ewqlso gold pro xp, Ewql choirs, NI akoustik piano and bfd, (will my computer cope?)

[idrisguitar]

with all those,

it is a dual core 3400 amd i think, 2 gig ram. audiophile 2496 soundcard.

i did have some cracks and pops with bfd, but i increased the buffer size on the soudn card (it was very low anyway) and everything was perfect again.

basically will my computer be okay with running all those high end programs, they are all sample libraries so that is okay i suppose.

i can always just add more ram to my system if that will help.

also i dont mind if it takes longer to load or anything, all i want it crisp clear playback and input without noise and other problems.

so can anyone who uses similar high end sample libraries and has a similar system give me their take on this, i dont mind buying another gig of ram or something if i need to.

[hisboyelroy@his]

I use a simlar setup on my mac G5 - the thing I will tell you - get a fast dedicated hard drive for the samples. In fact, plan on running the piano and the orchestra off of different drives to get the best performance. I don't run out of cpu power, but I do hit the wall of samples trying to stream from my hard disk. And it's best if these are internal drives.

More ram will always help too, although I'm not sure exactly how much ram you can allocate to your sequencer. Like for example, on the mac, I have 4G of ram, but I know that Logic (and the plugins loaded in it) can only grab 2.5G at a time total. There's workarounds on the mac to run a 2nd plugin host (like Live or something) at the same time, load more plugins into that and Rewire them together. I'm not exactly sure how you'd do that on a PC. I guess I'm saying that more ram will help up to a point, but after that it might not make a difference. I don't know exactly where that cutoff point would be on your pc - but it definitely wouldn't hurt to add another Gb at least.

Hope that helps!

Tim

[idrisguitar]

so i should consider getting a few more internal hard drives and space the samples out,

and also get another gig of ram?

then i should be okay,

internal harddrives are cheap now so that wont be a problem.

ill runn say cubase sx3 and bfd off that one, then run choirs off another one, and if i can maybe run orchestral and piano off another.

or is that going to far,

anyoen had success wihout having to go to these measure when putting the computer under similar pressures?

[Jsx]

One of the absolute best things you can do for sample based programming is to have a dedicated sample drive beyond your system drive. Having a single (or more) drive that is devoted only to loading up your samples will give you much more capability, particularly if you are using Direct From Disk for some of the larger libraries or sample sets. I would experiment with just one sample drive before purchasing multiple drives, as you may only end up needing one auxilliary drive for your particular needs. Somewhere around 250gb is generally the best range for price/performance ratios.

If your processor is an AMD Dual Core, chances are it is a 4400 rather than a 3400, as I believe the AMD Dual-Cores only go down to 3600. If so, the 4400 is a very good processor and should be able to handle whatever load you place on it admirably. If not, adding another gigabyte of RAM would also be hugely beneficial, particularly if you adjust the samples so that a larger portion of the sample preload time is reserved in RAM, which you can do in many soft samplers. Keep in mind that if you are using Windows XP anything beyond ~3.1gb of RAM will not be properly recognized by the system so 3gb is essentially your limit. Before investing in any significant improvements however, consider trying it out on your system and then react accordingly. I think you will find that another hard drive will be very helpful, but you may find that extra RAM might not be necessary.

[idrisguitar]

thank

im pretty sure now, i will get a new sata 250 gb or another two if theres enough slots, and another gb of ram and that should sufice for the ear future :)

thanks again