Which processor for digital audio recording computer?

[crimson117]

Hey folks, I'm trying to build a shuttle pc (or clone sff) digital audio recording station. Which processor will be the best performer for this? I've heard Pentiums do the best audio encoding, but I'm most interested in how each processor handles the raw uncompressed wavs being written to the hard drive while recording. (rather than how many seconds I'll save when encoding to MP3 or FLAC).

Any recommendations?

 

[Dman877]

A pentium 100 can record a wav from a realtime source just fine. The information that is written to your hard disk is the same whether you use intel or amd or G5 or whatever. A .wav recording is cd quality (provided the settings on the recorder are adjusted correctly) so you can't really make any quality comparison to differentiate cpu's. Please correct me if I'm wrong though.

 

[Kalmah]

My system is an audio recording rig also. I think you should be more concerned with the speed of your hard drive and your soundcard you're using. A fast processor isn't absolutly necessary. It does help for editing the audio.. speeds up the process a bit. Before I got this computer audio recording was just fine on my 1.4 ghz p4.

 

[joe2004]

For editing Intel P4 still rules.

 

[joe2004]

For editing Intel P4 still rules.

 

[crimson117]

Originally posted by: Kalmah
My system is an audio recording rig also. I think you should be more concerned with the speed of your hard drive and your soundcard you're using. A fast processor isn't absolutly necessary. It does help for editing the audio.. speeds up the process a bit. Before I got this computer audio recording was just fine on my 1.4 ghz p4.

Excellent, thanks for the tip. I'll grab a pentium and OC it, for the editing boost. Can you describe your setup Kalmah? I'm thinking of going with the m-Audio Delta 66.

 

[Kalmah]

Sure.

I'm not recording digitally though. Only analog right now.

I'm currently using:

p4 3.0 ghz, 800 mhz fsp
1 gig dual ddr pc3200 ram

I have 2 soundcards in my computer. The one I use for recording is an
Echo Darla (http://www.echo-audio.com) The model I have was discontinued but it works very nice. Echo makes excellent soundcard. It has 2 1/4" input jacks and 6 1/4" output jacks. (for different monitoring capabilities)
The second soundcard is a Soundblaster Audigy 2. I primarily use that for gaming.

I use to have a MOTU 1248 soundcard.. That thing was a freakin MONSTER! Stupid me when I first started pc audio recording didn't know what I was doing so I took it back. It has 10 gold plated 1/4" input jacks.. well all kinds of crap. hehe.

I mostly record guitar and keyboard. I have a Line 6 Pod Pro plugged into a mackie mixer, which is plugged directly to my soundcard. For the keyboard, I have the keyboard plugged into a Roland JV-1010 midi synth, which is plugged into a midisport midiman (midi->usb converter box).. which is plugged into my pc via usb.


I've heard alot of good things about the Delta 66. I've never used one though.
My Echo soundcard doesn't have digital inputs, just analog. Their better soundcards have digital functionality though.
I would suggest checking out the Echo Layla also (I think that's the one) It appears to be an excellent soundcard.

My hard drive is just a standard Western Digital, 8 mb catch, 7200 rpm hard drive. It works fine. I've never recorded from more than 1 source before with it though. But I'm guessing it will hold up on more than 1 source at a time.
I don't hear people talking much about using a RAID setup for recording. But that might be something worth looking into if you're going to be recording multiple things at the same time. Just a guess.

My old pc, which I used for recording for about 2 or 3 years was a p4 1.4 ghz. It had 500 mb of ram. Only a 4 mb catch 7200 rpm hard drive and it ran fine. I never had any problems with audio recording or playing out of sync or anything.

Well, I hope this helps. Just make sure you stay away from soundblaster soundcards. I've read that they 'cheat'. Most say they record in 24 bit, but I've read that they actually record in 16 bit then upsample the audio. I can't confirm if it's true or not though.

Good luck.