how this is really a weird topic to hash around. I guess I'll just dive in and build a system and try it.

My apologies for having mistakenly said that I was thinking of using the Asus P4P800 MB (too many acronyms and model numbers for my poor, tired brain). What I was really thinking of was the P4C800 which is what we use around here for our current standard computer configuration (so I have them to play with).

One of the reasons I am interested in trying the Asus P4C800 for Vegas is that it supports the usual dual ATA133 controller channels PLUS SATA RAID. I'd configure the OS on an ATA133 drive on one ATA133 channel, and put DVD-ROM and DVD burner drives on the other ATA133 channel, then put a "striped" array (RAID 0) of SATA drives for digitized media (audio and video) or possibly separate arrays for audio and video. This is the configuration I am probably going to try first. I will report back here with my findings. I also want to try the built-in IEEE-1394 port on the P4C800 Deluxe, for capturing DV video.

Another point of note is that I've been hearing from people who positively swear by the Windows Server 2003 OS (with many services disabled) as the most stable and highest performance OS for Nuendo. As its advantages would be similar for Vegas, I will give that a try too. I have all these OSs here, so that's not a problem. What I wish I had but don't, are the various I/O hardware choices to try. I'm going to have to just choose between the RME stuff, the Aardvark stuff, or something else. Whatever I get has to play nice with wordclock, etc. Ideally, I'd get something that could provide lots of digital I/O (Adat, Tascam, AES, S/PDIF, etc.) and use gourmet converters, but I might use something with a few channels of analog converters in it. I'll want to be able to drop in tracks recorded on my predominately 24/48 but sometimes 24/96 24-track remote recording rig, so digital I/O is essential. I will use the analog I/O mainly for monitor system outputs, so something like the Aardvark Q10 would fill the bill nicely for that. Any suggestions on I/O hardware will be welcome. I'm not going to use the MOTU devices (perfect as they are otherwise) until they write drivers that don't suck (they have to work with concurrent instances of various softsynths, samplers and Vegas).

Thanks again to everyone who replied!

Comments

tmrpro wrote on 3/4/2004, 6:50 AM
Hope that the info I provided was helpful.

Good Luck!

:)
CDM wrote on 3/4/2004, 6:54 AM
Softy -
I installed the p4c800 MB on another machine with 1gb of paired ram and it works beautifully with Vegas. I'm using both IDE channels AND the SATA channels for HD, with no problems.

I would stay away from RAID.

good luck!
Rednroll wrote on 3/4/2004, 7:07 AM
"Any suggestions on I/O hardware will be welcome."

Definately take a look at the echo stuff. WWW.ECHOAUDIO.COM. The Layla sounds like your ticket. Many Vegas users have reported success with these cards. When talking to Vegas programmers, they've commented that the Echo drivers are very well written.
drbam wrote on 3/4/2004, 7:23 AM
I also recommend the Echo cards. Unlike Maudio, they simply don't have ANY driver issues with Sony apps. Very stable and good tech support.

drbam
PipelineAudio wrote on 3/4/2004, 9:16 AM
For TDIF I/O the soundscape mixtreme's are bargains. The jury's still out whether or not 2 or more mixtremes will run in vegas in asio mode. Each mixtreme has 16 channels tdif I/O. It has a very handy hardware mixer app that can help you get around vegas' monitoring limitations.

RME's HDSP 9652 has 24 ADAT I/O plus spdif, 2 midi ports, and an even quicker and handier hardware mixer, which will even set you really nice headphone mixes plus overcome some of vegas monitoring limitations. In this mixer any channel can send to any and all input and output channels and your setups are stored on 16 config buttons you can switch instantly between. Their metering tools dont hurt either.

Aardvark makes a very limited but stable 8 TDIF I/O card

MOTU, you are asking for trouble with that, tho some people here have theirs working fine

I defer to everyone else on the cards with analog I/O, the only one I have is an ancient echo gina 20 with the old drivers where the spdif I/O can be controlled at random by any windows app making DAT burns frustrating. Paired with a midiman flying cow tho, it makes a perfect soundsystem for playing Quake and sees use everyday
Rednroll wrote on 3/4/2004, 11:57 AM
"the only one I have is an ancient echo gina 20 with the old drivers where the spdif I/O can be controlled at random by any windows app making DAT burns frustrating. "

Not sure why you consider the Gina 20 an ancient card. Yes, comparatively to the Gina24, but the Gina20 is still a great card. I'm using dual Gina20's with rock solid performance. ASIO mode, Classicwave driver, no problems using both cards. Never seen the spdif I/O problem you're describing and I have made 1000's of DAT transfers over the years. Maybe the only problem, with another app grabbing the spdif, is if you have the spdif assigned in the Windows Sound Mapper, but then it's just doing what you told it too. The great thing about echo support, is that although the Gina 20 is discontinued in way of the Gina24, new drivers continue to be developed, so I'm running the same driver versions as Gina24, the only difference is that it's 20bit and not 24. If you really think that less of the Gina 20, I'll happily take it off your hands for 20 bucks and throw in a Sound Blaster for your Quake needs, then expand my system to three giving me 12in/30out.
PipelineAudio wrote on 3/4/2004, 1:04 PM
back in the day I talked to the echo guys about the problem and they said there was nothing they could do about it and that it was a known issue. Its not mapped thru windows, or wanst back then but it is now Its no big deal, and hell no that is the ULTIMATE quake 2 soundcard, no way is it ever leaving. With the new EGL rendering engine, old game engines can now run at 48k too!


I gotta say something, that card has been in use with the PC always on between 3 girlfriends, tons of music videos, mp3z, quake, motocross madness 1, the whole development and life of motocross madness 2, constant abuse. Besides the spdif issue, this card has not even begun to show signs of failing
Softy wrote on 3/4/2004, 3:11 PM
Why stay away from RAID 0?
GlennChan wrote on 3/4/2004, 5:17 PM
>>> What I was really thinking of was the P4C800 which is what we use around here for our current standard computer configuration (so I have them to play with). <<<
I'm curious, why is that board the current standard? You can get the P4P800/P4P800deluxe for much cheaper and it's just as good. The main difference between the 865 and 875 chipsets is PAT, and with the Asus boards all you have to do is to go into the BIOS and enable it (memory acceleration mode).

Some RAID controllers aren't very good (data corruption, bad performance) so that may be a reason to stay away from it. The Intel ICH5 one should be ok. RAID 0 is unnecessary though... and doubles your chance of losing data to a hard drive crash (hard drive crashes don't happen that often though... but they do happen).
tmrpro wrote on 3/4/2004, 6:03 PM
...no need to argue about .... but .....

RAID 0 is exactly what you would want to use for performance...

BUT...before you beat me up Glenn ;)

Really.... if you're using Vegas for audio, linear file streaming WILL NOT be your downfall. Processing power will.

Anyone in here will tell you that with IDE configured correctly and 512m ram, you will be able to stream a ton of tracks on just about any P4 system... as long as your not using plugins.

Adding plugins will not affect your device stream as will affect your CPU usage.

I'll bet anyone 5 bucks that with a single processor machine and any multitrack application (your choice) that you will never ever make your device stream bottleneck before your CPU does ...as long as your IDEs are configured correctly.

The point is; you're building a single processor machine .... that processor will catch on fire before you need the throughput of RAID-0 in this topic's environment.
Softy wrote on 3/4/2004, 6:14 PM
Please see my other post, where I say that I am a VERY experienced computer builder (30 years), have built many hundreds of systems, written many many thousands of lines of code, etc.

I have been using RAID 0 arrays constantly since 1994, the advantage is SPEED. I have NEVER had a disk corruption problem. Have you ever had a problem with a stripe set personally, or just heard people say it could happen?
Softy wrote on 3/4/2004, 6:21 PM
The reason it's the current standard for us is quite complex. We have to standardize on things for business reasons which I'd rather not elaborate on. But one reason we chose the P4C800 was because of its possibly longer market life. I am not at liberty to say why we think it has a longer market life ahead of it. Let's just say we have our reasons. Time will tell whether Asus makes that a foolish choice or not. The hundreds of business systems we support have absolutely nothing to do with media creation, so it'll just be a lucky break for me if the same MB works out for my Vegas platform.
Softy wrote on 3/4/2004, 6:22 PM
Not true for video.
tmrpro wrote on 3/4/2004, 6:53 PM
******Not true for video. ******

I'm sorry, did I somehow fall in to another forum? :)

Were we talking about video?

I didn't think I was...?
Softy wrote on 3/4/2004, 7:09 PM
No, but I am planning to use this system for both audio and video, so it matters to me.

As I've said here before, I understand the reasoning behind having separate forums for Vegas Audio and Vegas Video, but obviously the product is designed to do both simultaneously, and that's how at least some of us use it. So when discussing such matters as drive striping, I beg a bit of latitude here.
tmrpro wrote on 3/4/2004, 7:30 PM
******So when discussing such matters as drive striping, I beg a bit of latitude here.***********

LATITUDE? !!! :|

Well, excuse me for not knowing you were a video person in an audio room.
Softy wrote on 3/5/2004, 3:17 AM
Well actually, I'm more an audio person who does video, than vice versa. But I don't understand your attitude about this anyway. What's the big deal about pointing out that disk speed matters to video, even though the post is in the audio forum? You'll note that I haven't been talking a lot about video here, but have mentioned in this forum, that I want to build a new system to run Vegas to do audio, video and DVD stuff (as I'm sure, do other people, since the product is obviously designed to do that). Besides, It's not as though nobody in the audio forum has anything to do with video. Do you think we should have yet another forum, specifically for issues pertaining to both audio and video? I think not.
tmrpro wrote on 3/5/2004, 6:27 AM
*******...But I don't understand your attitude about this anyway. What's the big deal about pointing out that disk speed matters to video, even though the post is in the audio forum? .... specifically for issues pertaining to both audio and video? I think not. *********

You've received my LAST assistance....

Re-Read through my suggestions to you. NOWHERE was there an attitude until now! Furthermore the only thing I said about striping was that it is faster in response to Glenn .... not you punk!

I offered some friendly advice related to the topic and the forum and you come off with a smart ass answer...

YOU'VE got an attitude!!!

Precisely why I rarely delve in these childish virtual playgrounds.
Softy wrote on 3/5/2004, 9:52 AM
Good riddance!

If you're going to not like it when I say something as innocent as "not true for video" here in the audio forum, and then get huffy about it when I simply point out that it makes no sense to do so, I'll be more than happy to pass on any future "assistance."
GlennChan wrote on 3/5/2004, 12:25 PM
softy and tmrpro, I think you guys need to settle down and look carefully at the other person's messages. It's the Internet and it's very easy to read something in other people's messages that was not intended at all.

>>> I have been using RAID 0 arrays constantly since 1994, the advantage is SPEED. I have NEVER had a disk corruption problem. Have you ever had a problem with a stripe set personally, or just heard people say it could happen? <<<
I've heard other people say it could happen. On person on DV-L (DV mailing list) has an Abit motherboard with on-board Silicon Image RAID controller and that gave him lots of trouble plus data corruption. Other people have also reported problems with data corruption. It's somewhat reliable information... but it depends highly on the RAID controller in question.

re: RAID is faster? Performance depends highly on the RAID controller. storagereview.com used to review RAID controllers and found the promise fastrak bumped performance 10%ish while other controllers gave like 30-40% faster performance with applications. For video editing with *DV*, I measured normal hard drive versus RAM Disk (use RAM as a fake hard drive, very very fast) and there wasn't an appreciable performance gain. In normal renders the performance bump would be like 0-3%... although when generating large DV files then the performance bump is more like 20%, and for file copies it should be somewhere near double the speed.
Rednroll wrote on 3/5/2004, 1:29 PM
"It's the Internet and it's very easy to read something in other people's messages that was not intended at all."

Amen to that!!! Boy have I fallen into that problem on many occassions because usually I'm short and too the point in some of my posts. I'm actually glad I'm not part of this flamming, because I'm reading both posts and am sitting here scratching my head, wondering what it's all about. Please you guys, if you're going to argue at least have a point to the argument so the rest of us can follow it.

This one did give me a good chuckle though Tmrpro. "Precisely why I rarely delve in these childish virtual playgrounds." I thought you're the one with their own website with a forum and you're the host/moderator?

Softy wrote on 3/5/2004, 3:35 PM
I don't think I said anything objectionable in any way. So pardon me if I react negatively to someone saying I did. And anybody who objects to me mentioning a video-related issue in the audio forum can just eat my shorts, as far as I am concerned. In this particular case, I'd say that it's perfectly reasonable when discussing the merits of disk striping in the audio forum, to mention that it's more of an issue in video. So what? And I had previously posted that I was looking into stable hardware configurations, as I was planning to build a system to do audio, video and DVD stuff with Vegas. I objected to someone inferring that because this is the Vegas audio forum, I shouldn't mention anything pertaining to video. What - am I supposed to gather completely separate sets of information from the audio and video people, then correlate what they have in common? Is it uncommon for people to use Vegas for both audio and video?

My own empirical tests of striped array performance differs significantly from what you are reporting here. But the hardware was all different, so who knows? Anyway, it's certainly my perogative to try it, isn't it?