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| Suggestions on Hardware Issues
My general hardware suggestions are as below. These apply equally if you are building your own DAW, and also for those interested in upgrading their current system.
- Buy the best quality you can possibly afford – it’s worth it in the end.
- Power filtration, and/or a UPS is a very good idea. A mains filter to protect against noise and electrical surges will help keep your computer running, and your audio signals clean. Also protect the modem’s phone line from surges – more lightning strikes hit a computer through the telephone line than the power in locations where phone lines are above ground!
- Cases are often overlooked when buying a computer. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mean some people forget to buy one :-) but that some cases provide better airflow and power supplies than others. Make sure the case is an ATX case, has room for a fan down the bottom at the front (or front left corner, if it’s a desktop), room for an extra fan next to the power supply (for keeping the CPU cool, and to drastically improve overall airflow), and that it is made of real metal not tin-foil, and capable of providing RF-shielding to help reduce noise and hum induced in other audio components. Ensure the fan at the front is blowing IN and the PSU fan and the fan next to the CPU are EXTRACTING air from the case. This is essential for keeping the system cool. Also make sure that the power supply is a good quality one, and provides at least a true 230W or higher. Be really careful here – some power supplies are not what they say they are. Inwin and Yeong Yang power supplies, as well as a number of others, are quite good.
- There are motherboards, and devices that look and behave like motherboards, but are really lemons. I’d suggest sticking with well-known brand names (such as Abit, AOpen, ASUStek, Gigabyte and MSI) and checking on sites such as www.tomshardware.com before spending your hard earned cash. For a reliable socket-370 Intel-based system, stick with the Intel i815 chipset, or the VIA Apollo Pro-133A chipset. The VIA Apollo KT133A chipset is a good choice for AMD (Athlon, Duron and Thunderbird) systems. I strongly recommend the Intel chipsets over the VIA chipsets for Intel-based systems, and unfortunately there is not much choice for AMD-based systems other than VIA.
- All manipulations that are made on audio data are done by using floating-point maths. Therefore you need to use a CPU that has a fast clock speed, and fast floating point maths performance. It seems that the P-III and Athlon processors are the two top processors in terms of both clock speed and floating-point performance. The floating point of the P-III is significantly faster than that of a Celeron (below 566MHz) or P-II of similar clock speed. This changes slightly with the new Celeron processors, the Intel Celeron 566 and faster. These processors are using the new P-III core, and have floating-point maths performance almost identical to the P-III processors. MAKE SURE your CPU is adequately cooled – the warmer it gets, the more likely it is to add 1 and 1 and get 3.
- RAM is not an installation procedure. The more RAM your system has, the less swapping to hard drive Windows will do (this is known as "Virtual Memory" or a swap file), and the quicker, or more responsive, your system will be. 128MB is really the lower limit for RAM in a system for use as a DAW (have you heard of the term "scraping the bottom of the barrel"), and 192MB, 256MB or 384MB is not a ridiculous amount of RAM these days.
- Video cards are sensitive things – look at them the wrong way and they’ll not talk to you for days. In a DAW, there’s no real need for the "fastest and bestest" card you can get your hands on. The best card in a DAW system is the one that interferes least with all other essential components, while providing decent performance. Definitely use an AGP card (as opposed to a PCI card – if you can find one, that is). You do not need 3D performance in a DAW system, however the GeForce2 MX and G400 cards provide this function too. The GeForce2 MX is probably the best price/performance card available, and should function quite well in your DAW.
- Sound cards and DAW cards are essential in a DAW, or it’s just a DW! Most people will choose quality cards for this purpose by default. Just make sure that card(s) you choose are able to be returned, or that GOOD tech support is provided, in case of difficulties or incompatibilities with your system. There’s no way to be really sure about compatibility, other than to get one and try installing it. :-(
- Network cards – stick with brand name cards, as these are more than likely to have driver updates, and quality workmanship. D-Link, 3Com and Intel are three brands that come to mind. I like the Intel cards – low CPU usage, good drivers, a bit pricey though. D-Link make good cards, and cheap too.
- Hard drives – get the fastest and biggest hard drive you can mortgage the house for. You’ll need it. Especially if you record and work in 24-bit formats, and especially if you want to use a lot of tracks. IBM drives are generally benchmarked as fastest, with Quantum, Western Digital and Maxtor coming in pretty close. Ultra-160-SCSI drives are the way to go (for those with ca$h to burn), or else ATA/100 is the fastest EIDE format. A number of i815 motherboards are available with ATA-RAID on board. These will by far provide the best price/performance in a DAW system. Big and fast – remember this.
- CD-ROMs and CD-R drives need to be good quality drives. Your CD-ROM drive should be an UltraDMA-capable drive, or preferably a SCSI drive, and your CD-R (recordable) drive really should be SCSI. I am a bit biased here – I have been a SCSI user for the past 8 years or so, and still find it more reliable than EIDE for things like CD burners. Make sure the software you want to use to create your CDs with supports the burner. CD-R drives are also good for making backups. If you have a choice, use a DVD drive as the reader – these may be slightly slower at reading CDs than the top-speed CD-ROM drives, but the quality is generally higher.
- Backup devices. In this industry, backups are not essential – they are mandatory. Imagine if you will, a project you have slaved over for the past couple of weeks. There are 3 songs, all have 8 tracks, and the drummer has been sent away with work for 2 weeks of on-the-job training. (Yes, I know (training a drummer) – but just imagine it – ok?) You are very happy with the sounds, and ecstatic about your mix. Just as you are about to dump this off to CD to send to your friend who works at Sony, you get a "General Error reading drive C:" message. You decide to reboot and see if that fixes things. You get a quite polite "Please insert boot disk in any drive" message, and your heart falls through your feet and makes a horrible "thwack" sound on the floor. You now consider jumping out the window, but remember just in time that you’re on the ground floor anyway.
- Jaz and Zip drives are becoming quite commonplace in recording studios (at least home studios, anyway). They are a good form of backup and transfer. Most places will have a zip drive.
- Modems. Now here’s an area that causes quite a few problems. Stick with external modems where possible (they offer better protection for the rest of the computer against lightning strikes than internal modems), and under no circumstances buy one of the cheap PCI-based internal Winmodems. These modems have hardly any of the smarts on the card itself, but require the computer to do a fair bit of the work required to get the data through the modem. Their drivers are more CPU-intensive because of this, and more often than not if you leave the Winmodem out of the system after a fresh install, you’ll have no problems. I do not know of any Winmodems on the NT HCL (Hardware Compatibility List), but there may be a couple by the time you read this. Also, these modems do not work in Linux or BeOS at all, which is a "Good Thing ™". Just say "No".
- Coffee maker. This is the most essential piece of computer hardware. A coffee bean grinder is also handy if you like to grind your own coffee. Make sure you get one that makes a lot of coffee, because you’ll need it. Always use good quality coffee, and hunt around until you find a couple of varieties you like. Variety is the spice of life! Nothing beats a good Espresso – well, except for a good…
General Hints On Keeping Windows Running
There are a number of things that are worth remembering.
- Backup your data.
- Before loading another project. Save your work and reboot the computer. This applies especially for Windows 9x boxes. This will ensure RAM is as defragmented as possible, and that any software gremlins have been put back on their leashes. Do this also when you have lunch or dinner. I know that most of the time you won’t get to have a lunch break, so just pretend you’re off to lunch, and reboot anyway.
- Backup your data.
- Ensure the computer is kept well ventilated and smoke free. Clean the dust out of the computer every 2 months (more often if you want) as this will cause local heating of the dusty components, possibly resulting in instability. Computers that smoke have a significantly shortened life span.
- Backup your data.
- Do not run any "fun" software just for the sake of it. This machine needs to be as stable as it can possibly be, and this sort of software really isn’t necessary (or appropriate).
- Backup your data.
- Consider either a second machine for your games/Internet/accounting/whatever, or at least a separate bootable partition with a separate Windows installation. There are a number of boot managers that will cater for this.
- Backup your data.
Reinstalling Windows The Proper Way
If you are having serious problems with crashes, clicks, incompatibilities and things of this nature, often the best way to solve this is with a step-by-step reinstall, adding things slowly and checking your system for stability. The following procedure will often weed out the misbehaving component:
- Ensure your case and power supply are of good quality (as mentioned above). If the power supply is not stable under heavy load, then replace it with a "serious" one. It may cost a hundred bucks or so, but it will often have a quieter ball-bearing fan in it too.
- Make sure the PSU (power supply unit) fan is blowing OUT, and I would strongly recommend adding two additional fans - the first (and most important one) should go under the PSU near the CPU, and this should also be blowing OUT. The second extra fan should go down the bottom of the case on the front panel, and should blow IN.
- Ensure your CPU is adequately cooled. There are a number of CPU coolers that are available for Intel and AMD processors – have a look on sites such as http://www.tomshardware.com/, http://www.overclockers.com/, http://www.ocshoot.com/, http://www.hardwarecentral.com/ and http://www.anandtech.com/ for reviews and recommendations.
- You also need to make sure you keep the cables tidy and out of the way of the airflow, and its a good idea to make sure the cards themselves are installed in such a way as to aid, not inhibit, the airflow. (I know that more often than not cards only work in certain slots due to IRQ issues, but keeping an eye on airflow is always a good idea.)
- Modern ATX cases are (supposedly) designed to have the airflow at optimum when the lid is on the case. It is generally not a good idea to run the computer for extended periods of time with the lid removed. This doesn’t always hold true though, but is good to keep in mind.
- Back up any important data you have, and get excited about the fact that you are about to reinstall Windows.
- Make sure you create a Windows 98 Startup disk that will load the CD-ROM drivers. Reboot off this disk and change to the Win98 (or Win95) directory of the CD-ROM. If this works, then all is going well so far.
- Make sure the latest motherboard BIOS and video card BIOS are installed.
- Physically remove all devices in your system except your primary video card, main hard drive, floppy drive and one CD-ROM (oh yes, you just may need to leave your keyboard and mouse attached :-). We will add these devices back in one-by-one later.
- Go into the BIOS (be VERY careful not to change things you know nothing about) and ensure UDMA support is enabled for the Primary and Secondary IDE channels if you use IDE devices. Also make sure "Block Mode", Read Ahead" and "PIO or Transfer Mode" choices for IDE hard drives are set to maximum, and that S.M.A.R.T. features are enabled. Make sure that the System BIOS and Video BIOS are both shadowed, the Video RAM is cached, and that shadowing is enabled for the BIOS of any SCSI cards you have installed. Select ACPI mode if you are running Win 98, Win ME or Windows 2000 (and want the extra features this provides). Select PnP OS if you are running Win 9x, Win ME, Win NT or Windows 2000.
- Boot off the floppy, type FDISK and partition your hard drive as you feel appropriate. (Please see the end of this document for my recommendations.) Reboot, then type FORMAT C: to format this partition or drive. Format any other partitions as appropriate.
- Make a directory on D:\ (or another partition) called D:\Install, and another called D:\Install\Win98. Change to the WIN98 directory on the CD-ROM and type "copy . D:\Install\Win98" to copy the install files to the hard drive. (\i386 instead of \Win98 in the case of Windows NT4 and 2000.)
- Change to this new \Install\Win98 directory on the hard drive and type "setup /ie /id /is /im". This will begin the Windows 9x setup without the scandisk or creation of a boot disk prompts – a bit quicker than a plain old "setup". Install Windows as you normally do, but do not install any desktop themes (install desktop theme support, though), do not install the OpenGL screen savers, don’t bother with the WebTV stuff, and make sure you select "MS Backup" and unselect "Disk compression tools" from the System Tools section.
- When Windows has finished its installation, I would recommend installing the latest drivers for your video card, rebooting then installing an external modem (using the Windows "Standard 56kbps Modem" or "Standard 33600bps Modem" driver), rebooting and connecting to the Internet (using MSIE) and downloading all the current Microsoft Windows Updates – the critical and recommended ones. Don’t worry about the NetMeeting, Chat and other updates like these, just the security, stability and operating system updates. Then reboot. (If you have the latest version of MSIE on CD-ROM or elsewhere, then it would save a lot of download time by installing this first.)
- Due to some really **STUPID** default settings that Microsoft has chosen, all file extensions are hidden (roll on .vbs viruses) as are "hidden" and "system" files. I **HATE** this default, and it (hide known extensions) has enabled and encouraged the proliferation of the .vbs (script) viruses such as Anna Kournokova and Loveletter. PLEASE, please, please do the following: Open "My Computer" (must be "My Computer" – any other directory will not work as expected), go to the "View\Folder Options" menu and click on the "View" tab. Select the "Show all files" radio button, and (most importantly) DESELECT the "Hide file extensions for known file types" box.
- Next, you need to go to Control Panel/System/Device Manager and double-click on your CD-ROM. Go to the "Settings" tab and unselect the "Auto insert notification". Select the "DMA" option if your CD-ROM drive supports DMA, or else throw it away and get another CD-ROM drive that does. I’d suggest changing the CD-ROM drive letter to "R" or something like that – this way it will stay the same if you add another hard drive in the future. Say "OK". Now reboot.
- In Device Manager, go to the "Performance" tab and click on "File System". Change the "Typical role of this computer" to "Network server", click OK and Close. Now reboot.
- Double click on the "Computer" icon in Device Manager and check to see that there are no yellow or red warning marks over any of the IRQ settings. Exclamation marks indicate conflicts. There should be none at this stage. Reboot.
- Using Symantec Ghost, Drive Image or a similar program, I’d suggest making an image of this partition elsewhere, so you can restore it at some point in the future when the need arises.
- Install your DAW card, and load the latest drivers for it. Have a look in Device Manager and check for conflicts. If none exist, reboot and install your DAW software. Reboot and check to see that it functions correctly. Reboot.
- If all is well at this stage, you may want to make another image for later use. Then reboot.
- Reinstall extra I/O cards one-by-one, load their latest drivers, reboot and check for conflicts in Device Manager, then reboot and confirm system stability. Then reboot.
- After you have added all cards in this manner, and left the PCI-based Winmodem nowhere near your computer, the system should be functioning well. Reboot and make another image (for posterity, and ease of restoring a working system). Then reboot.
- Now, add any extra software you need on your system, one package at a time, and reboot after each install. Check the system for stability after each new package is installed. Then reboot. If you find a package that causes instability, then go back to the last image you created, reinstall the other packages and leave the unstable app off the computer. It doesn’t matter what features it provides, if it causes instability, then you don’t want it on this computer. Now reboot. (You can make extra images at any stage – if you have a "touchy" system, then making a number of images throughout the boot process, and documenting CLEARLY when each image was made is a really useful idea, and you really should thank me for the time you saved.) Now reboot.
- Now that all is functioning well and you have more backups than should be legally allowed, I’d suggest backing up the Registry and keeping this with the last image you have made. The easiest way to do this is to go to the \Windows directory and copy the hidden files called "System.dat" and "User.dat" to the same place you saved your image files.
- Once you have done this, you have probably consumed a litre or so of coffee, and have a number of backups. You also have a functioning DAW. And this is a "Good Thing ™". Now reboot. You can burn some of these backup images to a CD-ROM, along with your licensed copy of the application you used to create the images – this is useful in recovering usable disk space on your hard drive.
- Did you notice the number of reboots you HAVE to do to ensure a reliable system? This is part of the fun of Windows. Rebooting a Windows system after driver or software installation will often result in final installation and configuration steps being performed as Windows loads and will result in reloading all system components. This is one of the most essential steps in creating a stable Windows system, along with lunchtime reboots, and a reboot just before starting a big project. Annoying, but rewarding when the system keeps working!
Drive Partitioning & Configuration
With the size of drives available now (40GB and (quite a bit) higher), it is really not a good idea to have just a single partition for all of your data. I would recommend that your drive(s) be configured/partitioned as follows:
C:\ - up to 8GB Operating system and applications installed to here
D:\ - up to 4GB Data (My Documents, Favourites, etc) stored here
E:\ - remainder Audio data stored here (backup only if you have 2 drives)
F:\ - second drive Audio data stored here
You’d like reasons for the above recommendations? YOU WANT REASONS? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE… Oh – yes you can! Firstly, I’d recommend having 2 separate drives, both as fast as possible, with the fastest for the audio data. This provides a bit of redundancy since the data in use is on one drive, and the online backup data on another drive. It also improves system performance (one drive on each IDE channel, preferably on the RAID channels (if present) and leaving the standard IDE channels for things like CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, Zips, tape backup drives, etc.). Having all of your documentation, cookies and favourites stored on the D:\ partition allows for easy recovery of this data should you need to restore the C:\ partition.
Although I prefer SCSI devices (especially CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives, Zip and tape backup drives), my ideal IDE-only setup would be as follows:
RAID0 - IBM 40GB 75GXP Glass-Platter drive
RAID1 - Empty
RAID2 - IBM 40GB 75GXP Glass-Platter drive
RAID3 - Empty
IDE0 - DVD-ROM
IDE1 - Zip drive
IDE2 - CD-RW
IDE3 - Tape Backup Unit
With the above setup, it would be possible to have the following partitions:
+---------------------------------------------------------+
RAID0 | 8GB – C: | 12GB – E: | 20GB – F: |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
+---------------------------------------------------------+
RAID2 | 8GB – D: | 12GB – E: | 20GB – F: |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
Giving a C: drive of 8GB, a D: drive of 8GB, a RAID0 (striped) E: partition of 24GB and a RAID0 (striped) F: partition of 40GB. This partitioning scheme would also result in quite a quick access time to the E: and D: drives due to their striped (RAIDO) configuration. This assumes you have a motherboard with onboard RAID, or a PCI-based RAID card. Of course, you *could* use 75GB IBM 75GXP drives – this would be *niiiiice*. :-)
Summary
If your system is misbehaving, firstly you need to ensure you have the latest drivers for your hardware, and the latest BIOS for your SCSI card, motherboard, CD-R drive, CD-ROM drive and video card. Then, make sure you have a sufficiently cooled computer. Also, make sure your cards are all configured correctly.
If you are sick of this system continually breaking, it is best to start from scratch. A fresh step-by-step install carried out correctly will often isolate the problem component (hardware or software) and save a lot of time and frustration. You now need to correct the problem component, or throw it away and replace it. That simple.
Due to the almost countless combinations of hardware available for the PC platform, there is no "sweet" solution that is palatable to all systems. The steps I have outlined above will work in the majority of situations, but there will always be some situations that require dedication of time and effort to isolate a strange conflict.
The Author
My name is Hilton Travis. I have been involved in the computer industry for the past 19 years or so, and as a technician for the past 13 years. I have used MS Windows since version 1, MS DOS since version 2, Linux since it came on 30 or so 360KB diskettes, Amigas and PCs. I have had very little involvement with Macintosh computers. :-) I am currently running Mandrake Linux 7.2, BeOS 5, Microsoft Windows 98SE, Windows Millennium, Windows NT 4 Workstation, Windows NT 4 Server, Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Server on a number of computers here. I run my own computer consulting business in Brisbane, Australia.
I have been involved in live sound for around 20 years, and seriously for about 11 years. I have done a bit of studio work in the past, and am in the process of setting up a home studio with the involvement of a couple of others. This will most probably concentrate on live recording and remixing for bands, conferences and festivals, as well as demo discs for bands. I am mainly a live sound engineer, and I really enjoy live work.
I have a small home theatre setup that I am quite happy with. It includes a Yamaha RX-V995 AC3/DTS decoder/amplifier, Yamaha CDC-902 CD Player (with digital output), M&K S-85 speakers and MX-105 sub (http://www.mksound.com and http://www.mkprofessional.com) and a Yamaha SD-9000 and PC-based DVD player. The M&K speakers are just plain amazing. For the price, and for anything up to 2 or 3 times the price, they are by far the best speaker I have heard. I will be using M&K speakers in my home studio. I am also in the process of obtaining more DTS surround CDs – these are also amazing – stereo is DEAD. :-) I’m waiting for DVD-Audio now…
Visit my web page at http://quarkau.cjb.net (when I get it happening). I am not an artist, and this is a technically oriented site. In other words, don’t expect anything pretty. This site will be updated as and when I get time to work on it. I’d LIKE to have it constantly updated, and look more appealing, but I do need to eat too!
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