What is...

[GoodMoney]

This is gettin on my nerves lol all I wanna do I make music but the bull ish keeps preventing me. I think I may just try a new soundcard and see if that works, or maybe a firewire interface might be a slolution as opposed to the usb 2.0 which is supposed to be fast but, not soo much...

[logic7]

This is gettin on my nerves lol all I wanna do I make music but the bull ish keeps preventing me. I think I may just try a new soundcard and see if that works, or maybe a firewire interface might be a slolution as opposed to the usb 2.0 which is supposed to be fast but, not soo much...

Unless you have a need for a USB or FW interface (use it with a laptop as well as your desktop), your best bet is to go for a PCI card. The M-Audio series of cards are excellent, E-Mu is good, but they're drivers had been spotty in the past. Creamware is the ultimate stuff. Expensive (the cheapest card, a SCOPE Home, runs $400), but simply the best you can buy.

[krushing]

SCOPE has a bit different...scope that most "normal" soundcards - the focus is on the DSP, you'll only get a stereo analog input and the rest is digital - so you'd still need a separate a/d box to go with that. I'd look at RME or MOTU if you wanna go to the higher end (not that there's anything wrong with the CW stuff, I just feel it's a bit off-kilter suggestion for a soundcard).

[logic7]

SCOPE has a bit different...scope that most "normal" soundcards - the focus is on the DSP, you'll only get a stereo analog input and the rest is digital - so you'd still need a separate a/d box to go with that. I'd look at RME or MOTU if you wanna go to the higher end (not that there's anything wrong with the CW stuff, I just feel it's a bit off-kilter suggestion for a soundcard).

For a PC, I'd never recommend MOTU. Their focus is MacOS and Win32 is always an afterthought. I loved their older MIDI interfaces and used Unisyn daily until I sold off my last piece of compatible hardware, but their audio interfaces have long been dogged with driver issues.

You're right; RME is great stuff.

As for Creamware, yeah, the focus IS on the DSP hosting. It's like getting a first rate audio card with a TC Powercore or UAD-1 built-in. I was looking at it more from a latency point of view since that what the OP was having an issue with. Creamware stuff has next to no latency thanks to the DSP.

[ruptured]

No, really it isn't. The Pentium D-820 is quite a good processor. while not a Core-series processor, it's no slouch, even today.

It is a slouch. Technology advances rapidly. Whereas the D series might be okay for light processing and office use, it falls short when dealing with multimedia. His latency is predominantly a problem inherent to the fact that the pentium D is.. slow, doesnt utilize both cores effectively and is just plain inefficient. Sorry.

[logic7]

It is a slouch. Technology advances rapidly. Whereas the D series might be okay for light processing and office use, it falls short when dealing with multimedia. His latency is predominantly a problem inherent to the fact that the pentium D is.. slow, doesnt utilize both cores effectively and is just plain inefficient. Sorry.

Then please explain why I'm able to get 5ms latency out of my Athlon XP2000, 1.3GHz Thunderbird (which the XP replaced), AND my P3-700???

Seriously, you need to do your homework. His latency has ZERO to do with his Pentium D. My primary laptop is a Dell Inspiron 630M with a 2GHz Pentium M on board. When I had my USB Fast Track, 5ms was attainable and 8ms was the norm under load. Now, by your reasoning I shouldn't have been able to do that seeing as how the M is much less of a processor than a D.

Y'all kill me with this sh_t... "... only good for light processing..."??? Bullsh_t. A Pentium D would do well under even massive loads like the stuff I do here in the office. "Office use"??? Dude... seriously, even a P2 does well for office use with XP, Office 2003, etc.

A couple of years ago, y'all would have hailed the Pentium D as the best you can get. Honestly, not much has changed since then. WinXP is still the primary PC OS, ProTools MP was released back then and it's CPU requirements haven't changed much since then (though it can now utilize SMP, making it run much faster on a D than on a P4). Sonar went from 5 to 7, and it's requirements haven't changed AT ALL (don't believe me? Look for it), Cubase SX2 and 3 have identical requirements as well, but Cubase 4 went up ever so slightly (from 800MHz proc to 1.4GHz proc). Even FL Studio works fine on "outdated" hardware (I have FLS5 running on my P233MMX laptop!).



So tell me, if the DAW minimum requirements have barely moved, if at all, since the Pentium D's were released (late '05), and ONLY ProTools requires barely anything more than a 1.4GHz P4 or Thunderbird (not even an XP... a lowly TBird!!!), why WOULDN'T the Pentium D do well in a DAW??? If the bulk of you are using samples for production, guess what? Sample playback requires the LEAST amount of processing power. Virtual synths? Yeah, they do require a bit (especially NI's Massive), but not nearly as much as you could imagine. If I can run 16 tracks of pure software synthesis on a lowly XP2000, then a Pentium D machine would be far more capable than my rig. I have a track right now that I can only open on my 630M 'cause I'm using NI Massive, but even with that I'm not even running close to full tilt.

I still run CGI apps on my primary desktop (3DS Max, TrueSpace, and Bryce), still use photoshop, and when I flip it to the linux install, I'm working in Blender and compiling C/C++. No problems. By your definition, I should only be able to check email and surf the web.