The best single choices for a DAW

[Conejo]

Hi folks.
I'm researching all the best components to buid the strongest audio workstation I can afford. Hope you could help me on this.

First of all, a mobo with dual processor support(Intel's Xeon or P4?), firewire/USB and no onboard card(planning to get a RME Multiface). Anyone knows a board like this?

About HD's for samples and audio recording: SCSI or two in a RAID connection?
Memory: Corsair XMS, 1GB DDR
Video card: MATROX G550 32MB DDR
Well, that's how far i went after an exaustive research.
Please help with any advices. I dont want to spend my sweaty money on some pre built DAW for half of the raw power we can get nowadays.
cheers,
conejo

[wogg]

HDD: SCSI or RAID are a bit of overkill nowadays, unless your interested in video editing. The Western Digital special edition drives are an excellent choice (7200RPM with 8Mb buffers) and can easily stream over 100 tracks.

CPU: There's a lot of debate over this but it has been shown by many users that an Athlon processor handles DAW work better (at very least, cheaper) than the intel chips. The floating point unit in the AMD's is far supurior to Intel. Look into a Athlon dually. I've heard good things about the Tyan motherboards like the Tiger MPX. www.2cpu.com (http://www.2cpu.com) is a good reference. Heck if money is no object the opteron systems should be coming into retail channels soon and are very fast.

Your memory and video choices will do the job nicely.

Happy building!

[wolfpuppy]

If you ever plan on doing any 3D work the G550 is going to take forever. I think it was a good card in its day, but its day was over two years ago.

[Rico]

Are you going to use the DAW strictly for audio? If so the Matrox card is fine. There is no need to be on the bleeding edge with your DAW platform.

I would suggest that you select your audio card and application software first. Then select a canadidate board/cpu combo and search these forums for known compatibility issues.

[Conejo]

THnks, folks.
A few new issues...
The new 64 bit AMD opteron? must be the future, but regarding todays softwares and hardware, will this processor be able to read 32 bit operations without problems? Or should I go dual Tyan, as Wogg proposed?

Rico: I'm working with Reason/Cubase/Wavelabs, handling as much VSTs and plugins I can afford. Any sugestion for a virtual sampler? I'm thinking in go MachFive, because of the universal compatibility.
Sound Card: i'm in between the Lynx and a RME Multiface. Anyone has tested and compared the A/D conversion quality? And what about the Tascam US-428 converters? Any issue about these cards and the softwares quoted above?http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bh5.sph/FrameWork.class?FNC=ProductActivator__Aproductlist _html___274773___TAUS428J___REG___CatID=2802___SID =F51EA842BB0
thnks again, and cheers from Brasil. Soon you'l hear about this band called Suvaca diPrata. http://www.audioforums.com/forums/cool.gif

[wogg]

The Opteron is a 32bit CPU with extended registers and instructions for future 64bit applications. It runs 32bit code just as quickly as the current Athlon's and is enhanced a bit further primarily with extra cache and the on-die memory controller allowing the lowest latency memory access on the market.

The only issue I would worry about is that it's so new, nobody's had the chance to really give it a workout in a DAW.

[Chaser]

conejo,

I use gigastudio 160. Ive got about 150 sample cds in various formats, mainly akai though. they all work fine.
I run it side by side with SX flawlessly on a p4 2.53 with a hammerfall 9652 i/o

the great thing about giga is that it doesnt use much resources - i gave it its own harddrive and use the latest multi-client gsif/asio drivers.
I'm guessing that mach5 will use more processing as its a pluggin..but i don't know. also i don't think you can do as much to the sounds editing-wise.