Explain the parts of a computer and how they relate to music software performance

[IonicBreed]

Curious actually if someone can break down the aspects of a hard drive and how it would relate to musical computer performance. Like how the cache, interface, and the memory type (of say 4GB of Flash memory) can affect your sample libraries.
If you invest in traditional platter style hard drives (disk drives) The higher the on board memory cache the better. Consider the on board memory cache of a hard drive like it's own mini CPU and RAM. The higher the memory cache the more "on board active" storage of information the drive has to send for processing by your CPU. This allows for less "search times" and longer drive lives. This will ultimately allow for faster samples to be "looked up" and found via your daw libraries.

A couple draw backs of SSD's. The write times are still particularly low compared to disk drives. (at least they were the last time i looked) The second draw back is sensitivity. SSD's in my personal experiences tend to be more voltage temperamental than disk drives. Your power supply must be solid. Otherwise you will have incomplete data. However SSD's are tremendously faster than [latter drives for playback. Much better for sample libraries.

I'm kind of looking at what feature(s) of a computer allow you to: (1) have more softsynths (like 5 instances of Diva) playing at the same time with less CPU hit.
RAM will solve this problem.
Ok I know there are some obvious assumptions for higher processor speeds here or more cores allowing you handle more, but it would be better to hear a confirmation of this.
(2) Or allow you to load samples and softsynth patches (for example in Omnisphere) quicker.
Ram, Ram, More ram.

The ultimate draw back to any computer system is the Front Side Bus. Which is the "port hole" that the information feeds into be processed by the CPU. Most Desktop based Macs have a 1333MHZ FSB. (Where as there are some 3rd party motherboard designers that are pushing FSB speeds up to 19GB/s.) Which relates to roughly a 1gb/s FSB. SO no matter how fast your RAM, Over clocked your CPU, you can only send a 1GB/s amount worth of information to be processed at any one point in time.

Other items to consider besides RAM and a faster Hard Drive: Look into upgrading your Video Card. The stronger the video card and higher the on board memory of the card, the less load the CPU and RAM have to bear while running your plugins and DAW.

To Summarize, RAM is the best way to IMPROVE plug in speed, stability. Better Hard Drives with higher on board memory run smoother. A stronger video card will improve performance even further after RAM upgrades and will alleviate any processing stress your programs are placing on your CPU, visually, while running your DAW.

Hope this helps.

[goddfodder]

Im sure there's a lot of clever answers to this,... but i tell you what,.. try taking a ten year old pc with a couple of gig ram. try running a few modern synths such as Omnisphere. try running a nice selection of plugins. I think your appreciation of modernity will significantly grow,...

[joecandy]

Originally Posted by IonicBreed

Curious actually if someone can break down the aspects of a hard drive and how it would relate to musical computer performance. Like how the cache, interface, and the memory type (of say 4GB of Flash memory) can affect your sample libraries.
If you invest in traditional platter style hard drives (disk drives) The higher the on board memory cache the better. Consider the on board memory cache of a hard drive like it's own mini CPU and RAM. The higher the memory cache the more "on board active" storage of information the drive has to send for processing by your CPU. This allows for less "search times" and longer drive lives. This will ultimately allow for faster samples to be "looked up" and found via your daw libraries.

A couple draw backs of SSD's. The write times are still particularly low compared to disk drives. (at least they were the last time i looked) The second draw back is sensitivity. SSD's in my personal experiences tend to be more voltage temperamental than disk drives. Your power supply must be solid. Otherwise you will have incomplete data. However SSD's are tremendously faster than [latter drives for playback. Much better for sample libraries.

I'm kind of looking at what feature(s) of a computer allow you to: (1) have more softsynths (like 5 instances of Diva) playing at the same time with less CPU hit.
RAM will solve this problem.
Ok I know there are some obvious assumptions for higher processor speeds here or more cores allowing you handle more, but it would be better to hear a confirmation of this.
(2) Or allow you to load samples and softsynth patches (for example in Omnisphere) quicker.
Ram, Ram, More ram.

The ultimate draw back to any computer system is the Front Side Bus. Which is the "port hole" that the information feeds into be processed by the CPU. Most Desktop based Macs have a 1333MHZ FSB. (Where as there are some 3rd party motherboard designers that are pushing FSB speeds up to 19GB/s.) Which relates to roughly a 1gb/s FSB. SO no matter how fast your RAM, Over clocked your CPU, you can only send a 1GB/s amount worth of information to be processed at any one point in time.

Other items to consider besides RAM and a faster Hard Drive: Look into upgrading your Video Card. The stronger the video card and higher the on board memory of the card, the less load the CPU and RAM have to bear while running your plugins and DAW.

To Summarize, RAM is the best way to IMPROVE plug in speed, stability. Better Hard Drives with higher on board memory run smoother. A stronger video card will improve performance even further after RAM upgrades and will alleviate any processing stress your programs are placing on your CPU, visually, while running your DAW.

Hope this helps.

That was a really good god damn answer...

Thank you..

[Dbas]

Originally Posted by IonicBreed

A stronger video card will improve performance even further after RAM upgrades and will alleviate any processing stress your programs are placing on your CPU, visually, while running your DAW.

Hope this helps.

This is probably why my quad core pc was struggling with gui's more than anything, I was and still am using onboard GPU!

[norbury brook]

this is where windows 7 and Aero make life much better than XP.


MC

[rids]

Wow, that was a great help IonicBreed, Thanks!

Though I do have a few followup questions. Can we then say that the processor speed and number of cores (as well as the FSB) will help the hard drive and Ram work quicker? I know you mentioned the FSB the most important aspect of the processor. It looks like newer Macbooks have Intel's DMI technology in them, which I'm guessing must just be a replacement for FSB and newer technology for processing.

I was going to ask some questions on L1 vs L2 vs L3 cache on a processor, but did some research and found out that nowadays L1 or L2 cache is usually fixed and dedicated to a dingle core, whereas L3 cache is available to all the cores.

Though I do have some questions on what can slow a computer down. Why is it if you fill your hard drive close to 60% full, it starts to slow everyday task like typing this message on gearslutz (seriously) and takes a little longer for things to load? I'm having that issue and in the process of upgrading (something). Haven't decided what I will upgrade. Was going to upgrade to a Seagate Momentus XT disk drive, but it's only 32MB cache (though it is SATA 6gbps). Seems to be the fastest HD for the Macbook Pro right now. Which is a bumber none of the 64MB cache ones will fit.

Curious about the video card improving overall computer performance. So do computers automatically always fall back on to the Video Card for help processing, or is there a setting that you have to tell your computer to do that?

[undertone]

Some of the points brought up by Ionicbreed seem a little off. Without getting into too much detail:

With regards to HDD's and cache size: while it's true that cache size will help in making information off the HDD available faster if requested again, the inherent problem in musical applications is that it may not be the same information that is required. For example, if you're playing multiple instruments in your DAW, you're streaming multiple samples at an extraordinary rate from your HDD, and as the notes keep changing and the velocities keep changing the samples requested from the HDD for playback keep changing as well. Given enough instruments and enough note changes, at some point the cache will get saturated and then it'll come down to the speed at which the drive can supply the data directly to the bus as if the cache didn't exist at all.

Of course this is content dependent: in an orchestral setting this will happen faster than if you're just playing one drum kit, where it might not happen at all. The raw random access speed of SSD makes them a natural candidate for this use, but how significant this is to you depends totally on your usage patterns.

And with regards to the FSB speed issue, while this is still a factor in CPU performance, newer technologies have developed to negate it's effect on RAM transfer rates by bypassing the FSB entirely, and more recent CPU's are even equipped with on-board memory controllers which access RAM directly.

It's a deep topic and it's a job keeping up with the constant changes being implemented in computer design. The other problem is that most of the information you'll find on the net references common use, as opposed to a specialized use like ours. The closest popular analog to what we do is gaming, which is also a real-time rendering activity, but that's all about graphics, and there sound usually plays second fiddle to graphics.

Understanding all the components of a computer and how they relate to each other and the use you want to put them to is a much more complex issue than can be covered in a forum post. I suggest the OP do a lot of reading on the subject and always take whatever info is given here with a grain of salt: even my own!

[IonicBreed]

With regards to HDD's and cache size: while it's true that cache size will help in making information off the HDD available faster if requested again, the inherent problem in musical applications is that it may not be the same information that is required. For example, if you're playing multiple instruments in your DAW, you're streaming multiple samples at an extraordinary rate from your HDD, and as the notes keep changing and the velocities keep changing the samples requested from the HDD for playback keep changing as well. Given enough instruments and enough note changes, at some point the cache will get saturated and then it'll come down to the speed at which the drive can supply the data directly to the bus as if the cache didn't exist at all.
This is a very valid point.


And with regards to the FSB speed issue, while this is still a factor in CPU performance, newer technologies have developed to negate it's effect on RAM transfer rates by bypassing the FSB entirely, and more recent CPU's are even equipped with on-board memory controllers which access RAM directly.
This also is a valid point, however going back to the HDD on board memory, your ram can also max out which in turn falls back on FSB and CPU processing rates. In programs such as pro tools, strictly being used as a tape substitute, you may never max out RAM. However while using time based plugins, and synthesizers, your FSB and CPU DO matter regardless of on board memory controllers such as X58. All that has been said is valid, debatable if it is a factor in your case, but all valid.

As far as sending processing to your GPU, there is probably a way of sending certain processes to your GPU, I think the AES board published some papers on how to do that in the past couple years or so. However, I do not know for sure.

[IonicBreed]

Though I do have some questions on what can slow a computer down. Why is it if you fill your hard drive close to 60% full, it starts to slow everyday task like typing this message on gearslutz (seriously) and takes a little longer for things to load? I'm having that issue and in the process of upgrading (something). Haven't decided what I will upgrade. Was going to upgrade to a Seagate Momentus XT disk drive, but it's only 32MB cache (though it is SATA 6gbps). Seems to be the fastest HD for the Macbook Pro right now. Which is a bumber none of the 64MB cache ones will fit.

Have you run a disk clean up in a while? Fragmented files are usually the culprit to a overly slow drive. On that note I recommend that you keep only essential files (Like program files) on your Main disk drive and place all extra information on an external drive. This will speed up load times and lessen stutter on playback of any music files in your DAW. With Thunderbird and Firewire 800, transfer rates shouldn't be an issue. Until somebody finds a hole in my explanation and says I'm wrong. [/B]

[Bunjji]

IonicBreed means thunderbolt not thunderbird!