Hello,
I finally decided to upgrade my computer from a 3ghz Core2 DUo w/ 4gb ram and Win 7 32bit, to 3.4ghz i7 Quad with 8gb ram and Win 7 64.
Also, I plan on buying one HD thats 7200rpm /6gb SATA for my Main Drive. <--- Will this make any difference?
But my question is, where is the best place to keep everything? As of right now I use Sonar X1 (or 8.5), Superior Drummer, drum samples and other VSTis...
I usually keep Sonar and all VSt's on the C drive, but all projects write and record to the D drive.
Superior, and all Drum Samples are on the D drive, is this correct? Or am I losing performance because of my setup?
I would like to know, just because I plan on a complete "douche-out" of everything, and would like to start from scratch, and have everything correct from day one....
Any info would be greatly appreciated.
I am a faithful life long Cakewalk user, from cakewalk pro audio 7.0 -> Sonar X1
and the situation you are in is almost exactly I've been through, I guess I am quite legitimate to answer your doubts in mind
I can tell you a bit of the PC hardware/software setup of past years first, for you as reference
05-08 - Dual Core C2D E6400 2GB ram (32bit XP, 32bit Sonar(s) )
09-10 - Quad Core C2Q Q9550 4GB ram Sonar 8.5->Sonar X1 (32 bit Win7, 32bit Sonar)
11 - present Quad Core i7 2600k 16GB ram Sonar X1 (64 bit Win 7 and 64bit Sonar)
1. Dual Core -> Quad core or even Hex Core would give you HUGE benefit on amp sim, convolution reverb/impulse performance, recently I upgrade from Q9550 to 2600k , both are quad core but still significantly faster/smooth/slick and whatever.
2. Ram, 8GB is good enough, I use 64bit sonar now and some of my VSTi are 64bit native, I checked the task manager, seldom excess 8GB of use.
(my jobs sometimes need quite a lot of VSTi , like orchestral instruments)
if you have extra money, of course go for 16GB, memory are very cheap now!
3. HDD configuration. over the years I have the same configuration at below.
C drive (OS/DAW Hose, VST plugins) (7200k HDD and now changed to SSD)
D drive Cakewalk Projects and audio files(10k rpm HDD in raid 0)
E Sample Library (10k rpm HDD)
(all physically different hard drive, not logical partitions)
this HDD configuration gives me lightening fast performance, I was told
you will have at least 3 drives for a good DAW performance(unless you run in all with SSD which is big enough for everything and you have monstrous balance in your bank account)
rule of thumbs, 3 drives, one fore OS , one for project file and DAW, one for library.
the old mechanical HDD has POOR multi task performance, so you store these part in different drive accordingly will drastically improve the overall performance and even easier to create/manage your backups.
if your 1st HDD drive dies and you don't need 1 week to reinstall your whole library collections or your gigantic horse P0rns
4. 64bit host vs 32bit host.
from my experience, ALL of my VSTi/VST work flawlessly in 64bit host, 64bit native or 32bit old plugins are running slick.
sonar has built in BitBridge for 32bit old plugins run in 64bit sonar host and it worked quite well, you don't even need to set anything, it runs automatically if it needed to run.
if you have some VST not running properly with BitBridge, you can purchase another bridge on internet called "Jbridge"
which is do the same thing like BitBridge but has much lot more VST/VSTi are supported, Sonar X1 supports JBridge native, so if you buy it and run in sonar, you won't have any problems.
hope these helps : )
