q10 vs. 2408 mkIII +compatibility. Help.

[nakedjackson]

After months of researching, i finally decided to go with dual athlon MP processors (1900 or higher, 1 gig or higher ram, and cubase sx windows xp. I am looking for a great soundcard right now, and am looking at the aardvark q10 or the motu 2408. However, i've been told that the most important thing is compatability with your soundcard and motherboard with your os. What Motherboard/chipset would be most compatible with My processor and either of these 2 soundcards. Which would be a better choice? help!

[Unwired]

Based on everything I have read, when using AMD processors stay away from VIA chipset motherboards. There has been a lot of success out there using motherboards based on SIS or Nvidia. Why have you decided on dual Athlon MPs? I have seen many more systems being built for DAWs using single Athlon XPs with a lot of RAM. I am planning on using an Athlon XP 2600+, 1 gig DDR ram and an ASUS 87NX Deluxe motherboard (Nvidia nForce2). I don't know that you will get much of a performance boost from dual MPs.
You will see varied results throughout this forum and others on both the Q10 and the MOTU 2408, but by and large folks are having good success with both. They both have ASIO drivers for Cubase.
Hope this helps.

[Boom]

MOTU is for Mac, they dont like PC's.

Aardvark has driver issues that will never be solved.

I would check out RME cards, seem to be pretty awesome and everyone raves about them.
http://www.rme-audio.com/

[nakedjackson]

unwired: I'm going for the dual processors because of the amount of soft synths and plug ins i plan on using, and because life is just that much better with MORE POWER!!! And of course i'll get a HUGE power boost from the duals. If i get dual 2.2 processors, thats 4.8 Ghz under my belt.

boost: i checked the RME website, and while everything seems cool, i need a multi input soundcard like the 2408 or the q10.

Also, anyone have any links to the recommended chipsets for: dual MP processors, the aardvark q10 or the 2408? People keep saying they should be on the manufacturers website, but i can't find em.

[Unwired]

nakedjackson: I realize dual processors provide more power but typically it will not be anywhere near 2x. While Cubase is designed to take advantage of dual processors, the system still has to share ram, hard drives, etc. Depending on the application the true performance difference between dual processors and single processors can be minor. I don't know of any head to head tests of dual vs single CPUs for Cubase. You may want to check out the following link to Cubase forum thread on dual vs single CPUs. http://forum.cubase.net/forum/Forum5/HTML/005573.html

[nakedjackson]

unwired:

Thanks for the eye opener man. I did read up on the dual processor issue and saw that for cubase sx, the gain seems to be fairly substantial. Would you be able to point me in the direction of tested chipsets with the dual MP/cubase sx/aardvark q10 or 2408? I've heard good things about the tyan mobos with dual mp's. Help!

[dhassay]

( MOTU is for Mac, they dont like PC's.
Aardvark has driver issues that will never be solved. )

The above statement is just crap and untrue. Dont listen to this kind of ignorance. do a search on q10 threads and you will see the bad comments about the old drivers but now and for some time the drivers have been rock solid as long as you have a compatible DAW like not using a via chipset. go buy a q10 and be very very happy like the rest of us q10 owners.

[joemix]

My Q10 worked best on a VIA P3 board.

There are indeed problems with the Aardvark driver that will never be fixed.. like the way it locks up the computer for a while when the Aardvark service is started, you will notice this upon boot.. certian chipsets excluded, this affects all boards that support PC2700 and faster DDR RAM as well as all RDRAM boards. It's also interesting that your computer will also hang similarly when DirectX(for example; Windows Media Player) is instantiated with "Processor Scheduling" set to "Backgroud".

Just food for though, and btw Aardvark is aware of these problems. from what I've gathered it's not a high priority, or a priority at all for them.

I realize some people paid a lot of money for their sound cards, and don't like to think there might be problems.. therefore I think it's necessary to be objective here.

[This message has been edited by joemix (edited 02-03-2003).]

[Boom]

Originally posted by dhassay:
( MOTU is for Mac, they dont like PC's.
Aardvark has driver issues that will never be solved. )

The above statement is just crap and untrue. Dont listen to this kind of ignorance. do a search on q10 threads and you will see the bad comments about the old drivers but now and for some time the drivers have been rock solid as long as you have a compatible DAW like not using a via chipset. go buy a q10 and be very very happy like the rest of us q10 owners.




Is that you Ben? http://www.audioforums.com/forums/smile.gif


Your crazy if you think the Q10 driver is finished. Just because it works on your box doesnt mean it works as advertised.

[Unwired]

NakedJackson:

Regarding dual CPU motherboards, they have been used mostly in the server market where Tyan has an excellent reputation. I believe their Athlon MP board is called Thunder K7. You may want to check out the following at Tom's Hardware Guide. http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/20020211/index.html

Since they are aimed at the server market dual CPU boards are typically quite expensive but rock solid. Also they do not typically come with the feature set you find with desktop boards such as onboard USB 2.0 or IEEE 1394.

I don't think you will find a specific review of the Tyan board with running Cubase. Since server boards have very high reliability standards I doubt the board will be an issue. You will have much fewer choices in chipsets.

Hope this helps.

[nakedjackson]

thanks unwired, that's tons of help. You have to become like a computer programmer and technician just to know what parts you should buy for your DAW. Fukkin 'a man. I have been researching the q10 and the driver issue seems to be one that for the most part has been solved. Also, many people seem to be in love with the preamps in the q10, so it looks good.

[Unwired]

nakedjackson:

Glad to be of help. I know you started this thread based on the Q10 and the MOTU 2408 but let me throw one other out that you might want to look at. Have you given consideration to the Egosys WamiRack 192X? If not, you may want to look into it. It has a great feature set for the price. I have not bought one but I am leaning heavily in that direction.

[theengine]

I have a dual 2200+ MP system. Tyan s2462 on bios 2.13. 1 gig ecc mem, 1 36 gig and 1 73 gig LVD scsi IBMs. Delta 66 with omni studio, Pinnacle Sys DV500, Hauppauge Wincast TV, ATI 9500 (SoftFireGL). External I have the Oxygen 8 and midiman 4x4. A Sony DRX500UL dvdr+. I am just starting out again in music. I spent years with my fostex 160 then faded away from playing and got into 3d graphics. As far as I can tell, the only issues I have are with the midiman Oxygen 8 drivers and XP. I have gotten that "process has locked pages" on both my Athlon and my P4 (XPC SB51G) systems. I plan on buying a higher quality interface such as a Q10 or Delta 1010, but I'm still reading. As far as working with the Athlon, its butter smooth and very stable. The new Tyan s2462 BIOS supports 2600+ MPs, which compared to a single 3.06HT P4 is still a deal and beats it in software that supports dual CPU. I have not read enough to see if the higher memory bandwidth of a P4 makes a huge difference over a dual athlon's number crunching ability in music applications such as softsynths ect. But the Tyan board is a great product. Don't expect to overclock and you'll need to add fancy firewire and USB2 thingies if you need them. Its a BIG board, so you'll need a case for it and special power supply (I have the antec 510w). Good luck.

[Royal Tee]

NakJax,Your decision is Fine as far as DUAL goes. I just finished building my Dually and it was a project in research for over a year.Here is my setup (http://www.audioforums.com/forums/Forum4/HTML/003946.html)
Make sure you research because 1 bad decision will cause instability through out your system i.e. DDR REG Ram,Updated Drivers,etc. As far as recommendations go. you can get alot of help @ 2CPU.com Forums (http://forums.2cpu.com/) . Good luck and feel free to ask if you need any more help. http://www.audioforums.com/forums/wink.gif

[This message has been edited by Royal Tee (edited 02-19-2003).]

[Nick Driver]

I just installed a MOTU 2408 Mk III into a Windows PC DAW I built for a friend and it's working as advertised just fine. This machine has an Intel brand mobo with i850 chipset, 1GB rambus, P4 2.0a GHz Northwood cpu, Win 2000 Pro. Seems to work flawlessly thus far using whatever drivers came provided on the install cdrom.

[knowdoubt]

I think you'll find these days that MOTU works better on a PC than Aardvark. I believe MOTU has had it's PC drivers in good working order for quite some time now & has no PC compatibility issues, except maybe with the occasional VIA chipset, but what soundcard doesn't.

Not sure why your choice is between the Q10 & the MKIII because they are hardly comparable except they both have 8 analog I/O, but from that point on they go separate directions. The Q10 has built in preamps & the MKIII doesn't. The MKIII has ADAT light pipe & the Q10 doesn't.

One little note on the MOTU. The superior 15 ft light weight firewire interface from the breakout to the PC that MOTU has been using for a couple years now is a little hint at how ahead of the game & more computer savvy their engineering teem is than most. Most of the rest including Aardvark are still using that heavy & relatively short computer connector with the humongous plug on the end. Why don't they use the much slicker, lighter weight, longer & more convenient hookup firewire interface???... because they have yet to figure out how to.

[knowdoubt]

[This message has been edited by knowdoubt (edited 02-19-2003).]