Native system over TDM WOW!

[zboy2854]

Hey all,

With the power of CPU's growing to where they are now, I decided to do a little informal DSP power comparison between the MixPlus systems we have at work and my 001 system at home. I basically instantiated as many Bombfactory 1176 plugins as I could on a 24 bit 44.1K session with audio on every track. On the MixPlus system (1 Mix Core, 1 Mix Farm) I was able to get 27 instances of the 1176 during playback before I ran out of DSP. On my Athlon 2000+ XP native system I was able to get 110 instances (no that's not a typo) before I ran out of DSP. That's right, 22 tracks with 5 1176's on each track playing back audio. I'm sure the new G5's are just as impressive.

As someone who was considering getting a TDM system for home, it seems to me the only reasons these days to spend all that money on a hardware DSP system is for more tracks, expandable inputs and outputs, and latency advantages. However, with the $4-8K price difference, I think I'd rather spend the money on Rosetta 800 and Big Ben as my front end, and maybe move up to a 002R for 96K. Thoughts?