Starting over from square one.

[haywire]

In the past several months, I started using vectorlinux. I had had some previous experience with linux, red hat and suse, but I found vector suited my current needs much better (for multimedia/sound software)
The multimedia bonus disc really sold me, and ALL the applications installed right from the cd with no major problems, except for ardour, but I think that was a hardware problem.

The spare pc I had vector installed on, an old 600mhz p3 was running great. I noticed especially that I just enjoyed my day to day work on this computer much more than any windows machine. Today I was horrified to find my hard drive had total hardware failure. While I did take the time to backup my graphics and music work, I never backed up the actual os. So here I am now going CRAP! Months of work customizing and loading software and now my hard drive crapped out.

The good news is that I found a much faster pc at a flea market for 25.00$ its a 2ghz p4 with 512 megs of ram. Lucky for me, the guy didn't know how new this pc was or I'm sure he'd have asked much more.

Thats quite an upgrade. One major problem I found on my previous vector pc is that I was never able to get ardour working recording and playback at the same time. I tried alot of things but eventually decided it must have just been that the ancient soundcard was not full duplex. My tracking software, milkytracker and renoise, worked just beautifully, though renoise choked alot due to not enough horsepower.

Now I am getting readyto start over, but before I did, I was hoping someone who did manage to get ardour recording and playing back at the time time could tell me what soundcard you are using.

I'm fine with buying even a pretty expensive soundcard if I am sure it will work with vectorlinux and ardour. Ardour install out of the box on vector was the main reason I chose vector in the first place. I was very happy with just Milky-tracker and renoise running beautifully on my linux system, but I REALLY want to get ardour recording and working correctly on the new pc.

If you installed ardour and used it enough to be able to playback and record at the same time, PLEASE tell me what soundcard you are using. I'm kind of happy this happened, because now I will be able to hopefully get ardour running, which was my original goal in the first place. I guess I got sidetracked just tracking music, then didn't get around to fixing whatever the problem was. Besides this, a p3 600 would not allow very many tracks on a multitrack recording program without problems The new pc I have for my new and improved vector box should run 24-48 tracks with no problems at all. I would think so anyhow. A pc that fast in windows can do so without problems with cakewalk, cubase or cooledit pro.

Other dumb questions... Has anyone been able to get cooledit pro running on linux with wine or win4lin? If so, I'd appreciate any advice you may have. Thats what I use on my windows pc, and all my recording sessions are in that format. If I could get it running on linux, I'd never touch a windows pc again except at work, where I am forced to use a windows pc.

Also, has anyone used one of those PCI dual IDE controllers in vector linux? I have one and I think I'd like to try installing it on the new box. 8 IDE devices sure beats 4. I have alot of 20-80gig ide hard drives around and recording on pc can take alot of space. having 6 or 7 hard drives also sure helps me organize my sessions and sample collections more effectively.

Finally, one last stupid question, but does vector linux support multi-processors? A friend has a 4 processor xenon processor motherboard with 2 gigs of ram and 4 2.2ghz processors. I'm pretty sure since vector uses the kernal that supports multi-processors it will take advantage of them, but I wanted to be sure before deciding if I want to plop down that much money on what may end up being my dream vector box.
Man, multitasking on that kind of box would be sweet! Gotta scrape up some money, but I think this may be my dream audio machine, especially if I can get an 8in/8out 24 bit soundcard working with ardour.
Do you have a machine with multiple processors? What is your experience like with the extra processors and vector linux? I'm especially interested in hearing from people who use multiple processors and do audio recording or music work on their vector boxes.

Thanks for your thoughts...

I'm off to assemble my new vector pc. Gotta dig for some parts and things, but mostly I have a pile here waiting to be assembled. This time I am using a BRAND new IDE hard drive. I hope the new pc will take vector and me to new heights...

Thanks guys!

Steven

[bigpaws]

I have no experience with recording and music so that I can't help.

I do however run multi core machines. Here are some things that
may help you. First if the application is not smp aware then it
will use only one core. Any thing you use will not be faster than the
core of the processor, in other words a 2.2 ghz core will not go any
faster than that. If you are gaming and have dual core 2.2 for example
the game will not play any faster than a 2.2 single core machine.

HTH

Bigpaws

[nightflier]

I only have experience with a couple of these things, but will add my $0.02:

Having multiple cores does seem to help. The main advantage is that the system remains usable to do other jobs even if one core is at 100% encoding music.

I have used the add-in PCI IDE/SATA cards with few problems. I remember one was RAID only, would not let me configure individual drives. Otherwise, they are quite simple and work well. When you start adding a lot of hard drives, consider power consumption and heat dissipation. Make sure your power supply is up to the task and add more case fans to keep the system cool.

[haywire]

Considering my money situation <- The situation is also called being poor.

I think I will be making due with the single processor motherboard for awhile. I planned on using a full tower case I've had around for awhile, that should help with heat if I add an internal fan. Also since the case has room for 2 power supplies, I think I'll use the main  ps to power the motherboard, cd rom and floppy and use a second power supply to power all the hard drives If I do go beyond 3.

The pci dual hd controller I have allows you to configure the individual drives in windows, so hopefully that will work in linux also. I'm still hoping to hear more about ardour and the soundcard issues. Anyone?

Steven

[exeterdad]

That was definitely a fantastic flea market find!  Keep your eyes peeled for a dual processor machine in the future though.  Even hyper-threading.  Which is old now, should be cheap and will act like two cores.  I've seen your stuff you posted when you first joined us.  You definitely will benefit from two cores.  If you can swing it.

Not sure what defines poor.  Just when you think you have it rough, you hear of others that have it worse.  But I sure can relate to not having the money to finance all the "extra's" in life.

[rbistolfi]

About the 24 bits soundcard, you should be fine picking any 24 bit full duplex capable soundcard from here:
http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main
An example would be the famous delta44 by Maudio http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Delta44-main.html wich is cheap and pretty powerful.
Ardour is very nice, you even can compile it yourself for getting Steinberg VST plugins support (it cant be distributed with that option enabled because of licensing issues.)
I own a maya44, and support for it was added a few weeks ago via a patch for the 1.0.17 alsa version, I will have to make the time to play with it