KVR Audio

Adambomb337 · Post by **Adambomb337** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 3:51 am

Computers used for the medical fiend and air traffic control are probably the most stable you can find.

Does anyone know what they use?
Is there anything like this for a computer dedicated to music?

Jim Roseberry · Post by **Jim Roseberry** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 4:38 am

Adambomb337 wrote:Computers used for the medical fiend and air traffic control are probably the most stable you can find.

Does anyone know what they use?
Is there anything like this for a computer dedicated to music?

The last time I was visiting a friend in the hospital, they were using computers that were running Win98SE.

(true story)

There's really no great mystery...
If you want a rock-solid DAW, use parts that are known to work well in a DAW envirnment.

Kim Lajoie · Post by **Kim Lajoie** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 4:39 am

In b4 sh!tstorm...

Adambomb337 wrote:Computers used for the medical fiend and air traffic control are probably the most stable you can find.

Does anyone know what they use?

Dedicated machines running custom software. Some maybe running a blend of COTS and Bespoke, consumer and commercial... but in these areas it doesn't really matter - the systems are designed to respond predictably to a very limited set of inputs and states.

And they're not (directly) connected to the Internet.

Adambomb337 wrote:Is there anything like this for a computer dedicated to music?

Yes. They're called workstations. They're designed and manufactured by companies like Yamaha, Roland and Korg. You may recognise those names.

(gets popcorn)

-Kim.

johnny2johnny · Post by **johnny2johnny** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 4:42 am

Adambomb337 wrote:Computers used for the medical fiend and air traffic control are probably the most stable you can find.

Does anyone know what they use?
Is there anything like this for a computer dedicated to music?

last time I went to the dentist, ( 2 or 3 months ago ) he had some old laptop, was all impressed I make my music on a macbookpro...

we had a conversation about how I needed serious technology to run todays music programs, and in dr's offices they don't need all that much power...

However...... I will say, that in an ER, or something, you will find some hefty machines.. But I reckon, anything in an F18 fighter jet, is more powerful than anything in a civillian air traffic control room. but I dunno.

C00kie · Post by **C00kie** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 10:27 am

Adambomb337 wrote:Computers used for the medical fiend and air traffic control are probably the most stable you can find.

Does anyone know what they use?

Stability is all about picking good quality components (both hard- and software) known to work well with each other, and using extremely well tested software to get the bugs out.

Air traffic controls probably use mainframes or midrange systems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zseries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ESA/390
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS400
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS6000

Go develop your own music software on that, and initially it will be unstable. Not because of the platform, but because of your programming skills

Adambomb337 wrote:Is there anything like this for a computer dedicated to music?

http://www.museresearch.com/

If you are experiencing instability (are you??) it's either your host or your plugins (or the combination)

RPdigital · Post by **RPdigital** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 11:23 am

Adambomb337 wrote:Computers used for the medical fiend and air traffic control are probably the most stable you can find.

Does anyone know what they use?
Is there anything like this for a computer dedicated to music?

They use stable operating systems with protected kernel.

Music dedicated computers are here:
http://www.openlabs.com/
http://www.museresearch.com/

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 11:33 am

theres a poster on our local buses says something along the lines of "theres more computer power in most modern cars than it took to get man to the moon". its an ad for some science site as oppose to car manufacturers, and whether its actually true or not is still interesting.
i really should note the site address.

Meffy · Post by **Meffy** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 12:44 pm

The medical software I write runs on ordinary PCs, though they get connected to extraordinary sensing devices. As the other folks said up there, the hardware should be of high quality.

That's suitable for just about any "medical fiend." :-} I know nothing about air traffic control computers.

@vurt: The computers used in the Apollo days really were terribly primitive by modern standards. In fact, the earliest Space Shuttle(s?) used ancient tech including magnetic core memory assembled by hand, each bit a tiny ferrite "donut" strung onto the intersection of two hair-like wires.

My first non-homemade computer, back in the mid-1970s, was an RCA 1800 whose CPU was fully hardened against radiation for space or military use. (The CPU's inventor sent it to me gratis as an engineering sample; a very kind and generous fellow.) Started out with 256 bytes of RAM, which I eventually expanded all the way to 2 kilobytes. Yeah, computers were comparatively modest back then.

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 12:56 pm

yeah i know, theyve come a long way. but still when you think about it, the fact that we occassionally have crashes even now, can you imagine being stuck in that situation with a blue screen

theres a royal navy advert over here as well where they follow a computer engineer on a trident submarine
"well obviously i cant just call in a bloke everytime theres a problem, more often than not i just switch it off and on again" thats the computers in charge of nuclear submarines, and hes just rebooting em willy nilly

air traffic control isnt much different either, manc airport has its own inhouse team of engineers of whom i know a couple, they regularly tell me storys about whole departments crashing and ending up with 4 or 5 departments sharing one terminal

Meffy · Post by **Meffy** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 1:18 pm

The database system I use for most of my non-Web projects is an adaptation of the one used in the Abrams main battle tank (the M1A1 version of the tank, I think it is). Pretty solid. :-}

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 1:29 pm

Meffy wrote:The database system I use for most of my non-Web projects is an adaptation of the one used in the Abrams main battle tank (the M1A1 version of the tank, I think it is). Pretty solid. :-}

There's something very Vernon Vinge about the thought of a tank with a database.

SELECT (LETHAL AND ARMOUR_PIERCING AND (ROUNDS_LEFT GREATER_THAN 0)) GIVING AMMUNITION_TYPE
SORT AMMUNITION_TYPE BY ROUNDS_LEFT
PRINT AMMUNITION_TYPE TO CONSOLE
LOAD

(always with them invalid query results moriarty...)

Meffy · Post by **Meffy** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 1:34 pm

COBOL? *shudder* Almost more frightening than battle tanks.

C00kie · Post by **C00kie** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 1:42 pm

Anyone had the pleasure to work with Pick? Universe rings any bells? Now THAT's frightning stuff... Glad we flushed it down the toilet last year!

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 1:55 pm

Meffy wrote:COBOL? *shudder* Almost more frightening than battle tanks.

pidgin COBOL, really. Havent done any in over 20 years. And yes; horrendous.

Meffy · Post by **Meffy** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 3:01 pm

Last time I even saw any COBOL it was in the main portion of O'Reilly's "Y2K in a Nutshell." Fortunately I designed my products to use four-digit years right from the beginning. Still got paid to go over the entire codebase (at consultant rates, yum) to confirm that, and to check for any non-Y2K-compliant stuff added after the products got bought by a company that apparently trusted me more than their own "coders" (good thing too, as their coders hadn't a clue).

Oh, and that product was NOT written in COBOL. Oh my, no. It was in VB and Borland C++. :-S

Computers for the medical field, air traffic control, etc.