how much power does this thing have?

[kurtr2]

thinking about getting one of these things, but am wondering, for such a big investment how much can this thing do at once?

could i, say, have all these things going:
-BFD
-Ivory
-Electrik Piano
-FM7
-3 instances of Kontakt 2 with one instrument each
-CA5000

and a couple effects?

would you say this statement is true?:

it's not worth getting the tricked out version because with only 2gb ram you wont be able to get anymore juice out of it than the standard version anyway.

thanks,
Kurt

[looneytunes]

Hi Kurt,

I'd say with Ivory / Elektrik Piano / BFD going at once, you will probably be pushing the limits of RAM (and forcing the DFD algorithms on each to be hitting the disk). Add Kontakt instruments on top of this, and you probably will have disk contentions (eg crackling noises, disk underruns, etc).

I do own the 'tricked-out' version, and there is noticibale improvement (despite the RAM limitations). This can translate into more sample-based instruments available (eg more Kontakt instances).

Overall, the performance is a factor of many things, including RAM speed, Front-Side Bus speed, CPU speed, Disk Speed, etc. MUSE has improved all of these things with the 'Pro' models. The RAM limits mostly affect you when you are trying to keep large sample sets in memory at the same time. When this happens, it puts stress on other parts of the system to compensate (as in the Bus and Disk for DFD).

All this said, I typically run 6-8 channels of sampled instruments and 2 compute intensive instruments simultaneously. From your list, I don't think you will have problems with the compute based ones (FM7, CA5000) - just with RAM contention.

Hope this helps, Regards,
Kevin L

[gregh1]

You'll want to consider the Pro-400, since it has a faster processor than the standard (Rev.C) model, and it makes a difference.

I recently compared a Rev.B (1280MB RAM, sys 1.5.20060418) with a new Pro-400 (2048MB RAM, sys 1.5.20060504).
Both machines at 44.1KHz sample rate with buffer size at 128 samples.

Each channel was loaded with MicroSynth, Classic EQ, Classic Chorus, and Classic Reverb.

On the Rev.B, 8 channels resulted in a CPU load of 80%.
On the Pro-400, 8 channels resulted in a CPU load of 55%.
On the Pro-400, 13 channels resulted in a CPU load of 80%.