Studio PC - what is the best setup?

Riaan

Guys
I finally got a second PC so I'm now in the fortunate position to use my current desktop as a dedicated studio PC. It's a Gigabyte quadcore with 4 Gb of RAM. Will be running WinXP Home (SP3) as the OS.

I have three hard disks available, two SATA's (a 500 Gb and a 250 Gb) and a 7200 IDE drive (160 Gb). What would you recommend as the best hardware and OS/software setup to get the best audio performance out of it?

The software will only be Sonar 8, Guitar Rig and a few VST/DXi plugins for Sonar. My audio interface is an Edirol FA-66 and I will also be using a USB connected Edirol PCR-800.

Also, would you use something like Nero 9 on a dedicated studio PC, to play MP3's, edit WAV files and do file conversions?

AlanRatcliffe

System Drive: 250GB SATA
Swap Drive: 160GB PATA
Audio Drive: 500GB SATA

Follow the system setup in the Tascam Win XP Guide, and you're good to go. No need to tweak all the smallest things like services - on a machine that capable it won't make an appreciable difference.

I have Winamp 2.76 on my audio machine for quick MP3 conversion (although You can do it from within Sonar). Wav editing I'm using Sony Sound Forge - although I'm far less happy with it since Sony bought it from Sonic Foundry - it's getting bloated. Still, it integrates into Sonar pretty well.

Riaan

Thanks Alan. Just so I'm sure: instead of having a swap file on the system drive, the size of which is normally decided upon by Windows, I specify the entire physically seperate IDE drive as space for the swap file, and that is done under the virtual memory settings?

AlanRatcliffe

Set the swap file to a fixed size (prevents windows from writing to it until it becomes absolutely neccessary). Usually about t0 1.5X the system RAM, but with 4GB RAM there's no need to go that big (and a big swap file can slow down startup and shutdown. So probably 1.5GB should be more than enough.

If you partition the drive into a 1.5GB partition for the swap (on the first partition to keep it fast), you can create another partition for the rest of the drive and use it for storage of sample files or whatever.

Heath

no , just move the swap file to the drive , if you got 4 gb ram make the swap file 4gb aswell , also move the temp folder to the 160 gb as well , and the internet temp folder there 2 , and if sonar uses a temp directory move there 2 ( i know you can in audition and reaper)

AlanRatcliffe

no , just move the swap file to the drive

Why is that Tailon? AFAIK, if you leave the swap dynamic, Windows is almost continually writing to and reading from it. Every guide I have read for audio has said fix the swap size.

and the internet temp folder there 2

As a dedicated studio machine, will it even have Internet?

Heath

i agree with you alan , seems while i was replying , so was i and you go it in first .

alan is right a fixed 4gb swap file is what you need anything above this is useless on a 32 bit operating system . if this machine isn't going on the internet then try and avoid SP3 , i have had nothing but trouble with it .

inflames

I agree with Alan,

Make your Initial size and Maximum size the same. In server terms it would be best to make your paging file 2x the size of memory.
So if you have 4GB of memory make the page size 8GB.

This is the way that I have been doing it for years.

Riaan

Oh boy, what a learning curve....this morning I knew nothing about swap files and partitions, and now...well now I know a tiny little bit more, perhaps dangerously so. Doing what you guys suggested at this moment. Thanks for the advice!

One thing I noticed, is that another swap file is created automatically on my system drive, in addition to the one I created on the physically seperate drive. There is the option not to use the one on the system drive, I guess I should only use the one on the other drive? Otherwise I suppose I'll never get the advantage of a swap file on a physically seperate drive?

AlanRatcliffe

Yes - disable the swap on your system drive, otherwise Winblows will use that first.

inflames

Riaan,

I assume you moved your swap space to lets say drive X.
So on your virtual memory settings select drive C and click on no paging file.

That should help Mickysoft out!