Rant: Power-computer-mongers

[pHz]

pHz quoth for once i find myself not agreeing with the rabbyt ...
...and then...
... as with everything in the world peoples mileage varies though
Which is pretty much what I said.
What I was effectively disagreeing with was LM's assertion that folk dont need ubergrunty machines. Some people might, and the only way to know when they ask is to find out what they're doing and want to do...
Anyways, I did sorta agree with his point but he wanted people to refute it so I did.

...

slainte rob

[pHz]

but at least i finally got quoth

slainte rob

[Sicklecell666]

but at least i finally got the last quoth on the qouthing quother..

slainte rob

Jeez..who needs further proof that power corrupts?

[pHz]

and absolute power corrupts absolutely ...

... eh ben ???

slainte rob

[Lunch Money]

Whyterabbyt: My assertion wasn't that people don't need power. But thanks for the refutation. <chuckle>

Greg

[Sicklecell666]

I think I would make an excellent moderator

[pHz]

I think I would make an excellent moderator

whoever you pray to help us all ...

slainte rob

[DevonB]

"Get a decent-sized monitor, or two if you can afford them" turns into "Gotta be LCD. CRT creates too much interference."

IF you record guitar, it's pretty much a must, unless you like flicking the power on and off, waiting between each take. Royal PITA, and glad I went LCD. No more interference from monitor 'noise'. Ya, it's doable, but... Ick.

For a beginner, I agree. For me, last song I fiddled with had 3 plugins, and about 70% CPU eaten on my 2.53ghz Intel w/ 1gig ram. Sucks. Looks like the only thing that will give me 'significan't improvement is dual Opteron 240's, I think it was? Oh well. Guess I'll probably wait... I need to start a post on here to get some numbers.

Devon

[whyterabbyt]

Lunch Money I guess my main point was missed, by some, though others seem to have gotten it: I'm referring to the relative newcomer who asks what they "need" in a machine and are basically given a fantasy list which addresses an individual respondent's personal desires and doesn't take into account the needs of the original poster.

Hehehe. I think I sort of alluded to that even though I took up your offer to refute what you said.

It just pisses me off when what seems to be a fairly clear question: "I'm just getting started, what can I get by on?" gets unecessarily twisted. Inevitably somebody will push each aspect to the next level:

Dont get too pissed off. Most people that do that are probably projecting what they want, not what the asking-dude wants... human nature.

"An Athlon 2500+ for $60 will give you a good system to start out with" turns into "Nah, I wouldn't go with anything less than a P4 3.2 or an Athlon64 these days."

Well, one thing about that is Im not keen on recommending end-of-line architectures to people just because they're cheaper. If its just internet-and-wordprocessing, I'll build systems for folk based on all-in-one motherboards and Durons. In fact I am doing, today. Because they'll get everything they need for £200 compared to PC World's OTT-gamesmonster-anna-pile-of-peripherals for £1200.

But for DAW systems (and 3D) I prefer to advise people to get the best option they can afford on a young architecture. So I'd suggest a Socket 754 A64-2800 instead of that XP2500. Yes it'll cost 40 or 50 bucks more, but in a year or eighteen months there'll be A64-4000's going for what he pays for the 2800, so s/he can notch up a fair whack without paying much more, or having to rebuild his entire machine.

Im running an XP1800 system OC'd to 2500, BTW, and I'll slot in an XP3200 which'll cost me only a bit more than the 1800 did in the first place. At the time, the 1800 would have been 3 times as much.... thats the sort of thing I think is better planning.

But recommend a twin-Opteron or an FX53 or somesuch? Nope. Never buy top of the line, and never buy 2nd down unless someone else is paying...

-"Two modest hard drives will give you enough audio streaming power for all but the most intensive disc-streaming applications." turns into "True, but with the price of hard drives these days, you might as well go dual SATA at 200 Gigs" (Better make sure you have a motherboard that supports SATA).

Well, yeah, although I'd normally suggest something slightly more than that for someone serious... a big boot-software-and-samples drive, a smaller audio drive, and a big removable for backup.

But 120Gb-and-smaller drives really are dirt cheap these days. They're almost disposable...

-"512 MB RAM is a good baseline" has turned into "1 GB RAM is sort of a minimum today... better make it 2GB to be safe". Does anybody here have any idea how little the diminished return is from going from 1GB to 2? Apparently not. You won't get ANY system performance, though you will obviously be able to load more samples into RAM.

1Gb is a sweet spot for price and headroom for a DAW. The only reason I'd recommend more than that would be for someone seriously using big romplers, or 3D. So yeah I agree.

Video cards, I admit, people usually make sense with their recommendations around here, though when it comes to monitors, that's another story:

hehehe.

-"Get a decent-sized monitor, or two if you can afford them" turns into "Gotta be LCD. CRT creates too much interference."

LCD's still far too expensive for me to recommend to anyone but peole do like them. But screen real estate is always useful. Anything less than a 19" is pointless, IMO. These days 22" screens cost less than my budget 19" did 4-odd years ago. But I dont fancy paying more than that for a 17" ta, and only a mug would (IMO) (Or someone recording single-coils )

Hopefully I'm being clear this time... in each of the above examples, performance benefits can DEFINITELY be found in the 'new' recommendation! But does this particular user need those benefits?

Exactly. Its about a sane sweet spot, but you gotta remember that sweet spot keeps moving upwards in spec and downwards in price. Sometimes these specs might seem OTT, but they're actually cheaper than you think... I could build a pretty bloody decent A64 system for FXTeleport-type stuff for under £500 for example.



At the end of the day, the original poster is being sent away with the impression that they need to spend a lot of money to make music, and that their system will "suck" unless they follow everyone's recommendations.

I dont think so. Those opinions come up, but they're not the only opinions that ever surface.

A nice, powerful $1,000 system turns into a $1,800 system, which is nearly double the price...! Each recommendation on its own won't break the bank, but you have to add them all up.

True. But remember that two, three years ago, you would have had to spend the $1800 to get an 'average' system. And $2500 to get the monster. And when it comes to laptops, people spend even more than that on lower-specced systems.

S'all relative. But you are right; we do need to keep it relative to the guy who wants the system, not our own private wishlists....

[Sascha Franck]

There's a lot of truth in what Greg is saying.
Until recently I've been using an 1GHz Athlon and it served my purposes just fine (at least most of the times).
The good thing about all this: I learned sampling things fast and IMO relatively well. Instead of using all those nice but powerconsuming VSTis directly I simply sampled them (still using those patches a lot).

Thing is, with all that horsepower people tend to forget how to actually save some CPU cycles.
I have just been watching some dude doing a "mix"... he's been using reverbs as track inserts, just because he's been too lazy to set them up on a bus.
Not that the settings have been too much different (so he could've gotten away with 1 or two instead of 8 or 9).
He was complaining about not having enough horsepower...

In addition (even if that might be a completely different story), having LOADS of horsepower sometimes is a good excuse for using MANY VSTis, all playing meaningless stuff, instead of just using some basic setup and do what these things should be made for: music that is.

[pHz]

i tend (out of necessity ATM) to agree sascha

slainte rob

[Lunch Money]

IF you record guitar, it's pretty much a must, unless you like flicking the power on and off, waiting between each take. Royal PITA, and glad I went LCD. No more interference from monitor 'noise'. Ya, it's doable, but... Ick.

I only record 2 things... guitar (mostly single-coil, even!) and voice. Turning off the monitor is one option, but not the only one. Here's what I do:

Get out of my chair (I prefer playing standing up anyhow), step 1.5 or 2 feet away from my chair (which brings me 3 feet away from the monitor), and it's usually sorted. If not (ultra-high-gain distortion is being added, too), then I find that pivoting my body so that my guitar is at a different angle will eliminate any hum.

With humbuckers, I don't even usually need to bother, especially not with the pivot.

So... yeah, LCD are ideal, and I'd LOVE a pair! But they're not even close to a necessity.


Whyterabbyt: I can't argue with any of that. FWIW, I wouldn't generally recommend a 2500+ either, in most cases (though I have a 1700+ and am thinking of popping in a 2500+ until I have a better budget). Depending on budget, Athlon64 3000 is what I usually mention.

"sane sweetspot" pretty much sums it up.

Greg

[DevonB]

With humbuckers, I don't even usually need to bother, especially not with the pivot.

So... yeah, LCD are ideal, and I'd LOVE a pair! But they're not even close to a necessity.

Must be nice. I'd swivel and back up, but I can only get back so far from my keyboard to start and stop recording. I still got the hum on my EMG actives in my guitar. Oh well. LCD's sorted the problem.

Devon

[Lunch Money]

Heh, well... if you literally CAN'T get further away, then it'll become more of a necessity.

Greg

[DevonB]

Heh, well... if you literally CAN'T get further away, then it'll become more of a necessity.

Greg

It would have been just easier to switch off the monitor, which is what I did instead. But it's all a moot point now with the LCD's. Expensive, but I also needed the heat reduction in my studio, and that helped quite a bit too. CRT's are EXCELLENT heating devices.

Devon