[Ardour-Users] building a new machine for Ardour

[Mark Knecht]

My view is that system and swap on the same drive is fine especially
if you've got DRAM. If you are going to mix a lot of tracks than you
might want multiple storage drives. I've used as many as 3 external
1394 drives - none very fast really - mixing 70 tracks as an
experiment. It worked pretty well. As I remember it I started to get
limited in X I think. Too many VU meters, etc., putting a load on my
under-powered non-gaming graphics controller. The machine is my main
now 4-year old AMD 64. At the time it had 1GB. It now has 4GB.

Ardour on Gentoo is really pretty CPU & drive efficient compared to
Pro Tools on the same hardware. Where things get dodgey is with
plug-ins. The Windows ones are generally less CPU intensive in my
experience.

Again, I'm assuming some small number of tracks getting recorded at
any one time - maybe 6-8 max, and then potentially mixing lots and
lots of tracks as you and Phil Spector build your Wall of Sound.

Hope this helps,
Mark

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 2:39 PM, david headon <davidheadonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm currently running an AMD Athlon64 based machine who's mobo has a top
> limit of 2G ram.
> I have been using an RME HDSP 9652 audio interface, very successfully.
> i for one will be watching this thread intently - i need to build a new box
> this coming year as time and budget permit.
> i'm curious what drives would be recommended, not just for audio file
> storage, but for swap etc.
> should i be using three drives (one for system, one for swap, and one for
> storage)?
>
> bring on the ideas people-
> this is fun stuff!
>
> dav=-0
>
> ________________________________
> From: Justin M. Streiner <streiner at cluebyfour.org>
> To: ardour-users at lists.ardour.org
> Sent: Monday, 8 December, 2008 21:39:58
> Subject: [Ardour-Users] building a new machine for Ardour
>
> I'm planning to build a new machine to do my audio work early next year. To
> start off, it will mainly be to mix and master audio that is tracked on
> other devices, but eventually I plan do do more tracking directly in
> Ardour.  The plan is to be able to record at least 24 tracks simultaneously,
> with the option of expanding in the future, if needed.
>
> That said, does anyone have any recommendations as far as motherboards,
> etc?  In other words have any of you been using hardware that has performed
> well and been reliable?  I've been using Asus mobos for the past 4-5 years
> and been very happy with them.  I'm also not against making the switch to
> AMD CPUs if needed.
>
> Beyond that I'm planning to have two hardware SATA-300 RAID sets in the box
> - a mirrored set for the system drive and a striped/mirrored set for for the
> audio data.  I do plan to get a mobo that can handle > 4 GB of RAM, but I
> don't think I'll put more than 4 into the box until it makes more sense to
> make the jump to 64-bit...
>
> jms
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