Single or dual processor for live performance? / live perf rig

[Martin Hughes]

I'm setting up a PC to use for live music - playing back soft synths / plugin effects and GigaStudio. Do the benefits of dual processors outweigh the cost increase?

The basic spec I'm looking at is:

- EITHER Dual Xeon 3.2GHz
- OR High end P-IV
- 2GB RAM
- 2x 200GB SATA hard disks

Running Windows XP Pro SP2

Tascam FW-1804 interface and a CME controller keyboard

I have also heard good things about the Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM drive. Again is there a measurable performance increase for disk streaming vs the cost?

Thanks,

Martin

[Teacher]

I'd go with Dual. The Extra CPU headroom will be good for any CPU spikes that may occur.

[elder rookie]

if it's for live use i'd go with as much processing power as possible. just remember that it's not all about ghz. check tomshardware.com for some very thorough benchmarks of different processors, do your research and get the most stable and reliable set-up you can get.

also check to see if the programs you want to install will even benefit from whatever set-up you go with.

[Martin Hughes]

Ok thanks.

It's mainly for GigaStudio and some soft synths. Pretty intensive stuff (LOTS of voices being used at once).

Will check around.

M

[genericperson]

Cheers Martin,

Let me suggest an informed strategy here:

1) Gigastudio does NOT play well with other toys. Forget trying to run Gigastudio at the same time as a VSTi or anything else for that matter. If you want to run Gigastudio, put it on its own computer. Trust me on this.

2) You want redundancies in a live situation. Think like this: "If this one thing breaks, am I totally lost for the show?". Another reason to get a second computer.

You should be looking at a distributed system where the responsibilities and loads are spread across two computers, rather than trying to build the "ultimate" computer and having it do everything.

For portability, you can look into laptops. But also look into Small Form Factor (SFF) pc's. these things are very very small.

look here for a link:
http://compreviews.about.com/cs/desk...psffpckits.htm

although not amazing for sound quality, a *really* reliable soundcard is the m-audio audiophile 2496. those things are dirt cheap now, and have excellent audio and midi response. i believe most small form factor computers give you one pci slot. that's just enough to get you going with the 2496 card. i don't think most club goers would notice if you were using an Apogee or the M-audio. Most club sound systems stink anyway, and it's surprising how little the average listener pays attention to details like this. Especially in a beer-drinking friday night bar situation.

when going for system reliability, remember this: the soundcard must get along with the mainboards chipset on the computer. not the cpu, the chipset. the chipset is what directs data traffic on the mainboard. Via chipsets used to have a bad rep many years ago, but i've seen excellent results with Via chipsets on more recent builds. Its all about "this mainboard, with this chipset, with this soundcard, at this point in time".

So if it were me, I would get two small form factor PC's that have chipsets that are friendly to the Audiophile 2496, and slap one of those cards in each and be done with it. Rather than buying the "ultimate" gigasampler giant version, i would get two smaller versions and load one on each computer (are you really going to try to play 256 voices at the same time live?). in fact, i would build each computer identically, so if you experience a system failure you can prioritize during the night on the one system that is still up and running. hard drive failures can occur at anytime. so don't let wishful thinking lure you into believing it will never happen to you at a live gig.

also, when you try to buy at the absolute top of the speed range, the price spikes way high. don't freak out thinking you need the ultimate latest processor. the stuff is so fast these days, that unless you're using a convolution reverb or something else way processor hungry, you should be fine.

also make sure you get a 7200rpm drive in each computer. the problem with laptops is they give you weak drives to try to save on power. with the small form factor, you can get a 7200rpm, perhaps a 10,000 sata one.

the completely pro thing would be to have 3 identical computers. two for live use, and a third one waiting in the wings for you to power up quickly in the event that one of your computers dies in the middle of a set. i would only bring two sets of monitor/mouse/keyboard. and if one of those failed, i would simply use a KVM switch to control both computers from the setup that is still working.

[elder rookie]

and whatever you end up doing make sure you have a really sturdy road case for it (but i'm sure you already thought of that)

[manning1]

martin....
i'm a computer engr with a little studio whose built large industrial fault tolerant computer systems in the past.
unfortunately....pc architecture has not yet evolved to offer fault tolerance....
in the same way as has been done in large industrial systems.
by this i mean in large industrial systems there is monitoring circuitry that is constantly monitoring computer activity...and should a circuit failure be detected in one circuit another circuit is switched in unobtrusively.
with pc architecture ....for example....a pc power supply going down brings down the house of cards......and there are many other possibilities that could ruin a live
situation... looking at the worst scenario.
given that pc architecture has not evolved to this level....your choice of hardware is critical for live performance......and i dont know what i can tell you other than proceed with caution. generic made a number of good points.
if your heart is set on duals....then i would test (before buying).....
dual xeons, opterons and amd 64's if you are able to......icluding testing out the complete sound system and audio software you intend to use.
even then....your not assured that a problem wont develope.
this is a difficult issue...and i dont see an optimum solution that can guarantee
100 per cent up time.....even if you spend lots of money.
as a budget solution.....i know people running giga on amd sempron processors which are cheap. its not ideal....but maybe consider two amd sempron systems
so you have back up in case one fails.???
i see no ideal solution.

[Martin Hughes]

Originally Posted by elder rookie

and whatever you end up doing make sure you have a really sturdy road case for it (but i'm sure you already thought of that)

I'm ahead of you on that one

Thanks for the post genericman

Originally Posted by genericperson

Gigastudio does NOT play well with other toys

That I did not know. Thanks for the early warning! How about Kontakt (it would be a pain to translate all the samples but as I already have that it would save buying another soft- or hardware sampler.

Originally Posted by genericperson

You want redundancies in a live situation

I will be using 2 keyboards - the upper a stage piano so worst case I can go to that. It's not club work - it's musical theatre (well, panto... so musical theatre with screaming kids shouting "he's behind you!" at every opportunity!), so we could get by with the whole show on a piano/strings patch worst case.

I'm not in the position to be able to afford 2 computers - even small format ones - at the moment. The ideal (multiple computers) will be realised after I've been paid for a few more gigs...

Originally Posted by genericperson

the soundcard must get along with the mainboards chipset

Does that also apply to FW interfaces?

Originally Posted by genericperson

also, when you try to buy at the absolute top of the speed range, the price spikes way high. don't freak out thinking you need the ultimate latest processor

I've seen the price go up vs GHz exponentially...! I was looking at the PIV 3.2GHz. No convlution reverbs here - just maybe a touch of waves reverb and some light compression :-)

No I'm not going to aim for 255 voices simultaneously. As this is "theatre", the show is pretty set (all the main numbers certainly are) in rehearsals, so I will probably mixdown all the "sequences" to stereo and play them back (through the sampler or using an audio sequencer setup I haven't quite figured out yet! :-D ). I'm planning on using either V-Stack + ShowControlPro or Brainspawn Forte Ensemble - again I'm trying to find out more about these before I decide (separate thread)

Thanks again for the posts. It has all been taken on board, although unfortunately I cannot go down the multiple PC route at the moment (for this gig anyway) - as much as I would love to. However, I'm working on a big tour and the producer would like to go down the computer route for that, so that will be a big system (it's amazing, they've been using 80's synths since 1989 and now want to go to PCs.... I'm very much of the opinion that is overspecified and have reccommended K2661s!!).

I guess that piano/strings patch will have to be only a button press away!!

M

[Martin Hughes]

Hi Manning, thanks for the points mentioned.

Originally Posted by manning1

if your heart is set on duals....then i would test

I'm not set on duals, just interested if they were considerable more stable / faster / whatever for the associated price increase of a dual motherboard/chipset (and the 2 processors)

Originally Posted by manning1

i dont see an optimum solution that can guarantee
100 per cent up time

Fair point, although as horribly unprofessional as this sounds (forgive me) - small scale panto is not "mission critical" and mentioned in my post above (sent as you were posting :-) ) you could theoretically get by with piano/strings. Let's face it, this isn't Les Mis or Phantom of the Opera (although tunes from them feature quite heavily ;-) )

I will also have a MiniDisc backup of EVERYTHING (including stings and entrance/exit music etc) in the orchestra pit and the sound guy will have the same so the numbers could be played from one of those in worst case...

Originally Posted by manning1

i know people running giga on amd sempron processors which are cheap. its not ideal....but maybe consider two amd sempron systems
so you have back up in case one fails

I'm inherently distrustful of Sempron and Celeron processors for ANY audio work.

The ideal solution for me would be a Kurzweil K2600 on the bottom, a 2661 on top, each connected to a K2600 rack. All maxed out :-D Money forbids though...

M

[manning1]

martin....
re....your comment....."I'm inherently distrustful of Sempron and Celeron processors for ANY audio work".....
celerons i would agree with ....although that might change .....but i STRONGLY disagree about the sempron.
the sempron imho is most underestimated.
you were talking earlier about a dual processor....a sempron system i recently tested blew away a dual core processor in some detailed dsp testing i did ....
maybe if you tried a sempron already it was in a pc incorrectly configured.

a sempron with good fast hard drives with large 8mb caches in a properly configured pc is a force to be reckoned with....and will put many more expensive systems to shame imho.
peace.

[genericperson]

a ha... music theater.

ok. you talked about sequencing some things. is it necessary to sequence it? you could burn it to cd and then trigger it off of a professional dj market cd player like the ones numark make. you can cue the cd in the headphones and then have it start instantly with a push of a button. djs live and die by instant starts, and they don't want a club full of angry dancers if they mess it up. i've done some dj'ing work and found the instant cue/start stuff to work quite well. it might appear artistic to have the stuff coming out of the computer. but if there is no practical performance reason for it, just be honest with yourself and cue it off of a dj market cd player. if your not timing lighting automation to midi timing, i can't see why the cd player won't work for this aspect of your presentation.


also, two mid-grade pc purchases can be quite comparable in price to one big pc purchase.

[Martin Hughes]

I have only tried a Sempron system once, and found it to be totally lacking power. Shouldn't rush to judgement maybe... :-) I really can't stand Celerons though (typing on one now :-D )

Originally Posted by genericperson

a ha... music theater.

Don't say that with such pity :-P

Originally Posted by genericperson

ok. you talked about sequencing some things. is it necessary to sequence it?

See previous post - some tracks will be triggered as samples.

I am keeping it all within the computer and on a sampler (rather than a CD player) because I need to "multitrack" the songs - using click track as well (and it is necessary for the playback track to be in stereo so I can't use mono playback).

Instead of using samples, I might just load the playback and click tracks into something like Cool Edit Pro (or Adobe Audition - whatever the name changed to recently) and play them back using that.

Would you forsee any problems running a VST host with soft synths and something like CEP together? I suppose I could at a push bring my old PIII 500 back from the grave for track playback, but I would rather keep the setup as small as possible...

M

[manning1]

martin....
if you get a chance sometime try a PROPERLY configged sempron pc
i suspect the one you tried was probably configged with low memory and or wimpy hard drives with small 2mb caches.......or maybe an early sempron release.
try a sempron (eg..3100) with 1 gig of hi quality fast memory....and NOT wimpy hard drives....the drives make a lot of difference.

[Martin Hughes]

Originally Posted by manning1

if you get a chance sometime try a PROPERLY configged sempron pc

I will. They might have some in the local stores here. Will have a mosey on down there this afternoon!