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Building A DAW (Digital
Audio Workstation)
The DAW;
Some back ground first. I am a system builder
(daytime job)... I've been building machines from desktop PC's to
Multi-purpose Servers and domain controllers, Security Video
Surveillance DVRS, and Audio/Video DAWS for over 10 years now. So
when it came time to build a DAW I had a foothold and understanding
in the industry so to speak.
The PC plays the most important part in the DAW equation.
And the best computer for a DAW is a Clone. The term Clone comes
from the old days when IBM had the market share of PC's. Simply put
a Clone is a PC that is not an IBM PC, or in today's world of
computers is not a Branded machine...Dell, Gateway, IBM, etc...
Why is the Clone the best PC to Build a DAW?
Because you have control over what goes inside, complete Open
Architecture. You can put in the best components available on
the market today, and later on upgrade them at a low cost.
Your first decision is what platform you will go
with, Intel or AMD. There are some things to consider such as
what Audio software will you be using. There is a lot of
controversy around the Intel or AMD platforms. Which is better?
Both platforms are competitively competent. Some differences
would be the cost factor for one, AMD has always been the less
expensive of the two. And issues such as the denormal issuse
which the Intel P4's are suffering with as of this article.
Selecting the right CASE;
For a Case stick with ANTEC, they have some of the
quietest power supply and case fans around. Also get one with a
power supply of at least 400 watts. The case below, made by Antec is
a large case primarily designed for server applications. Plenty of
room for airflow and cooling, which is the up most important reason
for selecting a DAW case, as well as room for extra hard drives and
case fans.
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Open the case and lay it down on it's side. Remove the hard drive cage,
unwrap the power supply connectors and move them out of the way. Do the
same for any front panel connectors or wires. Next locate the
spacing of the mounting holes on your motherboard and install the
brass stand-offs that came with the case. |
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Now install the I/O shield that came with the motherboard into the case
from the inside. |
The Central Processing Unit (CPU);
I prefer the AMD64 Processors. These are 64bit
processors that have an FSB (front side bus) of 2000Mhz, opposed to the
32bit processors running at 800Mhz. This means that the data path to and
from this processor is twice as wide as the 32 bit ones. This year, 2005 AMD is coming
out with Dual Core Processors and if your audio recording app has
support for multi processors, Cubase does, then you can take advantage
of this technology.
When installing the processor be very careful not to bend the pins.
Inspect the pins before you attempt to install it by looking at them
from two sides of the processor. they should be in straight rows. If you
find any bent pins you will need to very gently straighten them with a
flat peace of metal, like one of the PCI expansion slot shields. DO NOT
OVER BEND THEM!!! Your looking for fairly straight as they will
straighten them selves in the Ziff socket. |
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Make sure that the motherboard is on a flat surface
and an anti-static mat like the foam sheet that comes with the board.
You should install the CPU and ram on this before you put it in the case
so you don't crack the board.
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Notice the gold arrow on the top corner of the CPU line it up with the
white arrow on the motherboard, lift the lever all the way up on the
Ziff socket, place the processor on the socket and it should fall in
place on its own. hold it down lightly with one finger and put the lever
back down to lock it in place. |
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Now place the Fan and heat sink on the processor, making sure it is
centered and hooked on the side without the lever, and with the lever
hook it down and then lock it down in place with the lever lock inplace.
Remember to connect the fan connector to the motherboard where it's
labeled CPU Fan.
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RAM Memory;
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For RAM you will want to use good memory, Crucial PC3200 (DDR400
512MB) or Kingston PC3200 (DDR400 512MB), which is on the Asus short
list of tested and approved memory, four sticks will give you 2GB of
RAM. Also always use the same type of Ram. It's important that you use
the same configuration (Speed and Clock Level as well as the same
manufacturer). Yes you can mix-up manufacturers and it will work but
certain inconsistencies can cause all sorts of problems so why take a
chance. I learnt this from experience the hard way.
Line up the notch on the Dimm (stick of ram) with the notch in the Dimm
slots on the board. With the lock wings out press down evenly and gently
until the wings snap into place. Now press down the wings and pop out
the Dimm, then replace it the same way you put it in the first time.
This helps to seat the Dimm properly. You will notice it went in easier
the second time as well. Do this for all the remaining Dimms.
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The Motherboard;
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So let's say you want to use an AMD64 processor. You will
need to find a good socket 939 motherboard that supports it. Go with an ASUS board and you will
have no problems. A good match would be the A8V Deluxe board. |
| First using the motherboard manual, make sure any and all jumpers on
the board are set correctly. Place the board in the case guiding it
through the I/O shield then line up the mounting holes with the
stand-offs. Screw in the middle screw first, don't tighten them down
until all the screws are in place. Then with a small screw driver finger
tighten then screws so that they're snug. DO NOT OVER TIGHTEN!!! you
could crack the board. |
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The next thing to do is to connect the power supply to the
motherboard. Look for the tab on both the board and the PS connector and
gently press into place.
After that it's time to connect all the front panel connectors to the
front panel header on the motherboard. Make sure to pay attention to the
polarity of the connectors and pin-outs on the motherboard. The + lead
of the connector has an arrow on the back side. |
Expansion Cards, Hard Drives & Optical Drives;
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Now Install any optical drives and hard drives you have and connect
the power leads to them them. Also make sure that you set them to be
master or slave if they are sharing the same controller on the same
cable. You should use two hard drives set as master/single on different
controllers. Use one drive as a System/Programs drive on the primary IDE
channel, and the other as a Recording/Storage drive on the RAID IDE
channel of the ASUS A8V board. More on this later...
Video cards are a synch. I use ATI cards with dual monitor heads,
Svga and Dvi, and have no problems. You will need a Dvi to Svga adapter
to run a second monitor.
The memory on these cards should be anywhere from 64 to 256MB.
The video card plays a low requirement equation to building a DAW since
we are building for Audio and not Video. Install this next making sure
you pay attention to the lock on the back of the AGP slot. Now
install your Multi-Channel Recording Interface Card in slot three. Why
slot three? Slot three is usually on it's own IRQ. I have never had any
conflicts when using this slot. Screw down the cards and connect
any thing else that needs to be like the Midi connector if you need to
use it. It would be better to use the ones on your pro sound device if
it comes with them. |
Hard drives are crucial. Throughout the industry stable hard
drives have gone from one manufacturer to another, from IBM to Western Digital
to Seagate.
The things to be looking for when selecting a hard drive is, quiet
performance, 8MB buffer, Spindle speeds (7200 or higher recommended), EIDE, SCSI
or SATA.
With the great advances in the manufacturing of hard drives the EIDE
hard drive is the over-all best for cost and performance. SATA drives are
the new comer to the market. Simply put they are or where developed from the
SCSI drive to fit a new I/O. And today's audio recording programs along
with the OS advancements are better at the read and write operations than they
use to be.
I like the Seagate drives at the moment. You will need at least 2
drives running on their own channels as master. For this I would put a
Controller card in the computer also, unless you use the A8V which you can set
the RAID controller as an extra IDE channel . One drive will be for the O/S and
your recording program. The other partitioned for recording and track storage.
Remember to back-up your work!!! I back-up to DVD, DVD format will give you
4.7GB on a single sided media.
When partitioning a hard drive to be used for recording using
Windows XP you want to put the recording partition being the first partition on
the drive, which starts from the center of the hard drive and works out to the
edge. This way when recording to the drive it will put less strain on the
system. Also format the drive in NTFS with a 64K cluster size. This
enables you to utilize large chunks of data. For partition size 20 or 40 GB will
do unless you plan on recording for hours on end or use resolutions like 96Khz.
Still you will only be working with one song at any given time then move it to
the storage partition. The second partition on the recording drive can be used
for track storage when you are not working on a song. You will need to copy the
song folder to the record drive when you are going to be working on the song and
adding more tracks. Doing this makes the computer and hard drive's work a
lot easier. For the System Drive partition it as well. Use a partition
in the range of 10 - 20 GB for the first partition on this drive for the
Operating System and programs. If You use VSTi's,Impulses or Samples either put them on a
second partition on the O/S Drive or their own drive. and remember
to defrag your hard drives before a session for optimum performance.
Use the 64K cluster size for the second partition if you plan to use this for
VSTi's and impulses as well.
If you need to use this computer for tasks other than just recording you can
install a hard drive carriage with removable drawers so you can boot to different
setups and configurations.
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Windows XP;
Your Windows XP should be tweaked for optimum
performance. See the atrticles at
http://www.musicxp.net
One word of advice - Newer motherboards are all ACPI
compliant so Do Not disable this and install XP in
Standard PC mode.
Also NTFS is native to Windows XP and will offer you the best
performance and file structure stability over FAT32.
After you install Windows XP, SP1 (preferably) and any
motherboard drivers, video card drivers, sound drivers. Install all your
recording apps.
Then after you configured your machine and disable network devices and other
things it's all done and set to run.
I would now take an image of the Primary Hard disk (System Drive both
partitions).
I use True Image by Acronis
www.acronis.com . If you can install it on your other System Hard drive you
use for desktop publishing and internet and make a bootable copy. Then boot to
it and make the image and save it to the other hard disk to be burnt to DVD.
This save a lot of time if you have to replace a hard drive or get your machine
back to the original configuration. As time goes on and you upgrade/add software
and plug-ins you can take another image to keep up to date but keep the older
ones to fall back to just in case.
Next Part 2 the multiface sound device: |
