stable DAW

[Massili]

I'm getting mad about computers!

I'd like to know who of you guys have a stable DAW (notebook preferable), i mean "really stable", capable of running up to 16 recording tracks at once thru firewire interface + ADAT.

What OS system, RAM, Cpu Clock, HD, FW chipset or external FW card?
I can't tell you how pissed off i'm with my damm computer, so i decided to get a new DAW (Notebook this time for mobility) based on your experiences and recommendations.

Thx

 

[Ermz]

TinyXP. Intel-based CPU and Gigabyte or ASUS motherboard based on chips that are widely supported.

You NEED to have either the entire machine dedicated to audio OR dual-booting a specific audio and separate general OS.

I experimented with W7 64-bit and 32-bit. I found most recording apps don't do too well with 64-bit OSs. ProTools takes a shit instantly. W7 32-bit was a hairy one. It worked, for the most part, but things were quirky here and there. Most issues were had by ProTools and Drumtracker, but I noticed my DPC latency was somewhere around the 110 microsecond mark.

After going back to TinyXP and bareboning it to the max I've got the DPC latency back down to ~7 microseconds, and can once again track with a buffer size of 32 samples happily.

Avoid overclocking if you can. That will reduce stability. Dedicated PCI or PCI-e cards may be a better bet than sharing the firewire bus with other stuff. My RME HDSPe is very solid and not susceptible to the same bus noises as my Mbox is.

RAM shouldn't matter too much, as long as you're buying a good name like Corsair, G.Skill, OCZ etc.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

13" Macbook Pro June 2009 model.

 

[006]

15" Apple PowerBook G4, 1.33gHz PPC CPU and 768MB RAM, running OSX10.3.X up to 10.5 nowadays. Cubase SX previously, Cubase Studio 4 now. 24 simultaneous tracks for hours and hours back in the day. Was recording many live shows with this off the live boards and never had a hiccup, that's the worst situation to have one but I never did. Also used it to out-run my friend's PC that had like 3x the power spec-wise on many occasion.

Now mixing is a diff story... only so many plugs a 1.33/768 system can take, but I mix on my G5 anyway.

 

[Mutant]

I remember reading reports of successfully recording recording orchestral performances with Reaper.

And it is rock stable on my old Athlon 64 X2 5200, 3GB RAM 800MHz, Win XP SP2.

 

[Torniojaws]

I can't say Reaper to be stable. As soon as you have a few VST instruments running (not to mention sidechain plugins), Reaper crashes sooner than later. Most recently yesterday (v3.05), when I had just TWO (!) VST instruments, three guitar tracks, and one sampler running, in a 40 second project And I cannot render said project, nothing happens! It just sits there and says "Not rendering, ETA infinity" and hangs uke:

That has been happening with all major iterations (2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc) of Reaper ever since 0.999, on several different computers and many times with a clean install.

This is very unfortunate, as I really wanted to use Reaper for my next release.

 

[ParsonsMatt]

I can't say Reaper to be stable. As soon as you have a few VST instruments running (not to mention sidechain plugins), Reaper crashes sooner than later. Most recently yesterday (v3.05), when I had just TWO (!) VST instruments, three guitar tracks, and one sampler running, in a 40 second project And I cannot render said project, nothing happens! It just sits there and says "Not rendering, ETA infinity" and hangs uke:

This is very unfortunate, as I really wanted to use Reaper for my next release.

What VSTis are you using? I have a problem with EWQLSO Silver, PLAY version, but other VSTis work great

 

[Torniojaws]

ReFX Nexus and AudioRealism BassLine. Both work just fine in Cubase, the highest amount of instances I've had has been 9 instances of Nexus + 3 instances of BassLine (and a whole lot of other plugins), without problems.

 

[ParsonsMatt]

That's a shame. If you report your problems in the Reaper forums they might be able to fix the bugs.

By the way, I love Vortech! Great CD

 

[joeritson]

I'm only having issues with Reaper when I REALLY stress it. Like, I'm talking 95% CPU usage stress. I'm currently mixing a 55-track project with 4 instances of Amplitube 2, (pretty hungry) and 30 + Waves and Sonalksis plugins, and I only have about one crash a day. Annoying, but acceptable.
I used to use Tracktion, fuck that, it crashed every half hour or so.
I find most bugs are either dodgy hardware or poorly programmed plugins, or conflicts between the healthy iterations of either. But having worked on Protools, Cubase 4, Sonar 8 and Tracktion 3, Reaper is pretty damn stable.

 

[Massili]

i'm looking into dell latitude e6400 notebook, does anyone have something to say about it? Fw Chip?

 

[Glenn Fricker]

Tiny XP + SawStudio = Awesome.

 

[AdamWathan]

Question for TinyXP users, what version are you running? I was going to grab it but I've noticed people bitching about it not passing WGA? Not that that is really a concern since automatic updates will be turned off anyways but it runs flawlessly for you guys?

 

[Massili]

Question for TinyXP users, what version are you running?

I'd like to hear about that too

 

[oscillat0r]

Not to derail the whole 'tiny xp' subthread but my 2c ...

* 99% of instability issues are due to s/w instruments and effects or driver/chipset incompatibility. Through process of elimination I've always been to able to find the bad apple.

* I've gone back and forth about obsessing on my DAW a lot over the years and these days I'm running a regular install of Vista x64 Home Premium with SONAR and an Audiofire 12 and I have had zero crashes/blue screens etc. Its nice to be able to use 4GB+ of memory too... (I am a lot more selective about what plugins I load and I do kill unwanted background tasks like antivirus)

* If you're looking a Dell laptops, they actually certify the workstations for different applications (including pro tools, sonar, etc) . Even if you don't by the mobile workstation they recommend, you should be able to find a consumer version with the same specs/chipset/gfx for the same or less $$$

good luck

 

[Erkan]

I have only heard about TinyXP in the past but never enough...

I'm getting the impression that TinyXP is illegal.. is it?
What does Microsoft think about it?
Lastly, is it really a big difference from XP Home or Pro for audio work? On my XP, I only have 21 processes running and it seems to be stable enough... don't know if I wanna fuck around and reinstall.