Upgrading a PC for live band recordings

[GRiFF]

Hey Chappies and Chapettes,

I've just moved my programming studio to a new location in Hoxton North London and am looking to make use of the newly aquired live room that comes with the premises.

Obviously my plan involves recording multiple sources - I'm guessing 5-piece bands and the like, 8 mikes on drums max and of course haveing some inputs left over for scratch takes for bass and vox etc.

I've been thinking about purchasing a dedicated hardware recorder - Mackie HDR 24, RADAR etc, but as these options do throw up some other issues - such as the tedious methods of transferring data over to my studio PC - for ITB mixing. It has been suggested that I should find a good way to upgrade my PC to a 16 track recorder.

Currently I have a P4 2.5 PC thats running 1xHammerfall 9652 and is hooked up to the ADI 8.
This gives me 8 inputs.

I'm wondering about adding another ADI 8 - which I'm guessing will involve another 9652 also.

My questions are...

1) How successful is this type of system?
2) Whats the drain on the PC expected to be like
3) Can I cram all of this onto a standard Motherboard?
4) What new conflicts have other users noted?
5) Should I simply buy a dedicated new soundcard/converter such as an Apogee which comes with 16ins as standard
6) Is this method of recording on a PC stable enough or am I gonna get stressed out?

Hope you can help

[manning1]

you are already an RME user. my first port of call would be RME.
one possibility i would look into as well is the amd 64 processors.
no words i type can beat proper real life testing. which is the only way to really see if what you want to do will work in practice.
real life benchmarking is the only way. before you lay down your hard earned money. but i suspect the amd 64 will do the job.
but i would check first.

[GRiFF]

Manning - as in the AMD 64 microchip?

And as a PC processing upgrade?

I have some reservation about moving away from authentic Intel products. In the past I have found this as a great way for manufacturers to blame the failings of their own products on other brands of micro chips.

Regards G

[manning1]

you really have to do your own intel vs amd 64 test.
thats all i can say as every daw user is different.
but if you check around the net youll see the amd 64 PROCESSOR
is being praised highly in many quarters for daw work.
ask RME. apogee and the other sound product vendors your thinking of using for their input as well.
as i said - the way to beat your fears of upgrading are to do extensive tests on both intel and amd platforms. some dealers will let you do this.