Allenstein OctaPC(8-core) and Quadzilla(4-core) *OS Update

[Shan]

...and to top it off Kris75, your system is the smallest one with the 265's and only 2G of ram using a regular ATA system drive. Yet, you can do all this with power to spare.

I have to go Quading to. Later.

Shane

[pasanta]

Just thought I would chime in about the quad performance here. If there are any non believers out there, suck it up. I just started a mix last night using the Music Production Toolkit. WOW. I have 39 Tracks(10 of wich are stereo), 8 versions of the Amplitube LE, and 5 versions Hybrid plus all the regular compressors and eqs', and two versions of TL Space Verb running, oh yeah and one verison of sampletank LE running as well. My cpu usage is still under 50% and the system responds lightning fast.

My quad is on a 002r. But even though I only have 16 inputs ( 18 with spdif), I can put 32 tracks into record at a buffer of 64.........with 32 tracks of the Waves SSL plug on each track and the SSL Master Bus on the PT master. CPU at around 35-50% depending on which and how many verbs I decide to use.


Can you say, poor man's SSL? (Please. Keep the Waves WUP rants in their own thread......)

Oh how I hope the 003 has more inputs!!!!!!

[Shan]

My quad is on a 002r. But even though I only have 16 inputs ( 18 with spdif), I can put 32 tracks into record at a buffer of 64.........with 32 tracks of the Waves SSL plug on each track and the SSL Master Bus on the PT master. CPU at around 35-50% depending on which and how many verbs I decide to use.

Cool! So when it comes to mix time and you're at 1024 you'll have plug-ins for years.

Oh how I hope the 003 has more inputs!!!!!!

HD 1 hybrid Poor Man's HD rig. 32 inputs/outputs. Works great with the Poor man's SSL.

Shane

[guitardom]

HD 1 hybrid Poor Man's HD rig. 32 inputs/outputs. Works great with the Poor man's SSL.

any of you got a poor man's control room to put a poor mans neve sidecar in????
i guess some stuff we cant fake even with the quad

minus some plugin issues wich are not my quad's fault, this machine (named Armadillo (spinal tap ref)) is flawless. it is the best upgrade i have made in quite a while! life seems much less stressful not worrying about it crashing, buff errors, locking up, running out of cpu power and such, now i can worry about other stuff instead

[Shan]

any of you got a poor man's control room to put a poor mans neve sidecar in????

I have a poor man's control room that I had to cut alot of corners on to finish. I'll take that sidecar off your hands. Plug-ins are better for you as they give you instant recall and multiple instances. You dont need that boat anchor. They take up to much space and I'm sure it just gets in the way.

Shane

[markus44uk]

You will have to use PT 7 for HD to go hybrid. As far as plug-ins go, I'm 100% RTAS. I still consider this a native system for the most part and feel this is the future of PT for awhile. You will also have a few extra TDM DSP chips for any TDM only plug-ins you may want to use. You could use these on the aux returns such as your verbs and delays etc or something like that if you want to pay those TDM plug-in prices. Another bonus is all the upgrading you can add if one needed to expand the system. A core card can handle 32 I/O which is way more than I would ever use for quite some time. You also have a great selection of I/O from Digi and others that you can use. Another cool thing is you can use the UAD-1 or PoCo cards with PDC if you really like those plug-ins. 8 UAD-1 cards for the price of 1 Accel card isnt to shabby. You can really expand this system with all types of budgets from small to large.

There arent many differences between the HD and LE software wise these days. I'm almost certain that will change greatly with the release of 7.2. But the handful of HD only software things can come in handy now and then. A really cool feature is that any RTAS plug-in that clips, will turn red so you will know. That one is VERY cool and handy.

The Tyan Quad does HD 1 and LE perfectly. You can keep and use ALL your RTAS plug-ins. Plus, you no longer have to pay double the price for TDM plugs.

If you buy it used you can get an HD 1 rig with a 96I/O going for around $5000-$6000. That's a pretty good mid level system if you ask me. I feel it's the mid level system that many of us have been begging for from Digi. If Digi sold this at that price they would probably have alot of HD 1 sales. But that's ok, it all works the same whether it's new or used.

There are a few things I should mention though, the lowest H/W buffer you can use in HD is 128, unlike the 64 in LE, which the Quad does very well. This only really effects softsynths and isnt to big of a deal. Also, all your RTAS plug-ins will be bypassed in HD when you hit record. To me this is no big deal. I never record with effects on. But if you have a singer that absolutely must have a reverb or delay on when they are recording, just use the stock Digi TDM plugs for that purpose. I'm sure as more guys go the hybrid route we can get some of these things changed like the H/W buffer setting etc.

Most guys will find that HD 1 and below with a quad(or higher) is more than you'll need for music production. Many of my productions are massive but the HD core and quad can handle it all.

I'm up to about 85 tracks on this new production I'm working on. Not a problem. And I can also tell you that if we had true 96 mono tracks in LE, it would still be not a problem on the Quads.

Shane

Shane, thanks for that. I already have three Apogee AD8000SE I/O units connected up to a Mix 3 on a Mac G4. I hate the interface on the Mac (not a flame, just my preference). I assume I can use the Apogees for my I/O and get rid of the 002R unit. So if I understand correctly, all I really would need to do is get one HD card and PT 7 HD software. That would be much less than $5k wouldn't it?

Assuming I could get a used HD card and the TDM software, how would I be connecting the Apogees to the HD card? One HD card will accept 32 channels of I/O? That's sweet.

[FlowDenny]

My quad is on a 002r. But even though I only have 16 inputs ( 18 with spdif), I can put 32 tracks into record at a buffer of 64.........with 32 tracks of the Waves SSL plug on each track and the SSL Master Bus on the PT master. CPU at around 35-50% depending on which and how many verbs I decide to use. Can you say, poor man's SSL?

Now that is the post I've been waiting to hear about!! Waves SSL across the board with a H/W buffer of 64!...Poor mans SSL indeed... (Homer Simpson drool). I'm almost ready to go. My total is about $2500. Waiting for a friend who has a computer shop to get back to me...might be able to get some items a little cheaper. I saw 275 Opty's for 599! $599 Opteron 275 I'm pretty sure they're oem, but I'm not sure if they're used. Sounds too good to be true. Otherwise I saw the 270's oem for about $445 on pricewatch. 3.2Ghz HTP4 W 2gig of ram starts to freak @ 30 D-Verbs. Bring on the AMD OptyQuads!!!

Dennis

[JoaoTugas]

After much thought and endless price cotes my system will be this ( i was going fr a normal allenstein comp but i got some good prices for the this quad setup)

-Tyan Tiger K8WE Motherboard
-Two Opteron 265 Dual-Core CPUs
-4G of Corsair
-1 ASUS EN6600/TD/256 Video card
-Western Digital ATA(ide) 7200 hard drive
-7200 SATA Audio drive or Western Digital SATA 74G Raptor hard drive
-OCZ Power stream 520W Power supply
-Case Thermal take Xaser VA3000SWA Tsunami

This is almost like shan quad...

My doubts:

1- Can I get Asus Radeon X300 or Radeon X550 128MB graphic because its HALF the price of the first one? I wont be doing no graphic work just sound and some post but really don’t need much of quality … even in overdubs or ADR for displaying images ...

2 – Will just too regular 2 ATA (IDE) drives break the performance of the quad? Because again it will be half the price of the raptor … and also cheaper then the sata...

Thank you Shan and others for this BIG resource!!

Thank you in advanced ...

JoaoTugas

[Shan]

...I already have three Apogee AD8000SE I/O units connected up to a Mix 3 ...I assume I can use the Apogees for my I/O and get rid of the 002R unit.

You'll have to give Apogee a call and see if you can use one of their X series expansion cards with your Apogee unit in HD. Let me know what can be hooked up to this. I have an idea that may work.

So if I understand correctly, all I really would need to do is get one HD card and PT 7 HD software. That would be much less than $5k wouldn't it?

I've seen core cards go from $3850-$4000.

Assuming I could get a used HD card and the TDM software, how would I be connecting the Apogees to the HD card? One HD card will accept 32 channels of I/O? That's sweet.

We'll have to research this one since your appogee is an older unit. Let me know what you come up with.

Those of you who already have Apogee gear can make the leap to HD hybrid very easy. It is another I looked into but will have to post more later.

Shane

[Shan]

[QUOTE]

I saw 275 Opty's for 599! $599 Opteron 275 I'm pretty sure they're oem, but I'm not sure if they're used. Sounds too good to be true.
Dennis

Cool, let us know if you get those 275s. You'll be thfirst to have a pair of those bad boys. They'll smoke.

Shane