I feel like a consummate loooooser as I seem to be the only one around here that can't get my dam PC to run recording s/ware.
I've got a nice PC, exremely well equipped with amazing specs. It's sole use is for recording/audio (I use another puter for internet and such), has XP (not Vista), and has been extensively optimized for audio. It has no extra programs on it, has been connected to the internet only long enough to d/l updates and .NET, and I've been all through the task manager and systems monitors to make sure nothing extra is running.
I've spent a ludicrous amount of time trying to get it to work, and have come to the conclusion that for ME, computers and recording just don't go together.
If I had a new system, or got one I knew would work (or already does), or didn't mind blowing all my money buying new systems, new parts, etc etc etc, I'd keep at it. But for me it's oil and water. :evil:
What is it that doesn't work? From what you describe your system should would for you. If it isn't I bet you're REALLY close to having it running like a dream. If there are any specific problems you have, I'd be happy to help get them resolved.
Almost every Win problem user I have talked to have had so much crap added from Internet, freebie programs, and just plaint garbage. Then they restore, and restore and the registry is so bogged up and a mess. What do they do? they get a reg cleaner that is freeware. ok.
Next thing is they leave things running and have all sorts of garbage. I've looked at startup toolbar seeing as many as 20 or more hanging out, just hogging up the system. Then they say, It used to boot so fast!! Now it takes 2-3 minutes to just come on.
I've seen MAC's and PC's cluttered. Some are better at some things, some have specific failures. Fact is, most relative WIN problems are user related downloads and back running garbage.
Most people in all fairness just don't know. Or they have their kids get on ebaums world and click everything in sight. Dad comes home fires up Sonar and goes ballistic!
IF you dedicate a PC to only the DAW application it runs fast, stable and can perform as well as anything out there.
you can pay up to $2500 for a Mac or Buy 2 pc's. One for all your BS, and one for recording. The better served recording pc can have Core 2 duo, 4gb ram, 500gb hdd, and still have money left over for any external Firewire recording interface.
For Instance- typical Dell...
Buy a Vostro with Mon for $600
Buy a custom PC for recording under $1000 w 22\" monitor
That leaves $900 for software, firewire interface etc.
You can also buy barebones kits from Compusa etc. Less than $300 for a decent mo board. PSU, add the other hardware, OS, and your are set.
In another post I suggested Comp Shows. Friend of mine bought a PC to dedicate to AUDIO DAW for $75 with loads of features. As core 2 duo and Quad core have become a new standard, pc's at tradeshows like these are going for less than $100 as businesses and gamers etc unload their PC's for the better stuff. Most of these PC's are perfect for audio!!
Exactly my (considerable) experience fixing home computers. It's a lot easier when you look after a few UNIX servers
Call Liz Hurley, she could probably get it working.
I'm sure. She gets ME working, even when she doesn't return my phone calls.
Annnyway...I recently gave up on the PC. It wouldn't boot, I got a new HD for it, that wasn't it. I ordered a whole new m/board for it, assuming that either the BIOS chip or the controller chip had been blasted, probably by static from my socks. That wasn't it.
I redid the BIOS layout, I tried to reinstall XP, you name it. I'm just sick of diddling a computer that I didn't use for anything but audio, and it didn't even do that well. It tested my patience and my patience failed.
So I'm sick of buying parts for it. I'm parting it out. Look on ebay under 'shredd'.
one thing to remember is if that little coin battery on the mb dies, your system will puke hard. can be a major pita to diagnose too. i have gotten to where i replace them once a year in all the comps in the house.
just one more thing to check
one thing to remember is if that little coin battery on the mb dies, your system will puke hard. can be a major pita to diagnose too. i have gotten to where i replace them once a year in all the comps in the house.
just one more thing to check
Yup, checked that too.
I dunno why this puter has me strung up...I've built and modded many PCs, usually with success. But this one's got my number, and I don't have the time or patience to jerk the thing off for hours at a time to try to get it to work. After all, I DO have my trusty Tascam, and I can use my macbook for XEdit. So that PC serves ONE purpose - to record - and it won't do it. So I'm over it. :?
Liz - she ran off and married that billionaire middle eastern guat. When she coulda had ME??? Go figure. :roll:
That was my thought. You already bought the most expensive parts, finish it off.
Didn't multi-meter it, but the P/S seems fine. I removed all the cards in slots and used onboard stuff (sound and vid).
I'm sure it's just one thing...but after replacing the hard drive, the motherboard, using a different monitor, booting off my XP CD, yada...I'm just OVER it. At this point I'm resigning myself to this puter being mysteriously fouled and even with my experience w/PC's, I can't find the problem and aren't willing to put more $ into parts until I've built myself a whole new puter, at twice the cost of the original, and never know which component was the problem. :evil: If I even bother replacing it, it'll be with something new/er and more reliable :roll: .
Honestly, I regard a PC as I would a car in the 1920's: a strange machine, hard to understand, unreliable, and you wouldn't dare go more than a few miles from home without the capacity to do any repair in the field. Unlike cars now, where you stick the key in and change the oil once in a while. When puters are like that, I'll consider s/ware recording again. For now, it's GarageBand, my Tascam, and my GNX. :?
Someone mentioned needing to clean out the registry, etc. and that's very true for Windows. To put this in perspective, I've got a mac that is running a copy of OS X that has been upgraded from beta to 10.4.11 with no reinstalls of the OS or cleaning out of files etc. That's nearly ten years of stable operations with no manual intervention at all.
I am a software architect for a living, and have worked with Windows and various *NIXes for twenty years. The reason you have to deal with a bunch of nonsense in Windows is because the core underlying architecture of the OS is garbage. They had a chance to do something decent with NT, but instead of going the OS/2 route (a great OS), they decided to make Win32 which was an extension of Win16 (the windows 1/2/3/95 APIs) which were designed for simple, slow home computers and not well thought out to begin with.
UNIX on the other hand was designed for complex multiuser systems from the ground up. Now desktops are complex multiuser systems and it just works better as a result (MacOS X is a form of UNIX).
TOTally my point. PCs are a fancy face built on a feeble platform. I've had my mac for two years now and haven't even had to defrag it, let alone format/reinstall, or any of that other WIN garbage. Not one virus, no crashes, blue screens, yada.
Meanwhile, my hot-rod XP pc was a constant chore - HD maintanence, constant OS tweaks and patches, virus updates every week, yada...not to mention the fact that I couldn't get it to run recording s/ware for squat.
The problem I had lately I think was more h/ware related; I couldn't even boot to POST. Replaced the HD and M/B, changed from vid card to internal video, took out all extraneous everything...and this on a sys that was already optimized for audio. I just got sick of futzin' with it, so I parted it out.
Try playing Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, Half Life 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, F.E.A.R, Need for Speed Cobalt, Flat Out 2 or ANY of my other favorite games on a Mac.....Oh that's right....YOU CAN'T!
Actually, I play CoD4 and lots of other great games on my 47\" HDTV with my PS3...
I played games for a long time on PCs and the bang for buck equation is lacking when you consider a PS3 has about 10X the processor power of a modern dual core PC and costs $399.
This (kinda) makes my point - some machines are better at some things than others.
For gaming - if a PC is built specifically for it, it'd do fine. But maybe STILL not as good as a PS3, which is designed specifically for gaming.
IMHO, PC's are just not good at recording and processing audio. Even when they are built just for that, I'd bet that audio-specific hardware is still better, if not as cheap...
Actually, I play CoD4 and lots of other great games on my 47\" HDTV with my PS3...
I played games for a long time on PCs and the bang for buck equation is lacking when you consider a PS3 has about 10X the processor power of a modern dual core PC and costs $399.
- Josh
Well, goody goody gum drop for you...I was making fun of the puny little Mac...beyond that your \"10 x the processor\" assumption is just silly...(and, will you be upgrading the components in you PS3 in a year or two?)
Product name: PLAYSTATION 3
CPU: Cell Processor
* PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
* 1 VMX vector unit per core
* 512KB L2 cache
* 7 x SPE @3.2GHz
* 7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
* 7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* * 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy total floating point
Console games are rubbish. Nothing beats a PC in terms of gaming power. Pc's have far better gamplay, a better interface and better physics. I play BF2.
First guy - Wow, I've really gotten tired of tinkering around with this 65 Mustang, old Fords are crap. I think I'll get a new 350Z instead.
Second guy - Yeah, well you can't haul a load a lumber in your 350Z. My old Ford pickup will kick its butt anytime.
First guy - Oh yeah, well the 350Z is just better for hauling around me and my best guitar, or better yet, me and a broad.
Second guy - But when you wanna haul the entire softball team and a tow a party boat out to the lake, my old F350 will kick your 350Z to hell and back.
And on and on.
Seriously, this is what you guys sound like. Shredd ain't gonna use a PC for recording. He likes his Mac. The rest of you love PCs and their gaming prowess. So what. My son and I just built a kick butt Quad Core gaming machine. Guess what, he still can't run Logic, and I still can't run Sonar on my Mac. Oh yeah, actually I could if I upgraded to Leopard, partitioned the hard dive and installed VISTA or XP. Geez, I might even be able to run some of those games that \"you can't run on a Mac.\"
This (kinda) makes my point - some machines are better at some things than others.
For gaming - if a PC is built specifically for it, it'd do fine. But maybe STILL not as good as a PS3, which is designed specifically for gaming.
IMHO, PC's are just not good at recording and processing audio. Even when they are built just for that, I'd bet that audio-specific hardware is still better, if not as cheap...
Shredd, I've been doing digital audio on the PC for more than 10years now with no problems whatever. My first studio had 4 towers because the max available power was PIII @ 1GHz. I had my sequencer on one tower, 'GigaStudio' on another and the other two shared the soft-synths, etc.
Today I have a water cooled dual-core system that handles everything. It boots and shuts down in a heartbeat because there is no crap on it.
What 'audio-specific' hardware are you referring to, BTW? I think you'll find that there is a standard PC in there somewhere. Check these examples...
By \"audio-specific h/w\", I meant actual audio eqpt: mixers, audio processors, multi-track recorders or DAWs.
I had a P4 3GHz HT 1MB CPU running on a 800FSB m/board, with 1G of good, matched RAM. I had a SATA/150MB/sec HDD w8MB buffer, running on a high-speed SATA controller (and had even added a 2nd HD for music files), and ran XP SP2. I had the OS totally stripped down of excess programs and processes, and optimized for audio as per the many websites dedicated to this idea. No networking, no internet, nothing to interfere or obstruct the audio usage.
Yet when I'd try to record, I couldn't playback more than one track at a time. Even recording one track at time, it wouldn't record cleanly - breakup, static, dropouts. Plus, the audio engine would repeatedly stop.
I tweaked both the system and the programs' (PTP) settings, with no improvement. I was also never able to activate the hands-free capacity, even though it was installed and enabled.
I spent countless hours diddling the puter and it's settings, along with those of the program. I just fed up, and was wasting a TON of time I could've been playing (\"learning how to\", that is ).
I just decided that, while many of the guys here do very well with their puters, usually running Sonar or an equally good prgm, that PTP is a crappy program. I was't convinced my \"hot-rod\" system would run anything else better, so I sort of gave up on the puter as a realiable option for recording. I now record on a Tascam 2488 and a Fostex MR-8MkII (and, of course, the GNX's OBR). The main drawback, of course, is that it can be a chore to tweak a track after it's recorded, which is very easy in the various recording prgms. But for reliable, works-every-time reliability, it's worth the trade off for me.
I still play with GarageBand on my mac, and I also have had a generous forum member donate better recording software to me, which I have installed and plan to fool around with.
But as far as I'm concerned, computer recording is strctly for s***s & giggles, and not to be taken seriously. That's how I'll feel about it, until I can get something to work at least well enough to record and play back multiple tracks and process cleanly. Or I can lay my hands on a PC that really does work with recording s/ware.
Or have one of you guys come over and get my crap working.
Admittedly I haven't looked hard at your history with this thing but I have looked somewhat and the thing I haven't seen you mention is what driver you are/were using and what you did with the latency settings...that's pretty much all you need to address on a clean Windows XP system. Nothing at all wrong with PTP. I only stopped using it because I am a long time user of Sonar.
If you still suspect PTP, then download the free trial version of Reaper. Reaper recognizes the GNX4 ASIO driver right away and this software has to be the easiest to use recording software on the market.
I am sure that you simply have a driver/latency-setting issue. Heck, I am amazed at my business laptop, which is only 1.5Ghz Pentium M, because I really don't take too much care about what goes on it although it's well protected in terms of scanners. It's also my portable studio when I travel and I only have pops and crackles if I forget to disable the Skype (VOIP) program. Otherwise I can multi-track record, use softsynths, Guitar Rig, Amplitube etc., etc. until I'm blue in the face.
You're a most fortunate individual. I've had no such luck with mine.
I tried both WDM and ASIO drivers, with the same results. I also diddled the latency settings endlessly, again with no improvement.
I just decided that either that computer, or PTP, or both, suuuuuck. I've d/l'd Reaper, and Audacity, and I also have a coupla other ones to try, and once I work up the desire, I'll give 'em a try. Right now I'm quite happy with my Tascam, and i have a coupla songs in the can. Maybe when I've got nothing else to do, I'll start playing with these programs. That, of course, depends on finding spare time from pining for women to spend on recording.
Comments
I've got a nice PC, exremely well equipped with amazing specs. It's sole use is for recording/audio (I use another puter for internet and such), has XP (not Vista), and has been extensively optimized for audio. It has no extra programs on it, has been connected to the internet only long enough to d/l updates and .NET, and I've been all through the task manager and systems monitors to make sure nothing extra is running.
I've spent a ludicrous amount of time trying to get it to work, and have come to the conclusion that for ME, computers and recording just don't go together.
If I had a new system, or got one I knew would work (or already does), or didn't mind blowing all my money buying new systems, new parts, etc etc etc, I'd keep at it. But for me it's oil and water. :evil:
What is it that doesn't work? From what you describe your system should would for you. If it isn't I bet you're REALLY close to having it running like a dream. If there are any specific problems you have, I'd be happy to help get them resolved.
Exactly my (considerable) experience fixing home computers. It's a lot easier when you look after a few UNIX servers
Call Liz Hurley, she could probably get it working.
Annnyway...I recently gave up on the PC. It wouldn't boot, I got a new HD for it, that wasn't it. I ordered a whole new m/board for it, assuming that either the BIOS chip or the controller chip had been blasted, probably by static from my socks. That wasn't it.
I redid the BIOS layout, I tried to reinstall XP, you name it. I'm just sick of diddling a computer that I didn't use for anything but audio, and it didn't even do that well. It tested my patience and my patience failed.
So I'm sick of buying parts for it. I'm parting it out. Look on ebay under 'shredd'.
My guess was she'd go out with him, but then he'd end up crying when he saw the sun set :twisted:
just one more thing to check
I dunno why this puter has me strung up...I've built and modded many PCs, usually with success. But this one's got my number, and I don't have the time or patience to jerk the thing off for hours at a time to try to get it to work. After all, I DO have my trusty Tascam, and I can use my macbook for XEdit. So that PC serves ONE purpose - to record - and it won't do it. So I'm over it. :?
Liz - she ran off and married that billionaire middle eastern guat. When she coulda had ME??? Go figure. :roll:
I'm sure it's just one thing...but after replacing the hard drive, the motherboard, using a different monitor, booting off my XP CD, yada...I'm just OVER it. At this point I'm resigning myself to this puter being mysteriously fouled and even with my experience w/PC's, I can't find the problem and aren't willing to put more $ into parts until I've built myself a whole new puter, at twice the cost of the original, and never know which component was the problem. :evil: If I even bother replacing it, it'll be with something new/er and more reliable :roll: .
Honestly, I regard a PC as I would a car in the 1920's: a strange machine, hard to understand, unreliable, and you wouldn't dare go more than a few miles from home without the capacity to do any repair in the field. Unlike cars now, where you stick the key in and change the oil once in a while. When puters are like that, I'll consider s/ware recording again. For now, it's GarageBand, my Tascam, and my GNX. :?
I am a software architect for a living, and have worked with Windows and various *NIXes for twenty years. The reason you have to deal with a bunch of nonsense in Windows is because the core underlying architecture of the OS is garbage. They had a chance to do something decent with NT, but instead of going the OS/2 route (a great OS), they decided to make Win32 which was an extension of Win16 (the windows 1/2/3/95 APIs) which were designed for simple, slow home computers and not well thought out to begin with.
UNIX on the other hand was designed for complex multiuser systems from the ground up. Now desktops are complex multiuser systems and it just works better as a result (MacOS X is a form of UNIX).
- Josh
Meanwhile, my hot-rod XP pc was a constant chore - HD maintanence, constant OS tweaks and patches, virus updates every week, yada...not to mention the fact that I couldn't get it to run recording s/ware for squat.
The problem I had lately I think was more h/ware related; I couldn't even boot to POST. Replaced the HD and M/B, changed from vid card to internal video, took out all extraneous everything...and this on a sys that was already optimized for audio. I just got sick of futzin' with it, so I parted it out.
I played games for a long time on PCs and the bang for buck equation is lacking when you consider a PS3 has about 10X the processor power of a modern dual core PC and costs $399.
- Josh
For gaming - if a PC is built specifically for it, it'd do fine. But maybe STILL not as good as a PS3, which is designed specifically for gaming.
IMHO, PC's are just not good at recording and processing audio. Even when they are built just for that, I'd bet that audio-specific hardware is still better, if not as cheap...
Well, goody goody gum drop for you...I was making fun of the puny little Mac...beyond that your \"10 x the processor\" assumption is just silly...(and, will you be upgrading the components in you PS3 in a year or two?)
Product name: PLAYSTATION 3
CPU: Cell Processor
* PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
* 1 VMX vector unit per core
* 512KB L2 cache
* 7 x SPE @3.2GHz
* 7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
* 7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* * 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy total floating point
BTW: I'm a BF2 junkie myself.
Second guy - Yeah, well you can't haul a load a lumber in your 350Z. My old Ford pickup will kick its butt anytime.
First guy - Oh yeah, well the 350Z is just better for hauling around me and my best guitar, or better yet, me and a broad.
Second guy - But when you wanna haul the entire softball team and a tow a party boat out to the lake, my old F350 will kick your 350Z to hell and back.
And on and on.
Seriously, this is what you guys sound like. Shredd ain't gonna use a PC for recording. He likes his Mac. The rest of you love PCs and their gaming prowess. So what. My son and I just built a kick butt Quad Core gaming machine. Guess what, he still can't run Logic, and I still can't run Sonar on my Mac. Oh yeah, actually I could if I upgraded to Leopard, partitioned the hard dive and installed VISTA or XP. Geez, I might even be able to run some of those games that \"you can't run on a Mac.\"
This is like the LP vs Strat debate :?
Les Paul's are too heavy...
'Course, if I had 5 or 10 grand layin' around, I'd have a vintage ES355 again...
Coooool. 8) Whats your player ID?
Shredd, I've been doing digital audio on the PC for more than 10years now with no problems whatever. My first studio had 4 towers because the max available power was PIII @ 1GHz. I had my sequencer on one tower, 'GigaStudio' on another and the other two shared the soft-synths, etc.
Today I have a water cooled dual-core system that handles everything. It boots and shuts down in a heartbeat because there is no crap on it.
What 'audio-specific' hardware are you referring to, BTW? I think you'll find that there is a standard PC in there somewhere. Check these examples...
http://www.adkproaudio.com/clients.cfm
I had a P4 3GHz HT 1MB CPU running on a 800FSB m/board, with 1G of good, matched RAM. I had a SATA/150MB/sec HDD w8MB buffer, running on a high-speed SATA controller (and had even added a 2nd HD for music files), and ran XP SP2. I had the OS totally stripped down of excess programs and processes, and optimized for audio as per the many websites dedicated to this idea. No networking, no internet, nothing to interfere or obstruct the audio usage.
Yet when I'd try to record, I couldn't playback more than one track at a time. Even recording one track at time, it wouldn't record cleanly - breakup, static, dropouts. Plus, the audio engine would repeatedly stop.
I tweaked both the system and the programs' (PTP) settings, with no improvement. I was also never able to activate the hands-free capacity, even though it was installed and enabled.
I spent countless hours diddling the puter and it's settings, along with those of the program. I just fed up, and was wasting a TON of time I could've been playing (\"learning how to\", that is
I just decided that, while many of the guys here do very well with their puters, usually running Sonar or an equally good prgm, that PTP is a crappy program. I was't convinced my \"hot-rod\" system would run anything else better, so I sort of gave up on the puter as a realiable option for recording. I now record on a Tascam 2488 and a Fostex MR-8MkII (and, of course, the GNX's OBR). The main drawback, of course, is that it can be a chore to tweak a track after it's recorded, which is very easy in the various recording prgms. But for reliable, works-every-time reliability, it's worth the trade off for me.
I still play with GarageBand on my mac, and I also have had a generous forum member donate better recording software to me, which I have installed and plan to fool around with.
But as far as I'm concerned, computer recording is strctly for s***s & giggles, and not to be taken seriously. That's how I'll feel about it, until I can get something to work at least well enough to record and play back multiple tracks and process cleanly. Or I can lay my hands on a PC that really does work with recording s/ware.
Or have one of you guys come over and get my crap working.
If you still suspect PTP, then download the free trial version of Reaper. Reaper recognizes the GNX4 ASIO driver right away and this software has to be the easiest to use recording software on the market.
I am sure that you simply have a driver/latency-setting issue. Heck, I am amazed at my business laptop, which is only 1.5Ghz Pentium M, because I really don't take too much care about what goes on it although it's well protected in terms of scanners. It's also my portable studio when I travel and I only have pops and crackles if I forget to disable the Skype (VOIP) program. Otherwise I can multi-track record, use softsynths, Guitar Rig, Amplitube etc., etc. until I'm blue in the face.
Cheers!
Mickster
I tried both WDM and ASIO drivers, with the same results. I also diddled the latency settings endlessly, again with no improvement.
I just decided that either that computer, or PTP, or both, suuuuuck. I've d/l'd Reaper, and Audacity, and I also have a coupla other ones to try, and once I work up the desire, I'll give 'em a try. Right now I'm quite happy with my Tascam, and i have a coupla songs in the can. Maybe when I've got nothing else to do, I'll start playing with these programs. That, of course, depends on finding spare time from pining for women to spend on recording.