the capability of my PC is stopping me from learning and experimenting more

jesterroot4

jesterroot4

Member
Jul 5, 2007
450
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16
Croydon (south london) UK
its aload of crap! and needs upgraded.. when mixing anything i have.. just after 5 mins, packed and overloaded my CPU to a point that most the time the song doesnt play. and after a while of tryin to add more detail to the mix, it crashes.

i dont know too much about PC's and upgrading them so i'd like your help!

details of my comp:
Packard Bell
Intel(R)
Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz
3.06 GHz, 512 MB of RAM

thats what it tells me.. and the fact its got 512ram i know makes a differance..

could any one tell me what to get to upgrade it. because i realy cant afford a whole new computor..


cheers!
 
youll have to see what type of RAM is already in your PC. that should give you a good idea as to what type of RAM is compatible. as far as your CPU...a single-core 3GHz is probably fine for light mixing...i use a single core processor @ 3.4GHz and it works for what im doing. if youre interested in doing big mixing projects, a dual-core is a must.
 
You've got something screwed up if you can't get that running, to put it bluntly. Are you maintaining it well? I've run systems with only 512mb RAM, and while it wasn't boatloads of fun I don't think it's possible to be godly enough at everything to have *that* be the main hindrance to learning.

Jeff
 
lol yah i'v learned alot about maintaining the project and adjusting settings to make it easier to mix, but its the little things like running 3 instances of amplitube and maybe drumagog etc.. mainly as i dont have a nice beafy amp and my bass amp sounds like shite.

if my band had stuff finished, it would be fine, because i could then mix down the completed guitar tracks then remove amplitube, but we record as we write, so that makes things awquard.
 
jesterroot4 said:
lol yah i'v learned alot about maintaining the project and adjusting settings to make it easier to mix, but its the little things like running 3 instances of amplitube and maybe drumagog etc.. mainly as i dont have a nice beafy amp and my bass amp sounds like shite.

if my band had stuff finished, it would be fine, because i could then mix down the completed guitar tracks then remove amplitube, but we record as we write, so that makes things awquard.
Click to expand...

You don't need Amplitube while tracking, it can be a CPU hog. Use something light when tracking and once you get the tracks recorded make mixdowns of the guitars with Amplitube. I'd highly recommend GuitarSuite - it's free, doesn't use lots of resources (I could easily run four or five instances with my old Duron 1,8GHz) and it's fucking easy to tweak a good enough tracking tone from it.
 
I've just built a mean quad core with 4GB RAM, if you can get your hands on the cash, i'd gladly build ya one and courier it down! It seriously laughs off everything in its pathway :p

Cheap fast upgrades: wack a gig of RAM in it and bin the 512, thats only 25 quid, unless you can match the ram and keep the 512 too. Ive got a spare 512 stick about if you want it. I recommend downloading a registry and temporary file cleaner as well as the defrag, get one here at www.ccleaner.com. Failing this, you want to do a format and rebuild.
 
Mine is only 2,4 Ghz and I can handle 30 tracks with FX until it begins to do stoopid things because it is a matter of Ram. I only have 1 Gh and it's the minimum requiered for these typo of things. I can't use DFHS, or big sample VSTi's.

Try upgrading your RAM.
Scandisk, Defragment, run a Spyware, very important, most home PC's are full of silly programs opened that don't do anyhting but fucking your CPU.

If all fails... FORMAT C:
Reinstall everything and use your PC only for recording purposes.
 
@jesterroot4 :

just in case....
Of course the computer is not connected to the Internet ?? If it is... well don't even think about it.

The CPU is all right I think.

2 HDD help. One with the OS and softwares, and another with the audio projects and audio files.

For me. Buy 1 gig ram and a second HDD (SATA is better, if your motherboard supports it).
Format that new-born-sucker. Re-install everything on your C:. Once you have your config ready like you want it, make a backup with Norton Ghost or something like this. So next time it's faster if you wanna clean up everything.
 
I've got two gigs of Ram, next machine will have four.

It's dirtcheap now, max out your machine. (more Ram will also reduce swapfileactivity)
 
Couple questoins first...

What is the OS?
What is the speed of your Hard Drive access time?
What is the advertised L2 Cache?
Front Side Bus Speed?
What type of memory does it take?

Knowing these will be able to tell you if the computer is even worth upgrading or if you need a totally new unit.

Besides that you should...

- Upgrade RAM (must)
- Page File Space (Increase to the max)
- Uninstall anything that runs all-the-time. Toolbars, search apps (Indexing kills), animated cursors, etc...

Tip: if you reformat the machine, patition your physical disk into an OS drive (C:) and a data drive (D:). This is good for performance, speed and reliability. Also, if you OS gets hosed you can reformat it without have to worry about your data getting killed.
 
jesterroot4 said:
lol yah i'v learned alot about maintaining the project and adjusting settings to make it easier to mix, but its the little things like running 3 instances of amplitube and maybe drumagog etc.. mainly as i dont have a nice beafy amp and my bass amp sounds like shite.

if my band had stuff finished, it would be fine, because i could then mix down the completed guitar tracks then remove amplitube, but we record as we write, so that makes things awquard.
Click to expand...

No... I meant maintaining your computer. Granted, three instances of Amplitube don't help, but you need to keep malware and such under control.

Try this, if you can't bear to get rid of Amplitube in real-time: duplicate all of your tracks, process one of the copies individually (so that you'll always be listening to pre-rendered tracks) and mute the tracks with the second copies, pulling them out only if you need to re-do Amplitube settings.

EDIT: Yes, we could have thrown in the obligatory Apple plug, but I tend to get a little annoyed when people say that anything short of blown eardrums or a Behringer product is hindering their ability to learn mixing techniques.

Jeff
 
actofvengence said:
How much are we talking about here?
Click to expand...

Ive recently done a quad q6600 (overclocked from 2.4 to 3.0ghz completely stable on stock cooler), 2GB RAM and a 400gig disk for £450 for one of my mates :cool: (complete with 1 years warranty and normally my mobile phone number for technical support haha). I've started building dual boot systems for most now, as XP is great but they always love to play with Vista, it's just i dont have 100% confidence in Vista yet, and won't for a long long time to come.
The q6600's go like absolute hell, and will go beyond 6 ghz if you get into liquid nitrogen cooling :) (admittadly not your everyday run of the mill, but i've seen 4ghz on air, and a little more on water) You could get a few instances of C4 going then lol! :kickass:

(my actual machine now is a q6600 @ 3.6ghz, 4GB RAM, 720GB HDD, NVIDIA 8800GT)
 
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