What kind of processors are good for audio production?

[Guest Geeture]

What kind of processors are good for audio production*P4, Amd, Celeron"?

Lets say i have an audiotrak maya 44 soundcard.

 

 

*bytheway i own P4 celeron 1700

Thanx all your helpz!!!

[Guest scalar]

Go with a P4 without doubt. They really are faster than AMD now, and especially for audio, they are a LOT queiter and more reliable.

 

Quality (Unfortunately) costs.

[Guest Andreas of Amygdala]

I would definetly go with a Motorola processor.... Preferebly a G4

[Guest DeeperNETWERK]

P4 have a denormilzing issue though. Not all the time, but with certain plug in's and VSti's like Waldorf Attack IK Amplitude, MDA Dub Delay, Waldorf D-Pole and some others. They have plug ins that will stop the issue, but still gets in the way every now and then. P4's have the best floating point which the main thing you look for on a music processor, AMD sorta lacks on that. If you want to spend some dough ... Make a dual Xeon Processor system. You'll be unstoppable, even to Apple people.

[Guest Noope]

What the fxxk are you talking about...

 

"they are a LOT queiter and more reliable.", "queiter" maybe... but this could be handled by isolating the computer, keep an eye on the processor fan or the HD - it'll the make the noizzzzze, not the processor.

 

"the processors are more reliable" - bullshit, these processors are reliable. the problem is probably the compiler or the programmer of the audioware, not the processor. Make a difference between reliable and efficient.

 

"Go with a P4 without doubt. They really are faster than AMD now, and especially for audio" can you please tell me what makes it faster... it seems to to me like a lot of mumbo jumbo, since it is quite easy to make a processor fast for a particular task, and i seriously doubt that the applen(motorola...) crew made a processor built for MDA Dub delay...

 

Next: "P4's have the best floating point which the main thing you look for on a music processor".... explain please, once again ít seems like alot of bullshit. the number of bits used to represent a floaing point number usually fixed as far as i know... and if apple used a double length to represent a floatig point it would pobably not matter to you, you would not hear the difference.

 

"If you want to spend some dough ... Make a dual Xeon Processor system. You'll be unstoppable, even to Apple people." - true, but check out the price, and distributed processor systems are quite expensive, you'll get VERY good single processor system if you'll pay the same amount of money.

 

what ever... what matters is the size of the speed of the processor and the cache size (and the algoritms used) memory of the processor. This makes the celeron a bit weaker than the processors with bigger cache memories, but since it has got a good speed, it will probably work fine, learn how to use the sequencer in an efficient way, and you'll have no problems.

 

I use AMD processors (1.4 Ghz) with Cubase SX,VST and logic and i don't any problems so far, just think about how you use the sequencer program,.

[Guest DeeperNETWERK]

Straight outta Cubase VST Tips and Tricks by Ian Waugh.

 

"Quite how other processors might affect performance is a bit of a grey afrea although most of the concern about the importance of using an Intel Pentium lies in the use of the FPU (Floating Point Unit) for real-time processing. VST makes much use of the FPU, particualry for running realtime effects which make it difficult to recommend anything other than a Pentium (although other processors may be fine for general home and business use). VST also specifically supports Pentium and makes use of the chip's extra instructions to improve digital audio processing performance. While AMD chips also have 'go faster' stripcs not all software specifically supports these special instructions and thus cannot take advantage of them."

 

I think that's a good enough explantion. Sounds like you dont know as much as you think...

[Strumpling]

hey why don't you calm down, mr "Noope"

 

I've used both at same ghz (1.4) and the P4 rocks the AMD's ASS! Which sucks because personally I have an AMD.......... But the Pents are better, dude...

[Guest Noope]

hey why don't you mind your own stuff, mr "strumpling"

 

DeeperNETWERK: i'd say that is a better explanation, quite intresting, didn't know that the pentium has special instructions for audio stuff...cool

[Guest X-tul]

Some professional soundcards won't work with mainboards with specific chipsets. Latest VIA chipsets are not compatible with MOTU soundcards, for example, and most Athlon boards have VIA chipsets. Many manufacturers recommend Intel chipsets with Pentium processors.

Both processors are good!!, but I would use a Pentium for soundcard compatibility (you might want to upgrade your card sometime). Ask your manufacturer for compatibility with different chipsets! I had a Biostar mainboard with VIA chipset and Athlon processor. My MOTU soundcard was not even recognized by the computer and now I have a P4 with Intel chipset and everything's fine.

 

Here's what MOTU says about the chipset issue. The date they posted the information on their site was 2 days after I talked to them on the phone about my card not being recognized by the PC. They just told me: go and buy a Pentium.

 

"Will my windows PC work with the MOTU PCI-324 Audio System

 

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The PCI-324 card ships with windows MME Wave, WDM , ASIO, and GSIF support for windows 98/ME/2K/XP.

 

MOTU recommends wintel machines (Pentium II or III, and Celeron computers). AMD machines often ship with less efficient PCI chipsets. We've found SiS and MPV3 chipsets to be incompatible with the PCI-324 card.

 

There is also a known incompatibility with Pre-1999 Via Chipsets. We have been able to get recent VIA chipsets to work in some cases by downloading the "4 in 1 update" from www.viatech.com.

 

One motherboard using the VIA chipset that has been working well for PCI324 users is the IWILL KK266 plus. This would be a good motherboard to use if you were building an AMD system.

 

If you're considering building a PC using the new DDR RAM based motherboards for use with the MOTU PCI- 324 card you may contact MOTU presales at 617-576-2760 for compatibility info.

 

this record created on: 4/7/2000

this record last modified on: 9/26/2002 "

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P4s also don't need as much cooling as Athlons, so you don't need a noisy fan, or any expensive isolation.

[Guest MindPlug]

It´s not a big diference in performance betwen a Athlon XP 2200 + with the new ddr memories and a intel P4 , the diference its in the price , the athlon its much cheeper , i´ll defenitly go for the AMD processor . And in a certain way the AMD its better in some ways , for example the athlon processor executes more operations for clock cicle than an intel p4 ... As for the celeron , it is certainly not the best option .

[Guest UrhgurH]

" VST also specifically supports Pentium and makes use of the chip's extra instructions to improve digital audio processing performance."

 

Is kinda true, or at least it used to be...

 

The multimedia instructions enhancements are mmx, mmx+ and sse.

These where native to pentium only, but have been implemented,

by amd in their newer processors after licensing them from intel.

So actually you can't beat the price/preformance of a new amd system.

And Amd's fpu is slightly slower than intels but if you add all the

rest of the respective cpu core data together it evens out,

YES EVEN FOR PURE MUSIC USAGE!!!

 

As for the stability factor i can easily say that during the last year,

the problems have been with my intel system (p3@866),

while my amd system (athlon@1.2) has been runing nice and smooth.

 

Amd is the best bang for the buck.

[Guest coriolis]

an old analogy i like to make use of in reference to processors: why buy a racecar to drive through stop-and-go traffic? consider all bottlenecks in your system - ram and cache size, hard drive speed and DMA mode, bus speed, the video card, the PCI bridge, and so on and so forth and who gives a damn about the make of your processor? if you buy ANY recent processor you won't run into problems with it unless you're doing something unusual. i am using a 1400mhz athlon t-bird, logic 5, a 24 channel asio sound card with 6ms latency and lots of audio tracks and LOTS of VST effects and instruments. i rarely use more than 60% of my processing power according to winXP's system monitor.

 

but, once all is said and done, pentium processors will perform better than athlon processors for music production, but I doubt the difference will ever show because of everything else that gets in the way of performance.

[Guest Spindrift]

Yes UrhgurH,

The athlon processor seems to beat the p4 in FPU performance except for software using SSE2 instruction sets.

Using the MMX or SSE instructions the athlon is faster, and most audio plug-ins are limited to these instructions still. The SSE2 instruction sets has been slow to gain acceptance from developers since they are hard to implement.

If i would set up a new configuration today i would like to go for the athlon, since i think p4 is a flop and not an example of groundbreaking technology, and it's doubtful if the SSE2 instructions will ever be implemented in my plugins.

When setting up an audio PC, contact the manufacturer of the soundcard you are planning to use and ask what processor, motherboard and graphics card they mainly use to test their product.

The case will often be that they use a intel chipset, and then i would rather spend the extra for a pentium or settle for lower speed, because otherwise you might find issues like the one described above with the via chipset and MOTU interface.

[Guest monno]

all this babble is ok. but for proper info on actual real life application

check this link:http://www.digitalnaturalsound.com/logic_dsp/

this gives a better idea of how the perform against eachother it´s a bit outdated, but the results are still based on real life application rather than all sorts of theoretical b.s.

[Guest Mike Indidginus]

Cubase VST 5/32 supports AMD chips now. I use an AMD Athlon XP1700 & don't have any problems. And it is much cheaper than it's Intel equivelant. I'm not sure about the Duron chips.