[ardour-users] Intel EM64T and Ardour+VST

[George Chan]

Do yourself a favor and stick with a 32bit environment.

You can actually run 32bit browser plugins in a 64bit browser using:
http://www.gibix.net/projects/nspluginwrapper/

but for other things, you WILL have trouble.  

Most video codecs (like for mplayer, etc.) are available for 32bit ONLY.

I spent months trying to get my dual cpu dual core AMD64 system running
well with my audio & video needs in 64bit, and there was always some
kind of problem, including trouble with my RME 9632 card.

I'm NOT a Linux newbie.  I've been a Slackware Linux user for 8 or 9
years.

I tried two versions of SLAMD64 (64bit port of Slackware with 32bit
compatability), the 64bit version of Gentoo and Studio64.

If you are using a computer for general needs, then 64bit is no problem,
and in my opinion, things run much faster.  But, for audio/video use,
stick with 32bit.

Also, I was never able to get a low latency kernel working in 64bit.  I
tried something like 25(!) different configurations.  Every single one
hung at boot up.  On my single CPU, 32bit machine, the low latency
kernel worked fine on my first try.

Also, there were intermittent problems with my video files playing back
at double normal speeds.  Never was able to fix that one.

Ardour compiled and ran OK.  Ladspa plugins compiled OK, but because of
the many problems that I had, I was not able to try out most of them.

I was also never able to get wine working properly.  Debian has a 32bit
version of Wine running in a 64bit environment, but I was never able to
get it to build on my system. 

And if you need to have all of your media apps running in 32bit, why
bother with 64bit?  

It's also a bit of a pain keeping your 32bit and 64bit libraries
separate when compiling your own software.  You can, of course, put all
of your 32bit and 64bit libs in the same directory, (ie: /usr/lib
or /usr/local/lib instead of /usr/lib64 or /usr/local/lib64), but you
will regret it if you do.

Even though I have never been a fan of Red Hat or Fedora, I decided to
go with Fedora Core 5 with Planet CCRMA.  In under 2 hours, I had a
functioning low latency DAW.

Do yourself a favor.
Read Paul's advice: http://ardour.org/system_requirements

"Save yourself time, energy and trouble
Setting up a computer as a digital audio workstation is a nontrivial
task whether it runs Windows, MacOS or Linux. You can make your life
much easier by:

      * Using a Linux distribution or distribution add-on that is
        tailored for low-latency multimedia work (such as PlanetCCMRA,
        Agnula's Demudi or dyne:bolic)"


This is my 2 cents worth of advice.  Hope it is helpful.

George

On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 03:39 +0200, . wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have a new computer based on a dual core2 Conroe E6700 Intel and i intend to 
> install a Gentoo distro.
> 
> My main usage will be of course running Ardour :)
> 
> My problem is that i am a quite unaware of the issues regarding 64bit support.
> 
> I would like to run VST when it will be stable for ardour2, and i am afraid 
> that wine won't work in 64bit mode.
> 
> In this case will it be possible to have a version of ardour compiled with 
> EM64T optimisation on a 64bit gentoo running VST plugin with wine in 32bit ?
> 
> Ouch :)
> 
> On a wider scope, i will be happy to hear report from people using 64bit 
> version of linux, specially if the Ladspa plugins compile/run fine. Is it 
> really faster, does ardour benefit from the 64 bit mode ? 
> 
> And if there are things to know concerning Gentoo compiled for 64bit support, 
> feel free to email me privatly or not (depending of the relation with ardour) 
> because we can not change the compiler flag in Gentoo without reinstalling 
> everthing and i am tempted to stay in 32bit i686 for a year or so.
> 
> Thanks !
> 
> NR
> 
> 
> 
> 
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