DAW - advice for setting up my new DAW?

Question

Hi,
I intend to get my own DAW/general purpose computer in the next few months and was hoping to run my plan by y'all for advice. I intend to use it half for music recording, and also as a normal computer.
I plan to have a high end graphics card (dual dvi) for games etc, will run a 23" widescreen lcd (pref apple on pc) or bigger maybe upgrading to dual monitors later. I am running a HD tv card which needs some good headroom when recording. I only play far cry and need for speed when it comes to games etc so won't have a million games installed.
I have a about 50 gig of music mp3's and wmas and general stuff, so need lots of storage space. I have about 10gig of AA session files and that will grow so im thinking 30-40 gig min.
For recording/mixing, i have usually 10 trax minimum with lots of real time, sometimes locked fx, i do a lot of processing/wave editing and can have up to 10minute tracks up to 24 etc so i need some juice to power it all. running xp pro sp2.
Can someone explain raid vs ide, im told i can raid 2 similiar drives, but how much better is it, and are there draw backs? can i raid 2 x 15000rpm drives together(2 x 20 or 2 x 40 gig) as my dedicated AA session files space or is that just overkill, i plan to have maybe 2 x 250 gig 7200 or 10 000 drives raided as a dedicated digital vcr for HD tv recording, a small system drive 20-40gig just for installed stuff, another 80-250 gig for normal storage. Any ideas for best way to configure this stuff? minimum im thinking is sep small sys drive, sep AA drive/raided or not, sep bigass drive for TV recording, and sep general storage drive so thats minimum 4 or more.
Wireless keyboard (ultra flat touch keys like on bank atm's sort super silent DO THESE EXIST YET IF SO PLEASE TELL ME WHERE AND WHAT CALLED?)
and wireless optical mouse with extra side buttons and fully functional
Can y'all fill me in on scsi, im told the 14k rpm drives need a scsi
controller or osmething? tell me about this stuff please
Also, 64bit cpus? what the hell does that mean
I'm thinking the fastest intel cpu wht is it 3 gig these days with cache, or does anyone know how much dual cpu will cost (and what needs to go with it) motherboard with 800fsb and 8x agp that can take like 1-2 gig of ram (what sort is fastest?), 8 x agp graphics card that is very high end for 1080i output for high definition tv, and games.
Obviously dvd+rw/cd+rw drive.
Need advise on DAW case, ultra sound and heat proof as i might sleep in the same room and im sick of noisy computers, and i might need a big load of space with all the hdd's depending on what i get, will have a usb2. pci card no doubt and tv card etc
Wondering bout the new audigy 2 zn platinum pro thing Is this any good compared to the normal audigy 2? it says with firewire i can have 7 stereo inputs, is that really true at once, do i need extra external hardware like a mixer to do that, and does AA support that at all?
I have a decent pair of phones i will use for a while until i get studio monitors so don't worry about them for now, thats later.
I hope to spend only about 3-6 grand Australian pref no more, so any suggestions of other things to add or not to bother with etc, revisions?

Answer 1

Billy Corgan wrote:
> I intend to get my own DAW/general purpose computer
> in the next few months and was hoping to run my plan
> by y'all for advice.
Don't clutter a daw with too much GP stuff, office software
installations and antivirus software should generally not be installed
on a daw, and a gp computer can generally not be without either.
Generally, mind you, generally is generally a lot less general with the
more capable hardware, but a lean daw is a happy daw. Fortunately a
p2-300 with 192 megs of ram and a modern harddisk is still a lot of GP
officing computer, and such machines are not costly on the second hand
market.
> I intend to use it half for music recording, and also as
> a normal computer.
There may be valid reasons for doing that, if so then you could be well
off having multiple OS installations on it, one for GP use and one for
Audio use and making it a multibooter. It however my experience that a
multibooter always ends up being booted in the wrong OS ..... O;-)
> I plan to have a high end graphics card (dual dvi) for games etc,
A dual head card is strongly recommended. Matrox has nice cards that do
not need to have a fan on them and that do not require the utmost
hardware speed. You do not WANT to have the ultra fastest graphics card
on a daw because you need to avoid that the graphics cards bus bandwidth
requirements obstruct other, more vital chores. Less fast cards that do
not require a fan allows for a more quiet system.
> will run a 23" widescreen lcd (pref apple on pc) or bigger
> maybe upgrading to dual monitors later.
It may be that you can get dual smaller lcd's for the same budget as one
23", and it may be of more use, everybody is on some kind of a budget,
and you also need to have money over for audio hardware. Good mics and
good mic pre's do more for the quality of your sound than a larger
screen.
> I am running a HD tv card which needs some good headroom when
> recording.
Hmmm ...... select the recording options wisely, you come across as
chasing specs rather than as being aware of just what specs you actually
need.
> I only play far cry and need for speed when it comes to games etc
> so won't have a million games installed.
One never knows what the future holds, but it should be possible to
avoid having too many games installed at any one time.
> I have a about 50 gig of music mp3's and wmas and general stuff,
> so need lots of storage space. I have about 10gig of AA session
> files and that will grow so im thinking 30-40 gig min.
It is too costly pr. gigabyte to buy anything smaller than 120 GB, and
the 120 GB drives of today are all comfortably fast. You should at least
have two physical drives for Audition so as to be able to avoid
simultaneous reads and writes on the same drive, three physical drives
are imo preferable.
> For recording/mixing, i have usually 10 trax minimum with lots
> of real time, sometimes locked fx, i do a lot of processing/wave
> editing and can have up to 10minute tracks up to 24 etc so i need
> some juice to power it all. running xp pro sp2.
I think that your setup is one that would benefit of having three
physical drives to prevent having temp files on the drive that contains
the "static" audio files.
> can someone explain raid vs ide, im told i can raid
> 2 similiar drives, but how much better is it,
Depends, it is not faster than a single drive where it is fastest, but
raid 0 (simple stripe set) is less likely to show performance reduction
due to file fragmentation. A stripe set still counts as "one physical
drive", and if you want to have only two drives in it you are better off
not having them striped.
> and are there draw backs?
You can not remove just one harddisk and move it to another machine. If
one harddisk fails, then all is lost, at least if you run a simple
stripe set. The probability math is tolerable with only two disks in a
stripe set, but it takes less of an error to loose all. All things
considered you need to have a problem to solve by striping prior to
doing it, and distributing multitrack files over several physcial drives
is also a way to increase playback performance if there is a problem to
solve.
> can i raid 2 x 15000 rpm drives together(2 x 20 or 2 x 40 gig)
> as my dedicated AA session files space or is that just overkill,
That would be a silly set up, three 5400 or 7200 rpm 120 GB drives is a
possibly less costly way to get same or better performance, assuming
wise deployment. You will always end up having some copying of files
from one physical drive to another, and consequently it is very wise to
have identical drives so that the faster need not wait for the slower.
> I plan to have maybe 2 x 250 gig 7200 or 10 000 drives raided
> as a dedicated digital vcr for HD tv recording,
I wouldn't raid them, but tv recording is a very fast way of making
large drives appear small and I don't really know what the bandwidth
requirement is for recordign hdtv.
> a small system drive 20-40gig just for installed stuff,
No, you will be wasting a valuable drive bay on a drive that will be a
bottleneck, three drives is a good idea, but preferably identical or at
least similar. Put that old drive in a USB 2.0 box and use it for
project backup instead.
> another 80-250 gig for normal storage.
Yes, you may need storage space when you want to do TV recording, so 750
GB unformatted is not unreasonable.
> Any ideas for best way to configure this stuff? minimum I'm
> thinking is sep small sys drive, sep AA drive/raided or not,
> sep bigass drive for TV recording, and sep general storage
> drive so thats minimum 4 or more.
Three 200 GB drives will probably be the optimally cost efficient setup.
> wireless keyboard (ultra flat touch keys like on bank atm's
> sort super silent DO THESE EXIST YET IF SO PLEASE TELL ME
> WHERE AND WHAT CALLED?)
A wireless keyboard is called too slow and too sloppy ...
> and wireless optical mouse with extra side buttons
But a wireless mouse can be an ergonomic advantage, agreed.
> can y'all fill me in on scsi,
Too costly.
> im told the 14k rpm drives need a scsi
> controller or osmething?
Yes, and thus it gets to be about a very different and very costly mobo.
You do not want a disk controller on the PCI bus on a DAW.
> also, 64bit cpus? what the hell does that mean
Currently nothing of relevance considering the current software. What it
means is that the memory allocation space can be 64 terabytes rather
than 4 GB, and that is rapidly getting to be of importance for database
servers and terminal servers.
> im thinking the fastest intel cpu wht is it 3 gig these
> days with cache, or does anyone know how much dual cpu
> will cost (and what needs to go with it)
It is unknown to me whether Audition actually will benefit from multiple
CPU's, generally the required CPU versions (XEON) and mobo's are too
costly to make sense.
> motherboard with 800fsb
Asus P5P800 is modestly priced. I think your specs are extreme and that
your quests are of the "it would be nice to be able to" type. Life is
not about using as much money on chasing specs as possible, but rather
about getting good results. To do that, you also need to have resources
to get some reasonable audio equipment. Leave all the video concerns out
of it, I have understood them to be about leasure, and live with
recording the number of pixels that is possible with a good DAW.
I suggest this also because it may be problematic to try to make a
multitrack audio recording simultanously on the machine that records the
video in case "both combined" is the productivity quest. Just one reason
for not thinking that hdtv is very important on the machine is that it
is not very likely that you actually record hdtv with a camera.
> wondering bout the new audigy 2 zn platinum pro thing
In the audio context that is relevant here something Midiman is "more
like it" - example product, not the only possible choice. See also
http://www.pcavtech.com, Arny Krügers very interesting web site and a
good place to start learning more about sound cards. A budget card that
it appears will meet your demands is the Midiman 1010LT or similar model
from other manufacturer.
Kind regards
Peter Larsen
* My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk *