ProTools with OSX-- Are we going backwards??

[danickstr]

new os'es lead to new drive strategies. the partition thing was os 9. random scattering is the new approach for osX. times they be a changing. but the good news is that drive babysitting on our part is reduced. in unix based systems, i understand that the random writing is how its done and partitions are just folders of sorts.

[fifty8th1]

To MT , Stadium Rocker and David ...and others

I talked to Digi today to make sure the advice I was giving was up to date.
Some you felt that I was inacurate....so I needed to get updated ... It had been a long time since I checked
on Digi's recommendation on setting up hard drives for recording in Protools.

I don't have time right now to go into it but if anyone is interested I will tell you what they said. And what they
said about slow performances.

All I am going to say right now is the way i suggested setting up hard disks in their words...
"would be the fastest possible performance". Partitioning would be the best way of allocating hard disk space.
Digi felt we could even partition up as big as 30 gig without much loss ... but the smaller the partition ..the better the perfomance.

Our 6 gig partitions are big enough to get one entire song OR even several customers depending on the project.
We never delete anything. When the partition is full we back up to DVD's ...we may wait until those projects are finished if possible. Then delete the files so it's clean and ready to go for the next recordings.

We partitioned the drive 2 years ago and havn't touched it since...so it not any work to have partitions. And you should never have to set your preference for recording lengh every again...because that is all taken care of. (you be the judge)

We are using an 80 gig drive for data. There are just a few 6 gig partitions and one huge backup partition...
Digi says you may be able to go up to 30 gigs without much of a performance drop. This gives you a lot of options for setting up your hard drive the way it works best for you.

30 gigs is a lot in our opinion. Your not going to be as quick to delete and clean it up it as you would a smaller 6 gig partition.

If anyone cares I'll continue with more some other time.

Jon
58Th Street Studio

[bassmac]

At one time, it was quite common, (and recommended) to use 4-6 gig partitions.

With OSX, I’ve changed to 30g partitions.

Right or wrong, my partitions have always been good to me.

[rockridge]

We are using an 80 gig drive for data. There are just a few 6 gig partitions and one huge backup partition...
Digi says you may be able to go up to 30 gigs without much of a performance drop.

Another issue is to make sure journaling, which is some sort of defraging on the fly deal, is turned off on the recording partitions.

But i agree with the smaller partiton idea, regardless of the OS. It shortens the distance between data, and speeds up access.

[fifty8th1]

Here is more on hard disk setup.... for MT, Stadium Rocker and David and others

First .. yes turning off journaling would be a good thing. You don't need the OS doing defraging when your trying to get work done. The thing is .. this isn't just any data .. this is Audio .. which has everything to do with Timing. When your done your going to erase all the audio .. it doesn't need to be defragged. I am sure there is a lot more to say on that issue.

The other thing I wanted to mention was track count according to Digi today. They say that ATA supports 32 tracks and Firewire supports 24. To record higher track counts ... you need another disk. This is not to say you can't go over 32 tracks... but just to say it is not supported.

If you are using 2 180 gig hard disks ...fine. As long as you use a 30 gig (or smaller) partition. For a second 32 tracks use the second hard drive with its own 30 gig (or smaller) partition. This method is supoorted. As long as you have more drives you can go even higher.

I think there are a lot of advantages to partitioned hard drives if one wanted to get into it.

If anyone is having slow performance and they are using large drives without partitioning ... their systems are not using supported methods. There could be a lot of different reasons for slow performance ... but I have noticed on this post that this hard disk issue is a common bond between many...

Jon
58th...

[danickstr]

well...ok digi says so. they are usually right. but if you look at unix as a system, the partitioning thing is no longer writing data to only one area of the disk. partitions (as I understand from unix sites) are intermingled with one another so i don;t see the difference in setting up partitions. its just a matter of understanding (and us finding out once and for all) whether or not unix partitions are scattered around or kept in a small area. i dont get the scatter thing totally, but there is some reason it makes sense.

[poldo]

If i was running HD, I would go HD core with process cards and stick with OS9 on a 933mhz Quicksilver.

I am running 5 dsp farms and 2 d24 cards on a 866 quicksilver running os9 and I dont envy you OSX early beta testers. I have EVERYTHING I need or will ever need.

DONT LET THE TECHNOLOGY DICTATE YOUR TOOLS. use the tools that you need.

I must quote this from Seekerian: I could be happy with my os9 setup! I have experimented 3 years of great post production using PT 5.3.1 under os9.. Almost all perfect! And solid.

But now the 'Apple/Avid/3rd party developers' joint venture have decided that I'll never have any os9 improvement. No more updates. No more plugs or instruments all developed for full os9 compato.
Altiverb is a great example: version 4.2.7 for osx.. Big deal with new snapshots function! But this is osx only!
SO IF I WANT TO USE IT, I MUST USE IT UNDER OSX!
No other way.
In other words, I'm forced to buy, install and suffer with OSX!
This is the Apple way of business after 2k...

But there is a solution: Windows XP. I've expermented Nuendo XP and I'm surprised (as an old apple lover) about great midi timing, rocksolid virtual instruments performance, very affordable operating system and good soundcards that bring me to the DEFINITIVE decision...
I'll leave Apple with its poppets, hoping in a better tomorrow!

regards

AJP

[fifty8th1]

To danickstr:

I checked around for a couple days to see if any part of this was true. It is not true.

All of this scattering files rumors were just hog wash. Partitions are just as they were ... solid chunks of hard disk space. UNIX has very little to do with it. The file format is HFS+ as you already know. And HFS+ has been with us for more than several years now. There have only been minor changes to it. I checked with Macworld. You can forget all of the scattering rumors mostly because scattering is almost the exact opposite of what UNIX and HFS+ do. What performance increase could there be for a Head to follow scattered files and scattered partitions.

I hope this is the end of this part of our discussion about why some users are having slower performance with their systems.

Have a greater and much simpler day ... ( Audio disk Partitions are good .. and the smaller the better )

Jon

[StadiumRocker]

Hi Jon - I don't know what you're reading that makes you say the "scattering stuff is nonsense". The files do in fact get scattered everywhere during recording. Do the test I told you about - blank drive, record one audio file, then examine the drive with a defragging utility. You will see for yourself. If fragmentation is your concern, then a smaller partition is more likely to cause it to occur, because there is less space on a small partition for a contiguous file to be written. But it's a moot point...because data is not written contiguously to a hard drive (by Pro Tools). Yes, the Finder will write to a drive in a nice contiguous manner, but Pro Tools will not. Perhaps there lies the confusion in what you have read. Please share links so I can read what you are reading.

Re MT - how does a song become 55GB? Lets see...

18 tracks for live drums (a bit ridiculous but dictated by the producer), 3 tracks for bass (DI, preamp, amp), two guitar rigs using 9 tracks total (one rig consists of 3 amps with two mics on each cabinet), Wurlitzer (3 tracks, DI plus amp and ambience), piano (3 tracks), lead vocal, three backing vocals, two percussion mics, four tracks for horns, and various room/talkback/fx mics. Every take was recorded with everybody playing. About 30 takes. When I finished the tracking dates, the session was about 35GB. Then overdubs. Guitars, vocals, piano, B3, strings. Lots of overdubs. Then various editing, consolidating tracks, adding samples, duplicating things for printing effects, blah blah etc, and there you have it -- 55GB. Actually, it's about 65GB now. And yes, we were cutting at 96K.

I'm not a data management expert, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

[Mt.Everest]

I hope this is the end of this part of our discussion about why some users are having slower performance with their systems.

Well it really all depends on what kind of projects one does. If Im working on an album (25+ songs, 2-5GB a song), there is no way Im gonna want to split it across partitions while working on it. Too much of a headache. And I really dont think that a 30GB partition will be much different than a 60GB drive. Sure, Digi can say that you might experience better performance, but so will recording 30 tracks spread across 3 drives, but its not worth the headache. AND, I bet if one actually tested the real number performance improvement by partitioning, it wouldnt be significant. And if we are talking partitioning super fast SCSI drive, MAYBE, but Firewire is slow no matter what at 7200RPM and its bridge technology. (Most sessions use FW and bring their own drives, so Im not speaking of internal SATA). Hey, if it works for you, cool, but for the way I and most others work, its just not useful to make a bunch of small partitions. Maybe try one of those 3rd party disk speed apps that test speeds and responsiveness. See what the actual difference between a 10GB partition on a 120GB drive, vs no partitioning is. I bet it would NOT be significant.

Re MT - how does a song become 55GB? Lets see...

18 tracks for live drums (a bit ridiculous but dictated by the producer), 3 tracks for bass (DI, preamp, amp), two guitar rigs using 9 tracks total (one rig consists of 3 amps with two mics on each cabinet), Wurlitzer (3 tracks, DI plus amp and ambience), piano (3 tracks), lead vocal, three backing vocals, two percussion mics, four tracks for horns, and various room/talkback/fx mics.

Sounds like a fun project! Man do I miss live instrument sessions... I cant remember the last time I had any request to track a Bass DI, AMP, and PREAMP and 18 tracks of drums. Just dont happen much anymore.. Well at least in the HipHop heaven of NYC.

Also, for another take on the OSX gripe there is a funny article in the April issue of MIX magazine. I dont experience most of the writers problems, but a few of the points are ones that have been discussed here.

MT

P.s. I tried more RAM for the hiding tracks thing. No help whatsoever. Still have the delay. I wonder what part of the system is actually being taxed when you click tracks to hide. Cuz if you guys are seeing instant hiding on large, busy sessions on G5s, there has to be a reason why mine dont.