i3/5/7 CPU/Motherboards & User SSD replacement ?

[hughhalf]

Hiya,

This is my first message to the forum, I thank the many contributors that have provided such a rich source of information for a prospective user!

I'm about ready to press the button on getting a Receptor 2+, I'm only really stalling as in the back of my mind I wonder if we might be about to see a refresh to one of the newer generation of Intel i3/i5/i7 CPUs. If anyone cares to confirm or speculate that'd be interesting to know

In any case, the first thing I wanted to sanity check is that the nature of the Receptor 2+ hardware is such that with some care I can indeed swap in a new motherboard in the future if I want to.

I note I may need to de-authorise before upgrading then re-authorise certain plugins to reflect the fact there is a new CPU present. Also acknowledge that I may not need to do this heavy lifting myself given Muse' reasonable track record of providing upgrade paths

As I'm some way from Muse's dealer here in Australia I'm keen to take a backup of my drive when I first receive it as a spare. I gather there's no particular difficulty in doing this as long as you're somewhat handy with Linux ?

Final thing I wanted to check though was that at some point in the future I can swap over to self-installed SSD by a process along the lines of;

* Backup existing factory drive
* Reduce filesystem and partion size of factory drive down to something that will fit into the new SSD using gparted or similar
* dd copy or carefully rsync the old drive to the SSD
* Physically swap in SSD
* Futz with grub/bootloader to cope with changed UUIDs if necessary

Is there anything in the Receptor software suite or plugins that will complain about new UUIDs ?

Thanks in advance,

Cheers,
Hugh

[hopkihc]

A lot of folks here have been clamoring about DIY hard drive swapping and backups. At present I think the general response will be that this is a bad idea, or at least one that Muse will not support, perhaps (I'm guessing) due to a potential support nightmare from people fouling up their machines.

Really, when getting a Receptor, I think it's a matter of knowing what you want to do with it, plugin-wise, and living with the model you get for a good while, i.e. treat it more like a traditional hardware module, less like a computer.

That said, I'm well aware it IS a computer, albeit a very stringently engineered one.

I can also tell you that I picked up a used Receptor 2 Pro Max (equivalent to a 2+) and it can run heavy plugs like Omnisphere without a sweat!

[UltraJv]

You cant swap the motherboard. It has connectors for front panel and display that may not work on different motherboard also the BIOS is custom so a replacement will cause trouble. This has been tried before by some and no good came of it.

[hughhalf]

Thanks hopkihc and UltraJv for their replies and for the couple of PMs received, have a much better sense of the lay of land on all this now

Since writing my original post I've received my 2+ PRO and am really quite impressed. Very nicely constructed unit and Muse Research have done an admirable job of integrating plugins designed for a general purpose Windows PC into a bespoke bit of hardware and software

I'm running Omnisphere, V3B and Alicia's Keys (Kontakt) as my main plugins for now and learning the ropes around snapshots, appropriate latency settings and so forth. My principle use will be for a gigging band that I play in with a few mates of mine, so very much interested in the live options. So far so good.

Still undecided about attempting a HDD upgrade or not, on the one hand put off by the Void if Removed warranty sticker (!), on the other a bit sceptical about the longevity of rotating rust in a live context.

On reflection I'm supportive of Muse Research's position on user performed upgrades, it clearly does open a bit of a can of worms around support and presumably licensing/piracy too. Very much applaud them doing the right thing in making bits of Linux that they've worked on available under the terms of the GPL - setting a great example here

Most importantly though - the Receptor sounds awesome - clearly lots of work gone into the audio path

Happy Playing!

[ndurant]

Regarding installing an SSD, I've often wondered whether it would be a simpler matter to add an SSD just for storage of samples and data-intensive libraries, but still boot off the factory HDD. Start-up time wouldn't particularly be improved, but it ought to be lightning fast for patch/sample changes!

It'll still void any warranty you have though....