Best Systems and Components for Win HD/TDM

[len branville]

Nikki wrote:

"I am curious if it would be possible to use a PCI SATA card (for an external solution).

I'm kinda wondering about this too and/or other solutions and alternatives.

Off topic -yet seeing SATA/drives have been discussed here from time-to-time.. Has anyone ever ran into the situation where a SATA audio drive (internal) gets confused and thinks its the boot drive in XP. Or vise versa where the boot drive directory either gets corrupted or can't decide if it should boot or not. I know this sounds weird but this has happened to me at least a couple/few times and my computer becomes quite the beast when this happens. I have had success with repairing the boot directory etc., but other times the system (when this happens) can be a real bear.
Any suggestions would be appreciated because they claim there's no jumper and/or configuration issues with SATA (unless I'm confused about this).
???
Thanks,

Len

[len branville]

After putting some pieces of the puzzle together I might have found what could have caused this.

On this particular system the audio drive was at one time the primary system drive. Even though this particular drive was formatted and a fresh system drive installed, this could be a place of suspicion for this particular issue. Still guessing at this point though.

It still would be great to know of anymore possible existing audio/file drive solutions. Especially when it comes to SATA drives (firewire and secondary internal SATA(s) still works fine but I'm thinking along the lines of an external SATA solution that could house several removable drives in a drive bay/caddy situation?). Maybe something like this already exists and I just don't know about it ?
Just thoughts...

Len

[Bodie]

It still would be great to know of anymore possible existing audio/file drive solutions. Especially when it comes to SATA drives (firewire and secondary internal SATA(s) still works fine but I'm thinking along the lines of an external SATA solution that could house several removable drives in a drive bay/caddy situation?). Maybe something like this already exists and I just don't know about it ?
Just thoughts...

Len

Len,

I'm using the "preferred" method with the Digi SCSI|128. The drives spin at 10K RPM and are each in their own self-contained chasis. Not being a big fan of Scsi, I bought the card 2nd hand and they threw in the drives...in hindsight, it was a huge win. They are the LVD drives from Digi and are perfect for taking sessions, then transferring to portable media (my firewire drive comes to mind and is much smaller).

My 2 cents, your mileage may vary ;-)

bodie

[audiogeek1]

I think I am one of the few that are using a prebuilt system and it works great. I have had very few problems with it.

Here it is:

HP XW8200
4 gig of ram
HD4 accel
V10 Video on internal firewire bus
64bit expansion chasis 7 slot
firewire card
ATTO Fiber Card
4 channel SATA card
NVidia Quadro 1400 graphics card
1 160 gig SATA drive running XP Pro Service Pack 2
3 300 gig SATA drives
AVID Unity Storage
Dual 23 cinema displays
3 digital 192s connected to Euphonix 727
1 analog 192
Everything runs through a Euphonix System 5 console.


I run high track counts and mix in surround and stereo. I switch between 24/96 and 24/48 and 24/44.1 on a regular basis. I use uncompressed video along with the different audio depths. I have only run into 1 issue. If I set a surround output of Pro Tools on my interfaces connected to the second PT Card my system runs into buffer underrun errors. I know most people mix in the box but on my last project I had music running from a Euphonix R1 recorder, SFX and Foley running from one PT system, Dialog and Walla running from another system, and recording stems into a third PT System for a total of 140 inputs on the console and 30 mix bus outs for the stems.

I used to run the HD system on a Dual 1 gig mac and the PCI bus would overload with 10 to 1 compressed video and had nothing but problems with video and sync dropouts. I think most of my problems were fixed by getting away from 6.2.3 and getting to 7.1 cs6. But the PC is running great and I never thought I would say that. The only thing that still gets me is the key commands. My fingers got used to a specific way of working.

Mike

[len branville]

Thanks Bodie,

That's an option that performs very well (seeing I'm trying to get away from an internal audio drive solution with firewire/DVD backups/tranfers.. I would still do the firewire/DVD backups though ). I just happen to have a few of those serial ATA drives stocked and would love to press those into service in some type of modular configuration.
I do have a SCSI card here -so I could get going with the SCSI option too!

len

[nikki-k]

UPDATE!!!!

First post in this thread has (finally) been updated to include the now infamous "Quadzilla," courtesy of Shane (user: Shan on DUC) and several others. My, and undoubtedly many others, thanks and appreciation for the money, and extreme number of hours put into researching, refining, and sharing this monster system with us all!!!

The first post has had the Quadzilla basics copy n pasted from his post in the LE section, albeit with a few edits (colorization, basically). I have only included the Tyan version of the few Quadzillas being used with LE. Why? Because I have personally spoken with Shane, and he has worked with the NW Digi rep up in his part of the igloo to verify the Tyan version as to be trouble-free (and poweful!) with an HD1 and HD2 system. (HD3, as noted in the post, should also be good to go). I consider this to be a "flagship" Quad (two dual-core Opteron CPU's), and worthy of housing HD cards

I will be updating my own site for Pro Tools (see my sig) to include this monster as well, hopefully sometime next week.

I will be adding other Quad systems, and more powerful ones as they appear and are FULLY tested, and will hopefull be able to include info such as Shane's portion of the first post includes.

Personally, I will be looking into a variation on the Quadzilla: I want to try to use the Tyan 2895 board, with 6G RAM (3G per CPU), dual Opti's, and once Digi makes PCIe drivers, I want to try an HD Core PCIe (Accel!!!) card in it, if possible to work.

Quad on!!!

[Shan]

Thanks Nikki!!!

One very important thing is to include this link:

**How to attach the firewire connector on this board**

Very important that everyone attaches the firewire connector this way. Thanks.

Time to do some more Quadin'

Shane

[markus44uk]

Nikki:

As Shane has mentioned on the Quadzilla LE forum, going with an HD1 card and a full Quadzilla PC can bee an excellent upgrade path for TDM users who may still be in 24 Mix systems. I myself have resisted the high cost of upgrading to HD from my 24 Mix +++ (three mix farm cards).

By building a Quad system, I have been able to upgrade to HD1 for a fraction of the cost of a full HD upgrade. Because of the massive RTAS capacity in the Quad system, I am able to get 155 D-verb RTAS plugins simultaneously in record mode with HW Buffer set to 1024. Since I only need a few select TDM only plugins, the HD1 card is currently more than enough DSP to cover my needs.

Of course, once the PCIe Accel cards are available for Windows, the old PCI HD cards will spring up all over Ebay and I'll be first in line to pick 1-2 up at a bargain price.

Finally, I get all the benefits of a TDM system that don't exist in the LE platform (PDC, massive track counts, Multi-track Beat Detective, etc)

My only downside is that my 3 Apogee AD8000SE I/O units are not 96/192 capable. Even with the Ambus HD card, I am still only able to track at 24. My ears are still not convinced that I'm missing anything not tracking at 96 or 192. The upgrade to higher quality will require a massive spend on I/O units. Gonna put that off for a bit.

[rojo75]

I'm looking for a rackmount case to build my pc, like the one sweetwater has on there creation station computers, to set an example. Any good brands? And if they have an on-line store better!

thanx!

[nikki-k]

I'm looking for a rackmount case to build my pc, like the one sweetwater has on there creation station computers, to set an example. Any good brands? And if they have an on-line store better!

thanx!

Enermax Rack Case 4U

I got mine at Newegg for like $240 I think. It comes with a power supply, but I would HIGHLY suggest replacing it with a nice, name brand high power one (like an Antec TruePower 520 or better). Also, I am still searching for some sliding rack rails. I have my case in a SKB Shockmount rolling rack (16sp)(beautiful and very protective), and would love to have some sliding rack rails that lock in place. Ah well!

Newegg has one, iStar look-a-like, but it has blue aluminum doors instead of silver. It looks very, very close, and is only $184. I could not find the Enermax on the newegg site anymore...dont know why not.

ok- found an all black version of that iStar for $155.

I did find someone who has the Enermax: Advanced Design in Kentucky. Never used them... Might try Pricewatch.

Anyway! That is the exact rack Sweetwater uses...I use it, and all is great for me. You would only fit a DVD/CD drive, plus 3 hard drives in it...unless you leave out a floppy drive, and then you could fit one more hard drive. I would suggest using a Zalman fan on the cpu (Artic Silver paste!), and hit End PC Noise for some nice, quiet fans for the case (I use them for "quiet PC" parts, great people...and btw- the Nexus carver mouse pads are AWESOME! They are slightly slick plastic, work VERY well with optical mouses; otherwise, a thin piece of wood with a piece of adhesive-backed felt from Wal-Mart's art supply dept, in black, works very well too). I also suggest round cables inside to help allow more airflow.

Lastly, Antec has a similar case as well (I imagine there are many "clones" of this case). It is the Take 4. But, I personally do not like th einternal layout, and wonder if it would work well (or at all) with Digi HD cards. Caveat Emptor Maximus on this one!

Any more questions, feel free to ask!

(oh- almost forgot! dont forget to grab a bag of fan screws; some fans come with them, some dont. And existing case fans sometimes have different ones, or crappy ones.)