PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

"I suspect when I do move from Xp32 completely it's going to be to Win7 instead of Vista"

I'm right there with ya! Skip Vista all together....straight to Win7 64...by then...hopefully there will be a larger number of hardware & software vendors that will have their act together, with regards to a 64 bit OS & drivers...well played.....well stated!


Joel

Honestly I see myself as a small percentage of guys who actually need all of these instruments loaded in a single template for live performance.
If I was just recording and doing mockups this would seem like an incredible waste.

IMHO it boils down to guys who just want their apps to do whatever they want w/o thinking about purging unused articulations or using hardware re routed to avoid those CPU killing native effects, etc.
The more convenience ( laziness ) that people demand from developers the more power requirements will be needed.

With all of the insane power available I think it's time for new types of synthesis, effects and mixing.
I already have mixers from SpaceF and DAS that go beyond what hardware can do.
Whoever thought I could send a Program change and disable or enable dozens of effects on mixer channels. Or have insane amounts of automation through MIDI.
Many say MIDI is dead..........well they haven't seen a SpaceF mixer perform live.
One of my local bro's has been out on tour for a year and a half and is finally coming home, and the first thing he said is when can I see these mixers....
He uses consoles none of us can ever afford to use and yes he still has a Lexicon 480L on his manifest. But he gets all excited when I tell him I am mixing IEM's live while I double on FOH chores from a keyboard..He has an assistant, a runner, and even the Monitor man has his own IEM frequency handler !!!!
He contributes to Mix magazine and has for years, so I hope I can impress him.
These types of advancement haven't needed Octo cores or even an XITE-1.
I can't wait to see what developers can do when they lose their handcuffs from current DSP conservatism.

Jimmy of course I would trust that you know what you're doing well enough to know why you're doing it. There's nothing at all wrong with being 'bleeding edge' or an 'early adopter' if you know what you're doing, but as I don't earn income from selling any of the gear I avoid recommending upgrading to the latest & greatest just for the sake of it.

I do think that the general computing world affects the music industry much much more in that regard, as the other side effects of sharing similar production & design practices. Case in point is the popularity if mostly disposable inexpensive 'accessories' for the modern computing musician to blow a few bucks on.

When it comes to more demanding computing I think that it's safer for someone who actually needs to get work done to know (for example) what boards & hardware combinations are stable for our beloved DSP cards. Ie, it's more about building a machine to suit the particular task(s) that it's going to be used for.

To keep with the other thread in this topic's discussion, SSD's currently make ideal drives for disposable $300 'netbook' PCs that are proving to be incredibly popular with mainstream users, and a decent drive for someone that wants 'fast gaming and internet'. Yet for music tasks there are some things they will excel at and other things they're still unsuited. We've of course hashed most of that out now between this thread & the off-topic forum one, but the updates keep with the progression of the technology (and hopefully in this context how that applies to us.) X-25's seem to have crossed another hurdle and now cost/GB seems the largest barrier there, with OCZ's attempts eating away at that a bit more. When TRIM hits with Win7, a die shrink brings down costs through improved yields (as well as power & thermal improvements) I think things will be looking more attractive still.

In your case I could quite easily see you going for a 4-way OCZ Vertex array for your romplers connected to a Vista-64bit machine running 12GB of ram on an i7 today, and I'm sure that you'd have someone assemble it who was capable of ironing out the kinks. But I see little reason for the average home musician to do the same thing just because a few people tout the 'incredible power' of such a system. I've known so many people over the years with thousands of dollars of 'classic' hardware synths connected to a single inexpensive budget mixer creating lackluster music. Nothing wrong with them taking enjoyment from their hobby either, but the point stands that buying all of that 'impressive' gear didn't equate to any improvement in their skills or music (that comes from the person not the hardware). In your cause you're eyeballing quite realistic performance improvements which seems far more pragmatic to me.

It's funny though, 64bit computing is mainstream enough that I have both my wife's PC and my mother's running a 64bit OS with 4GB of ram (it's more secure for them due to true DEP & UAC and does all the youtube/ipod/facebook stuff that my wife cares about now.) Yet it's ironic that the music world in many cases still lags behind my mom's computing needs...though if you're selective (and in many cases if you skip the more mainstream/prosumer corporate products) it isn't the barrier it was even a year ago.

Mom is hip.....

As usual I always appreciate your replies and posts, and since you have tons of experience I always listen.
I still thank you for bringing Bidule to my attention.
Believe it or not, I belong to a private forum where nobody was using it, but was using Soundflower, etc. Now everyone there is stemming with it.
Good apps will sell themselves, but somebody has to spread the word.
The developers are even looking into making a MIDI Clock to MTC converter, and are constantly continuing FREE development.
I had to beg them for a donate link for the latest upgrade, and then again for the 64bit Vista/XP drivers.
I am taking your advice on the CPU purchasing as well. The i7's have new stepping and will be releasing even faster models. The 32nm CPU's are already going to OEM's and by summertime the i7 945, the one I want, will be dirt cheap. From 560 down to 400 which is fine.
Watching and waiting has also shown that 3 top DAW builders are using the Gigabyte UD X58's, which are good for old Scope cards also, but limited to 2 x PCI.
Intel has just shipped out their 1,000,000th Nehalem CPU.
Less is more, except where sample playback memory is concerned.....

Sounds like you're on the path to a useful new machine this summer. Btw I'm sure your knowledge of Bidule surpasses mine by now

OCZ Officially Reveals 1TB Solid-State Drive for PCI Express Bus. ... if you don't mind spending $1500-$2000 USD (or equiv in local currency)

XITE-1/4LIVE pointed out in a pm that x-bit is misreporting the costs for the OCZ above, $1500 is the *starting* price for the 250GB model. Her'es the 1TB model at retail: http://www.frozencpu.com/products/9009/ ... DRV1T.html for $3,239.95

I realize that has an integrated RAID controller but that's definitely still out of my price-range.

I use to read those review sites relgiously and thought " It had to be right,...It's on the internet, and Google doesn't lie"......
It just depends who's writing the review.
Anand Shimpli is the best guy around. His sight has some bright upcoming talent too, but they misquote many things also. Anton probably was in a hurry, had no sleep, and probably was in the Strip Clubs where the girls see a credit card and spike your drink.
______________________________________________________________________________
Quote........." Based on preliminary estimates, OCZ 1TB Z Drive should cost $1500 - $2000. Actual pricing will be announced at a later date and will depend on the region. "
______________________________________________________________________________

The above statement is based on his preliminary report, not OCZ.

I understand these geeks never get out much, and after a visit to Las Vegas with all of the new gear at NAB, it's easy to understand the mistake.
While Anand Shimpli is testing the i7 975 and Supermicro L1366's, he will release a thorough review in due time.
You can see these guys at XbitLabs are more in a hurry to announce they have one and run a few generic tests just to be hip.

I have learned to skip over any reviews unless I see Kyle Bennets name, or Anand Shimpli.
These guys are the Apex of geeks, but Intel and many other top tier manufacturers actually seek their advice. These guys even made sure to announce that i7 motherboards were being released with many bugs, and fixed with BIOS updates after their release. After a few years I have learned to wait and read chosen reviews only. But even then, someone could sign their name and we wouldn;t even know it. So google can also be a great tool for our Government to spread disinformation too..............I don't trust anybody anymore....it's a conspirarcy...

For anyone interested though, the 250GB model is a single Vertex MLC SSD, the 1TB model is 4 x Vertex's w/ a 400 dollar RAID controller built in.
Even so, the 250GB model has 256MB's of cache, and that's where the excitement is.
But the meger 2 year warranty is the story teller here.
Fusion I/O drives have 12, 24 and 36 year warranty................
I want to know what Flash storage they are so proud of ?

When my Raptors die, or start choking on the newest Rompler, the 256MB will have to be used.
Sure it's a couple weeks pay but 2 years worth of paychecks is the upside.
No load times, no staring at your miniature LCD like the Muse Receptors....yecchhh.

anyone who buys that is really going to regret it it is just chips. and what do chips do best.
drop in price

So is the XITE-1..........

If my Raptors can't handle these new Romplers that need RAID and OctoQuad CPU's the developers should hang it up.
Kontakt seems to be going in the right direction so we shall see.
Besides I have been using the DSP modeled Grand Piano from Modartt and it sounds great.
DAS has also been messing around with instruments so who knows.

I have a feeling next year is going to be a great year for DSP.....

I certainly don't look on Anandtech, xbitlabs, hardocp or any of these sites as gospel, they're just running around trying to glob up whatever info they can to keep the ads coming. Even the crappy reviewers usually have at least a table with temps & current draw for gpu's or etc, and then I scan the conclusion. Once I get a feel for how 'reliable' these guys are, I just filter their output accordingly. I've never really seen a small site do benchmarks that correlate well with my actual workflow, in graphics or in audio work, even with the ones that are able to digest new tech & regurgitate the info in a transparent enough manner.

I used to really enjoy Ars years ago for the excellent whitepapers on his site, but while I still read arstechnica today it's not for the same information that they once had. So for the computing tech sites I tend to just read the news blurbs on the side every day or so, and scan any articles that might have any info not on a manufacturer's product page.

Neutron wrote:anyone who buys that is really going to regret it it is just chips. and what do chips do best.
drop in price

Pretty much how I feel. The MLC stuff is getting better logic attached to it, but it's still going to take a few process shrinks until this stuff reaches consumer price levels. I'll probably buy in before then but certainly not until the drives will hold up to at least my normal OS drive duties (TRIM support & all). I've no idea if SLC will ever come down as much in price (SCSI/SAS never really did) but it's just as likely that neither SLC or MLC will be the mainstream product in the long run.

As for the 1TB model here, there are people on 2 other forums using the current Vertex with sata raid controllers and getting quite passable performance. That's magnitudes cheaper and even that cost is beyond what it would repay in performance dividends for me.

For the truly bleeding edge, the NYTimes is reporting on GE's announcement of 'crossing the threshold' with the holographic storage medium they've been working on for the last several years:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/techn ... .html?_r=1

I'm guessing this is an optical storage replacement for archival & delivery (now you can get those 500GB romplers on a single install hologram!)

Confirmed optical storage format:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/di ... Discs.html

well, optical holographic storage was announced to be "almost ready for the market" years ago (aka. tesa film roll storage), so I refuse to believe until I can put my hands on it.
(no, my name is not thomas )

ps. the news just hit the heise newsticker. btw, tesa rom was developed 10 years ago, but I never heard of it again...

The heck with holographic storage for ROMplers - pretty soon we'll just be able to boot up a fully holographic real orchestra and have them play the music we give them via voice commands.

Greg

I'd pay a few bucks to watch you boot that up!

valis wrote:I'd pay a few bucks to watch you boot that up!

so would I

Greg

Computerworld.com Analysis: SSD performance -- is a slowdown inevitable?

I got this last week & I have to agree. SSDD has a viable app. I just don't think it in audio/video apps.

High NAND cost delays SSD rampup to 2010, 2011

NAND flash prices almost doubled in the first half of this year, pushing down adoption of SSDs. When will SSDs finally go mainstream, and why? Can the NAND industry supply enough chips?
-read more in the ars journal post