Reply-to: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx>
At 01:14 PM 2008-08-17, Malcolm Smith wrote:
It's worth getting a fast computer or a great deal of time will be
spent waiting for processing to take place. If you're handling a lot
of material, this can add up.
Hi, Malcom,
I've more-or-less standardized on 3 GHz P4 computers around here --
and Dell Optiplexes are showing up on the used market in this class
for decent money.
What it seems -- at least with Samplitude and Algorithmix -- is that
raw processor speed is the most important criteria, followed by good
I/O capability.
I was really surprised (but shouldn't have been) when I upgraded the
RAM from 1 GB to 2 GB on my audio machine (a 3 GHz P4 with
hyperthreading) that the additional RAM didn't seem to be used or to help.
I haven't looked a lot into whether the two threads are used (which
in Core Duo processors would be the separate cores) but I'm not sure
that a 2 GHz Core Duo processor is a good trade-off against a 3 GHz
straight P4. While in certain, well-tuned graphics applications and
gaming, I hear of astonishing increases with dual-core and quad-core
processors, but, so far, I haven't seen the potential for that in
either slide scanning (the 3.2 GHz P4 was running 1/2 of its
hyperthreading full out and the other half was sitting there. I
turned off hyperthreading for the Nikon Scan software) or for audio
with Samplitude, though Samplitude is multi-core ready.
So, I'm really asking...what are people seeing in multi-core
processors for audio vs single-core?
The FSB speed may be as much of a factor as the processor speed.
I'd be curious what you and others have found. For audio, the
complexity of the processing directly affects the rendering
(bouncing) and the MP3 coding speed. Setting the MP3 coding to
highest quality really slows things down. With the 3 GHz processor,
my typical oral history cleaning pass gets done in about 3-6 minutes
for an hour piece. MP3s take longer, though those can be batched overnight.
Cheers,
Richard
Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.