Is a Separate PC for GigaStudio REALLY necessary?

[Glenn]

I\'ve seen some opinions on the net that you really should use a dedicated PC for GigaStudio.

I\'m thinking that if I use two hard-drives on a Pentium 4 with 512MB, then one hard drive could stream the Giga sounds, while the other could record the sounds for the mix.

Cakewalk would be the tool handling it all.
Midi takes very little CPU. And Giga would be doing the effects for the tracks. I thinkthe P4 could handle it all.

What have some of you found to be true on this topic?

-- Glenn in Minneapolis

[PeterRoos]

You can run a sequencer along with Gst and do digital recording at the same time, all on the same machine. Not a problem with current PC\'s, like the P4. BUT, make sure you have fast HD\'s and ample RAM, these are most important.

I am running Gst with Logic on a P-3 at 500 Mhz with 768 Mb ram. Polyphony of my current projects is about 100 voices; I can capture and record these while playing without a click or pop.

There are however other, very valid reasons for splitting your digital studio into 2 PC\'s, e.g. doing also video, running plugins in Logic or Cubase, or doing heavy orchestral stuff.

I\'d like to have a rather complete set of libraries loaded. So, I\'m thinking of another PC with Gst for this. Additional Gst site license can be purchased at 50%, I believe (anyone experience with this?).

Keeping everything within a single PC saves you some hassle with external Midi paths (cables, midi \'multiplexer\' box, etc)

Peter

[Haydn]

I run GigaStudio 96 with Cakewalk 9.03 on the same computer with full 96 voices and no pops or clicks. I can run 10 tracks of digital audio on Cakewalk with Giga. My system is a P3-733 processor with 512 MB of RAM with 2 7200 rpm Maxtor drives.

It would be nice to add a 2nd computer but the cost of computer, soundcard and MIDI ports have scared me away for now. I would still run GigaStudio on both machines to get more polyphony and to load more instruments. Most of my work is orchestral and I could really use at least 3 or 4 machines each with 2 GB of memory.

[PeterMR]

GS96 and CW9 on an (old) P3 450 with two 7200 speed drives and 160 MB and an old non-GSIF card and, amazingly, it\'s been doing great. No clicks or pops. I don\'t know that\'ve done all 96, but I\'ve come very close. The limitation has been the size of the samples versus the RAM. (So I\'m adding more RAM.) But I\'ve loaded the Gigapiano, depressed the pedal, and done a left to right run and notes play and nothing crashes.

[bmiller]

just my opinion, but if your work is critical..........it\'s worth a 2nd PC. You need additional drives either way, and the price of a CPU isn\'t much, depending upon if you make a living at music. A switch box to use 1 KB, monitor and mouse with the 2 PCs works great. Less desk clutter, expense, etc. But mainly....if you need to get the work out, if your GS ever goes out, you have a fallback with other sound hardware, and the extra computer. Also, far less chance of conflicts....I could go on but...enough!
good luck

[Lance_M]

My general-use, P3 700E@933, 256 megs ram, Asus P3V4X, SB Live on Win98 setup gets more voices than my teacher\'s dedicated machine.

Maybe his system is messed up. Maybe I have pure, dumb luck. But *shrug*... works for me.

[seclusion]

Personally..
2 separate P3 1 gig processors with 512 ram in each. 1 for logic, 1 for giga
I run raid cards for my audio drives..
So I\'d need 5 harddrives in 1 puter so I could keep the audio and samples separate with low latency.
Plus I\'m the kind of dumb, dumb that would accidentally record an audio file over a sample or something equally stupid.
So I run them on separate puters not only for better reliability but for keeping my samples safe and better organized..
I guess if you\'re going with a p4 2 gig each dual cpu with win xp and scsi drives, and 2 gig of ram then reliability maybe less an issue. FYI Giga still has not added an uninstall for it, so if there is a compadibility prob, you\'re puter is down for a while...
I run both puter platforms with 2408\'s so I have potential to mix 24 sample outputs and 24 audio outputs via lightpipe to my 2 digi consoles..
I love it..
Just waiting for Garttian Strings in the mail... Gawd I\'m impatient
Brian

[This message has been edited by seclusion (edited 01-01-2002).]

[astrt4]

I\'m actually running a three computer setup so that I can get more than 160 voices. Having multiple computers yields better performance and is less frustrating to work with. When you consider the fact that you can get a decent sequencing computer for $250-$300 and a good GigaStudio computer for around $500 (because of the sound card), it just makes more sense to get several cheaper computers than it does to get one killer machine for $2000. I\'ve spent a little over a thousand on computers all together, and my polyphony is around 300. I run Cakewalk and Finale on one computer and GigaStudio on the other two.

[PeterRoos]

Can you tell us the specs of these cheap PC\'s? I\'m really curious!
I assume you are using a Kbd/monitor/mouse switch? Which one?

Regards

Peter Roos

[Chadwick]

There\'s a good revies of KVM switches here:
http://www4.tomshardware.com/network/01q4/011017/index.html (\"http://www4.tomshardware.com/network/01q4/011017/index.html\")

[PeterRoos]

Thanks for this pointer.

There\'s also an interesting article from Ryan on http://www..com/tech/midi/articles/030101/omniviewpro.shtml (\"http://www..com/tech/midi/articles/030101/omniviewpro.shtml\")

Still curious about the $250-300 PC\'s!

Peter

[ahrensj]

Hey astrt4,

Could you let us know what the specs are for your inexpensive PC setup? It would really be appreciated.

Specifically, what are the specs for the Giga PCs, and the Cakewalk PC? How many audio tracks do you get with the \"$300\" Cakewalk PC (or is it sequencing only)?

Thanks much,

Jeff

[jsaras]

Cakewalk Home Studio 2002 has 95% of the functionality of Sonar, for about $80 retail. I got it for $40!! It has fewer softsyths bundled with it (which I don\'t miss) and it doesn\'t allow a SMPTE offset in the counter (which could be an issue if you do a lot of scoring for film/TV). I have actually found it to be more stable on my computer than Sonar! They also have a sequencing program called Plasma for $29 retail, which is also basically a \"lite\" version of Sonar as well, but I think it allows fewer tracks than Home Studio. With all the great MIDI, audio, and \"Acid\"-looping features of these budget programs, you can\'t go wrong

As far as needing a separate PC, I have had terrific results just installing a 2nd physical hard drive on my machine just to store/stream Gigasamples.

I have built several low-cost PCs for friends who have wanted to get in the Giga game. Basically they\'re 800mHz PIIIs, Asus motherboards (without the integrated sound card), 8 or 16 mb video cards, and a SoundBlaster Live Value soundcard (about
$30), Atapi CDRW, Windows 98 SE. All this comes to about $560 at my local computer store.

I absolutely love my SoundBlaster card. It\'s only 16 bit, 44.1 kHz, but I\'ve had no problems with it under Win98SE. I don\'t have any latency issues with Giga at all. I will upgrade only when I need to have more physical inputs/outputs and I have a project that will pay for it.

My $.02

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