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hey guys,

i am purchasing an ASUS laptop featuring Core 2 Duo 2.2Ghz with 4GB RAM for my onsite recordings.

I was wondering whether anyone with a similar spec'd machine can tell me how many tracks i would be able to playback at 24-bit 96 kHz recording with the one HDD. Using Nuendo... I am expecting to be mixing 25-30 tracks active simultaneously...all my tracks have plugins active approximately 2 per track. (15 tracks) approximately 3-4 for my vocal tracks (i love those big def leppard style vocal productions! featuring 10 vocal channels all running autotune aswell) Would my specs be able to handle that kind of demand?

I am currently using a P4 2.8Ghz (single core) with 1.5RAM and struggle after 15 tracks

If a single drive becomes a bottleneck.. i am happy to purchase a dual bay HDD with RAID 0. But may not be necessary..?

cheers,
spiro

Comments

bent Sun, 02/24/2008 - 19:44

On my Asus / Athlon64 3200+ / 1Gig Ram / WD 120Gig HD - I've done up to 72 tracks with 6 subgroups each running 2 or 3 plugins without a problem @ 24/48 (mixing, not recording - I bypass most plugins when I record).

Most current computers can do a TON (yes, a TON) of audio tracks nowadays without a problem. I remember when all's I had was an AMD K6 / 32Meg RAM / El Cheap'o SB card... It still did enough tracks for what we needed at the time...

bent Tue, 02/26/2008 - 06:50

Total (a lot of the tracks I've mixed to stereo) playing back at 1 time is 25.
6 Submixes with gate and comp on one, flange on one, verb on another one.

This will also kill you: I'm playing them back from my system drive.

The only time I have a problem is if I zoom in or out too fast during playback.

CPU shows 21% usage with Vegas eating up 92Megs RAM - Playback only.
I wouldn't try to record at this point...
(These specific tracks are 16/44.1)

bent Tue, 02/26/2008 - 06:56

RC up the street has a G4 running PT 6.4 TDM - not sure how many farm cards, but it's common on that system to record at least 24 tracks simultaneously, and often overdub multiple parts at the same time on top of the 24+ playing back (at 24b/48k)

It's an old system comprised of (1) Apogee AD8000 and (3) Digi888/24's, all running simultaneously.

Guest Tue, 02/26/2008 - 08:37

igotnosmoke wrote: hey guys,

i am purchasing an ASUS laptop featuring Core 2 Duo 2.2Ghz with 4GB RAM for my onsite recordings.

I was wondering whether anyone with a similar spec'd machine can tell me how many tracks i would be able to playback at 24-bit 96 kHz recording with the one HDD. Using Nuendo... I am expecting to be mixing 25-30 tracks active simultaneously...all my tracks have plugins active approximately 2 per track. (15 tracks) approximately 3-4 for my vocal tracks (i love those big def leppard style vocal productions! featuring 10 vocal channels all running autotune aswell) Would my specs be able to handle that kind of demand??

I am currently using a P4 2.8Ghz (single core) with 1.5RAM and struggle after 15 tracks

If a single drive becomes a bottleneck.. i am happy to purchase a dual bay HDD with RAID 0. But may not be necessary..?

cheers,
spiro

good luck getting an Asus to work for Audio. they have the dreaded ricoh chipset.
while the older single cores used to work fairly well the newer ones suck.

read why if you want
http://recording.org/resources/recording-computers.300

the comparison would apply to any ricoh chipset laptop (not just who i called out) assuming you can actually get the interface to be recognized.

Scott
ADK

Codemonkey Sat, 03/01/2008 - 09:53

BTW, one thing about using multiple drives.
My friend got Vegas and I was using it to make a video of a parody song we sang for our other friend's 18th (we also did another for our Minister's 40th)
(bearing in mind video is more intensive than audio)
The video files weren't on my system drive but another 7200rpm drive. What I found, was a slight improvement when I swapped the bus, so it was sharing the IDE cable with my system drive but was sharing it with an unused CD drive.

Swap your buses, you might be able to squeeze an extra track out of it. I got 1-2 more fps (doing some complex realtime processing).