My current machine is more than 3 years old (dual core 2.4mhz E6600) which is an eternity technology wise. Just starting to research a new system. Any suggestions on the latest greatest that behaves well with Sonar 8? I'll go 64 bit if it makes sense sonically otherwise I'm good at 32 bit. My best Sonar systems always had Intel MB & CPU. Is this still the way to go? Neil R
On 6/23/2010 2:01 AM, Neil Rutman wrote: > My current machine is more than 3 years old (dual core 2.4mhz E6600) which > is an eternity technology wise. Just starting to research a new system. Any > suggestions on the latest greatest that behaves well with Sonar 8? I'll go > 64 bit if it makes sense sonically otherwise I'm good at 32 bit. My best > Sonar systems always had Intel MB& CPU. Is this still the way to go? > > Neil R > > > > Save your money and upgrade to an socket 775 Intel Quad. That way you won't have to fork over more money for new DDR3 RAM .
I'm not up on the latest/greatest hardware -- I'm still running the same vintage (dual core E6600) -- happily with SONAR 8.5.3, only now it's the 64-bit version on Windows 7 Professional x64, so it actually can use my 4 GB memory configuration and also lets SONAR use more of it. The reason I'm replying is your implied question on 64-bit. It won't make a sonic difference. The 64-bit editions of Windows and SONAR only accomplish getting you the possibility, and very possibly the reality, depending on what you actually use, of using more RAM for SONAR. 32-bit limits application RAM to 2 GB, and I've definitely run into places with multiple large softsynths going where I maxed out prior to updating to 64-bit. I've probably also run into places where I've maxed out since, but that would be a limitation of my 4 GB of RAM hardware, and that Windows is taking some of that, rather than the underlying software. I could upgrade my system to 8 GB, but it would mean replacing all my current RAM since all four slots are occupied with 1 GB modules at the moment. There is another area where SONAR and 64-bit do come into play in sonics, but that is the 64-bit audio engine, which can also be used when running 32-bit SONAR. I've been running that for a long time, way before updating to the 64-bit version of SONAR. In the more distant past, I found it didn't make any difference in sonics, and proved it on some of my projects by doing mixes both ways then flipping the polarity of one and generating silence. However, that was back when pretty much all of the third party plug-ins I was using only supported 32-bit data paths, and SONAR's suite of plug-ins wasn't as strong as it has become since then, so the likelihood of my using those plug-ins versus third party ones was slim. A few years back, though, a number of my favorite plug-ins, especially some of my most-used ones from PSP Audioware, got 64-bit data path upgrades, and then I did start noticing differences in the sonics. One key was PSP VintageWarmer 2, because I've used PSP VintageWarmer across my mix bus for a long time to try and impart the flavor of mixing to tape. That became a bandwidth bottleneck when it was only 32-bit, so having it upgraded to 64-bit data paths was a real key for letting the 64-bit audio engine make a practical difference in my mixes. Cakewalk's also come out with some pretty good quality plug-ins in recent years, too, such as the linear phase multiband compressor, Channel Tools (one of my favorites since it lets me do true panning of stereo tracks, rather than just shifting left-right balances like the track-level pan control does), and several others. Most all the recent Vintage Cakewalk plug-ins, in addition to a number of the older ones like the Sonitus:fx series, do support 64-bit data paths. Whatever you go with hardware-wise, I'd definitely suggest Windows 7, as it's a big improvement over XP. I'd also be inclined to suggest the x64 version of that, even if you end up running 32-bit SONAR, since I haven't seen any ill effects of doing that (if you need to use 16-bit applications, make sure and get the Professional version of Windows so you can use the XP compatibility mode with those), and, even if you don't need 4 GB of RAM or more now, it gives you that potential for the future. As for whether to go 64-bit or 32-bit with SONAR, that comes down to your needs and any compatibility issues for plug-ins you use. You can always install both versions of SONAR so you can go either route. I've only installed the 64-bit version, but did end up writing off a few seldom-used plug-ins that didn't play nicely with 64-bit in the process. At the same time, I ended up getting a few plug-ins I really didn't expect would be able to work at all in 64-bit to work just fine, in particular some 32-bit DirectX plug-ins (BitBridge, which adapts 32-bit plug-ins to 64-bit SONAR supports VST only, but there is a freeware wrapper that allows wrapping DirectX plug-ins to VST, which then allows many of the 32-bit DirectX plug-ins I used to work as wrapped VST plug-ins under BitBridge). Rick -- ======================================= Rick Paul Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP) Web: www.RickPaul.info MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic ======================================= "Neil Rutman" <> wrote in message news:... > My current machine is more than 3 years old (dual core 2.4mhz E6600) which > is an eternity technology wise. Just starting to research a new system. > Any suggestions on the latest greatest that behaves well with Sonar 8? > I'll go 64 bit if it makes sense sonically otherwise I'm good at 32 bit. > My best Sonar systems always had Intel MB & CPU. Is this still the way to > go? > > Neil R > > > >
The killer robot "Neil Rutman" <> grabbed the controls of the spaceship cakewalk.audio and pressed these buttons... > My current machine is more than 3 years old (dual core 2.4mhz E6600) > which is an eternity technology wise. Just starting to research a new > system. Any suggestions on the latest greatest that behaves well with > Sonar 8? I'll go 64 bit if it makes sense sonically otherwise I'm good > at 32 bit. My best Sonar systems always had Intel MB & CPU. Is this > still the way to go? I upgraded from the same CPU to one of the Intel i5 750s and an Asus P7P55D mobo and a couple gigs of DDR3. I'm still running 44/16 and Windows XP 32 bit, but last week I worked on a song with Poly that ended up having 32 tracks, about a quarter of which were softsynths, some with big sample sets loaded, and something like 65 effects, most of which were Vintage Warmers, Mastering Limiters, and Compressors. My machine was hitting around 35% CPU use in Reaper when I was mastering it, and burning a CD from the timeline. -- Remove YourHeadFromYourAss to Reply by email ________ __ / ____/ /__ ____ ____ / /_ ____ / / __/ / _ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \ / /_/ / / __/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / \____/_/\___/_/ /_/_/ /_/_.___/\____/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Glennbo http://www.soundclick.com/glennbo Non-Linear Sound http://www.soundclick.com/jambits Hear My Music http://www.soundclick.com/ThePseudonyms
Just to add to the other comments: If you want to keep the hardware you have, find out whether it has 64-bit hardware drivers available and how well they work, before deciding on 64-bit OS. There are definite pros to 64-bit OS but there are some downsides too depending on the situation. -- Sue Morton "Neil Rutman" <> wrote in message news:... > My current machine is more than 3 years old (dual core 2.4mhz E6600) > which is an eternity technology wise. Just starting to research a new > system. Any suggestions on the latest greatest that behaves well with > Sonar 8? I'll go 64 bit if it makes sense sonically otherwise I'm good > at 32 bit. My best Sonar systems always had Intel MB & CPU. Is this > still the way to go? > > Neil R > > > >
Lets talk os for a moment. Does jumping from xp pro to W7 ad a significant performance boost for audio purposes? I'm not desperate for a new machine but it has been a while and it will be a while until I do it again after this - so my thinking is to get the latest and greatest with whatever amount of ram is required for maximum performance. Glennbo I can't get similar results during a mixdown with latency slider adjusted appropriately. When I have the latency slider way down for the purposes of playing soft synths in real time my results will vary - often it;s frustrating with a dense project. Neil R "Sue Morton" <> wrote in message news:hvtl3u$ira$-september.org... > Just to add to the other comments: If you want to keep the hardware you > have, find out whether it has 64-bit hardware drivers available and how > well they work, before deciding on 64-bit OS. There are definite pros to > 64-bit OS but there are some downsides too depending on the situation. > -- > Sue Morton > > "Neil Rutman" <> wrote in message > news:... >> My current machine is more than 3 years old (dual core 2.4mhz E6600) >> which is an eternity technology wise. Just starting to research a new >> system. Any suggestions on the latest greatest that behaves well with >> Sonar 8? I'll go 64 bit if it makes sense sonically otherwise I'm good at >> 32 bit. My best Sonar systems always had Intel MB & CPU. Is this still >> the way to go? >> >> Neil R >> >> >> >> >
The killer robot "Neil Rutman" <> grabbed the controls of the spaceship cakewalk.audio and pressed these buttons... > Glennbo I can't get similar results during a mixdown with latency > slider adjusted appropriately. When I have the latency slider way down > for the purposes of playing soft synths in real time my results will > vary - often it;s frustrating with a dense project. I *never* change the latency on my system any more. I use ASIO and in my Delta control panel, I have it set for 64 samples, which gets me 1ms of latency. The project I just did with Poly that had 32 tracks and 57 effects was mixed without changing anything to do with audio engines, latency or anything. I just went from recording to mixing. Bear in mind though that I am using Reaper which is a lot more efficient than Sonar with a heavy load of FX and softsynths. That said, if I was still using my E6600 this project would very possibly have required me to increase the latency at mixdow, because the track and FX count were higher than my normal projects. Usually, I hit more like 16-20 tracks with 30-40 FX. -- Remove YourHeadFromYourAss to Reply by email ________ __ / ____/ /__ ____ ____ / /_ ____ / / __/ / _ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \ / /_/ / / __/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / \____/_/\___/_/ /_/_/ /_/_.___/\____/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Glennbo http://www.soundclick.com/glennbo Non-Linear Sound http://www.soundclick.com/jambits Hear My Music http://www.soundclick.com/ThePseudonyms
"Neil Rutman" <> wrote in message news:... > Lets talk os for a moment. Does jumping from xp pro to W7 ad a significant > performance boost for audio purposes? It's tough to say for sure, because there are lots of variables that come into play. What I can say is that I jumped, on the same hardware (and a similar system to what you're using now CPU-wise) from XP Home (not Pro, and the 32-bit version) to Win7 Pro x64. My system is, in general, WAY snappier now -- I'm talking all around, from bootup taking probably less than 1/3rd the amount of time it took previously to just general responsiveness of UI. As for SONAR, I am now seeing better performance at lower latencies, and I am much more likely to just leave latency down in the 4-5 ms range because I don't think about it when I go to mix if I'm not seeing any ill effects. Previously I was religiously going to 50 ms latency for mixing and editing, in large part because I had to for performance reasons. I'd picked the 50 ms setting because, at least with my interface, an E-MU 1820M, it was the highest I could go without seeing ill effects in certain plug-ins and softsynths, most notably Spectrasonics' Stylus RMX, where weird things happened if I went to the next setting up, which is 100 ms, and 50 ms was generally good enough for performance. I'd also noted, though, that a few specific plug-ins, especially some of the IK Multimedia T-RackS modules, but possibly also some softsamplers that are heavily scripted, want much lower latencies to behave properly. Thus, I was sometimes messing around with changing latencies to see where I got enough performance but also didn't end up with a track spontaneously muting or having its audio drop out occasionally or some such thing. That has largely become a thing of the past under Win7 x64 and SONAR x64 because I'm much more frequently just operating at lower latencies. I mentioned above, though, that there are lots of variables. To be more specific here are just a few that I'm aware came into the picture for my upgrade: Win XP to Win 7 32-bit OS to 64-bit OS 32-bit SONAR to 64-bit SONAR (note that I was using SONAR 8.5 just prior to the upgrade, too, but only for a few months prior to the upgrade, having used SONAR 8 before that) McAfee VirusScan to Microsoft Security Essentials (I strongly suspect this is a major factor in my bootup time reduction) 32-bit XP audio drivers to 64-bit Vista audio drivers for my E-MU 1820M interface; similar notes for all other drivers on my system 32-bit versions of all plug-ins to a mixture of 32-bit and 64-bit plug-ins, with many, but not all, of my most used plug-ins having 64-bit versions some degree of disk and disk partition shuffling (I added a new, large SATA disk to the two IDE and one SATA hard drives I'd had previously, and my OS is now on a SATA drive where it had previously been on one of the IDE drives) The key thing that did not change is my actual hardware configuration (i.e. beyond adding the one new drive). I'm still running an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 with 4 GB of RAM on an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard with the same graphics card and monitor and other peripherals. > I'm not desperate for a new machine but it has been a while and it will be > a while until I do it again after this - so my thinking is to get the > latest and greatest with whatever amount of ram is required for maximum > performance. RAM needs will depend highly on your usage. Basic audio recording doesn't require a lot of RAM, but some softsynths require huge amounts. I seem to use a fair number of the latter, with typical projects having basic tracks that include EZ Drummer, Trilogy, Chris Hein Guitars, Virtual Guitarist and/or RealGuitar 2 (often with more than one instance), Garritan Steinway Basic, plus a few additional "flavor" instruments, often KONTAKT-based acoustic instrument simulations with key switching. Were I to be configuring a new system for my needs, I'd probably configure a minimum of 8 GB of RAM because my current 4 GB can get tight at times. With the 2 GB application limit under the 32-bit version of SONAR and 32-bit Windows, I was often having to freeze softsynths and juggle which ones I had connected at any given time to avoid running out of application memory. I don't have to do that very often with SONAR x64 on Win7 x64, but things still do get tight, and, for example, I sometimes end up closing down Outlook, which I pretty much always have running in the background, in such situations, so I'd definitely prefer to have more headroom. Note that RAM isn't so much a performance tuning thing as it is an all or nothing thing. That is, if you've got enough for your particular application (I.e. specific project needs within your specific DAW running on your specific system configuration with whatever other things you run in the background), things should work and work reasonably. If you're running short at times, during those periods, things aren't likely to just slow down somewhat, but rather more or less grind to a halt. For example, you may not be able to instantiate a softsynth, or you could get hang-like behavior when your system starts thrashing trying to swap things in and out. I also highly suspect this type of situation has been behind the SONAR poofs (I.e. disappearing with no crash message), which is something I cannot recall having seen since my Win7 x64/SONAR x64 upgrade. > Glennbo I can't get similar results during a mixdown with latency slider > adjusted appropriately. When I have the latency slider way down for the > purposes of playing soft synths in real time my results will vary - often > it;s frustrating with a dense project. This will really come down to what you're running (I.e. softsynth and plug-in-wise), your audio interface, and your system hardware. Keep in mind, too, that some plug-ins have high plug-in latency, and, if you're monitoring these through SONAR, they will result in audible latency even with low latency settings on your audio hardware. But, as I indicated above, this is an area where I saw a big improvement on the same hardware after upgrading to Win7 x64 and SONAR x64. I never tried running 32-bit SONAR on Win7 x64, and I had all the other variables I mentioned above, so I can't really peg this to any specific change, only to my overall set of changes. Rick -- ======================================= Rick Paul Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP) Web: www.RickPaul.info MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic =======================================
On 6/23/2010 1:51 PM, Sue Morton wrote: > Just to add to the other comments: If you want to keep the hardware you > have, find out whether it has 64-bit hardware drivers available and how > well they work, before deciding on 64-bit OS. There are definite pros > to 64-bit OS but there are some downsides too depending on the > situation. I was surprised how much hardware was plug n play in W7x64 compared to XP. Wireless keyboards and mouse come to mind. All of my systems are W7x64 plus I kept an XP partition on 3 of them. 32 bit apps are quite stable. Sonar,Reaper and Vegas are the only 64 bit apps I have. 64 bit Reaper is rock solid as far as handling both 32 and 64 bit apps. I have both 32 and 64 bit versions of S8.5 installed. I'm staying away from the Intel 1156 platform until RAM prices go down. All of my AMD upgrades have been from dual to quad core processors.
