Slashdot Mirror
Solid-State Mini-ITX Linux Recording Studio HOWTO
An anonymous reader submits "LinuxDevices.com has posted a project howto on building a dedicated music recording and editing computer that uses a CompactFlash card instead of a hard drive, to eliminate hard disk chatter. It uses the latest release from the Agnula (GNU/Linux Audio) project, and the newest Epia MII-12000 mini-ITX board from VIA. The method described in the article applies to embedding most any Knoppix-based Live CD onto CompactFlash boot media."
Dont flash cards have a maximum number of write operations? Or is that USB keys?
paul reinheimer
Moron, they just replaced their front page with a software protest one. Perhaps you should click through?
http://www.agnula.org/index2_html
Big problem with CompactFlash- you can kill the card. They have a very finite number of write cycles. It's in the millions, but you can burn through those VERY quickly if you aren't managing your writes. CompactFlash in a camera, for example, only sees sequential writes, so you can literally fill the card and erase it hundreds of thousands of times before it's zapped.
The same may be true when recording, but when you start talking about editing, things get messy. God help you if you put swap on the card.
CompactFlash also doesn't seem nearly fast enough for real time audio beyond maybe 1 or 2 channels.
Really, I don't see the point. Use a laptop; many modern laptop drives are so quiet you can barely hear them in a dead silent room, and if they're too noisy, run your cables into another room, or put a pillow or box over it, etc. You can buy a ton of memory at decent prices and use ramdisks if you're really concerned about HD noise.
Please help metamoderate.
Clicking on the "to enter the site click here" link, we find that the site (and the project) is up and running just fine.
... assuming the West doesn't just bully the Chinese and the Indians into adopting similiar measures and crippling their own tech industries as well.
Software patents will either be recinded, or software development will come to a screeching halt and ALL free software will be killed, not just this project.
In which case we can all just pack up and find another profession, or move somewhere other than the US and the EU (if current legislative trends continue). After the IT economy has been destroyed and innovation has moved to India and China, perhaps the US (and possibly EU) beurocrats and politicians will get their heads out of their asses and ban software patents
I am quite frankly amazed at the EU's stupidity in this, as it clearly benefits Microsoft and other big American firms, to the detriment of European startups such as Suse, Mandrake, et. al. But that is neither here nor there.
I will continue to develop and use free software (including this project) until such a time as $un, Micro$oft, or one of their stooges ($CO) kills free software dead, or reform occurs.
At which point I will continue to use and develop free software, until such a time as their thugs pry my keyboard from my cold, dead fingers...but that is a rant for another day.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Although they do redirect you to a page about software patents in Europe if you don't click though in 15 seconds.
Given the finite amount of write-cycles on CF media I think it'd be much more sensible to have the data written to an NFS-mounted partition on a fast (and noisy) remote host. Put GBit cards in both machines and performance should also be way better. The system partitions can stay on CF since they don't get written too that often (i.e. only during upgrades).
The solution, of course, is to use real audio interfaces, which will have an external breakout box and digital interface back to the computer from that point. At that point, the length of cables back to the computer become a lot less important.
For example, you could use a nice standalone A/D box with a ADAT-compatible output, then string your digital cable the 15 feet into your nicely isolated computer closet, where it enters an ADAT card. Run monitor and keyboard cables the 15 feet, and you have a system that can be as loud as it wants to be without getting anywhere near your recording.
Of course, for real recording, you're going to want to isolate control from recording, so you can have a somewhat noisy computer in control (so long as its noise factor is less than what you can tolerate during mix and edit).
This project is neat for geek factor, kinda like sticking SSH on your cellphone, but there are a lot of easier, more useable ways to minimize recorded noise.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
If you're doing a studio project with 4 instruments including a nice drum set, and it's a live band, you can expect to have at least 16 tracks, meaning 16x5 minutes of audio, or 80 minutes for one take. Assume 4 takes, and that's 320 minutes of record time, or about 2800 megs, for one song. I would anticipate needing to have 8-10 songs on the drive, and then burn the rest off to DAT's for mastering some other time, so that figures to around 20 gb free. That's my experience from being in real (see: records artists you've heard of) production studios more than a few times.
stuff |
I real "pro" would have a good soundcard, with a digital input/output. He/she would then use an external DAC/ADC to get sounds in and out of the computer without (as much) fear of interference.
jffs2 is much more conscious about write behavior, so I'd strongly recommend it for anything on a flash filesystem.
Anyway, the main reason compact flash is rather slow is simply the fact that few people need high throughput. There are cards these days that sustain a throughput of 15M/s, but they're only meant for high-end cameras. While flash is slower than RAM, it's still considerably faster than mechanical devices, so I'd expect this number to go higher.
The Raven
And use the EigerStein router on a floppy: http://lrp.steinkuehler.net/DiskImages/Eiger/Eiger Stein.htm
External firewire/USB/Box on a cable has been the only way to get good recordings of analog inputs on a PC for years. As long as you do you A to D outside the box your fine.
No sir I dont like it.
A lot of people seem to be missing something, here. Like a Live CD, this system runs on a ramdisk, not on the CF card. With 512MB of RAM, you get about 300MB of free space, which is okay for recording a song or two at a time, even ones with a bunch of tracks. You only write the keepers onto the CF card.
:-)
The CF card will support 100,000 writes, and includes wear-leveling features that use the whole card, not just certain spots. So, realistically, I figure my musical inspiration will wear out long before the CF would fail. Like, LONG before.
Also, the hard drive chatter comes from RF interference inside the case produced by the rotating magnetic disk and the electricity in the cable -- not the actual sound of the hard drive. --Henry K. (article author)
Sure the SB Live it's not über-pro, but isn't that bad either. In fact I'd say it's the best entry-level card around
The Live is significantly noisier than the TB Santa Cruz, if you want to compare consumer cards. The "best entry-level card around" (for home recording) is probably the Audiophile 2496.
The Live pretty much sucks for anything other than gaming.
The SBLive and other consumer cards don't have good A/D converters. You can spend thousands on a good one. However, the Delta line of interfaces from m-audio have a good reputation for low-end DAWs.
:)
If you've already got a capable computer system, look at a Delta 44 and Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 (or Sonar 3, if you have the money). It would be much cheaper than a comparable analog system. Be careful, though - home studios are a big money pit.
If you want a simple, relatively small and quiet, two channel recording rig, with equivalent sound quality to this, I highly suggest buying a fucking Minidisc or DAT deck, a decent mixer, and a couple good mics. Then you can dump it to a machine with decent editing tools later.
And the best part? It is silent.
What the hell advantage does this system have over a DAT deck and a computer with editing software worth using? None, because its a two-track system using a consumer-level sound card. Any gains you might make in reducing hard drive chatter will be totally overwhelmed by the crap quality of your A/D subsystem.
This thing is barely suitable for use as a two-track tracking machine, and there's no reason to edit on this thing as opposed to a decent PC which won't run into disk space or flash write limitations.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
The only real problem is that the VIA Envy 24 series chips don't do hardware mixing on Linux. VIA claims that the standard Envy 24 (not the HT model) does it, but it only works in Windows. Frankly, I think that they are possibly lying though. The EMU chips and the CS46xx (like those in the Santa Cruz) are probably some of the best choices for audio on Linux, even if they are considered to be "consumer-grade". There is no doubt in my mind that some of M-Audio's hardware has a better S/N ratio and THD than that of the Santa Cruz, but it's not substantial enough to warrant the shear lack of features that you'll get with using the Envy chips on Linux.
/ ca talina/comparisons.asp
I've also noticed that Turtle Beach now makes a card called the "Catalina", which looks like standard Envy 24 HT-S fare. How disappointing. I've never been a Creative Labs fan, but they appear to make one of the only new chipsets anymore with halfway decent Linux support. Audigy 2 is technically inferior to the M-Audio Delta hardware (in terms of recording capabilities, like true 24/96 support), but it's superior in a sense that its hardware actually works very well. You can't say that for any of the Envy 24 lineup, especially the low-end Envy 24 HT models.
Man... I'm sorely disappointed at the state of PC Audio. It's actually *regressed* in the past few years. Companies think that it's enough to simply add a few extra speaker channels and tout 96 KHz SPDIF output, but it ISN'T enough. Look at this comparison:
http://turtlebeach.com/site/products/soundcards
Sure, the M-Audio Delta hardware is more advanced than Catalina (especially with the more sophisticated Envy 24 chip), but the fact that it has a million XLR jacks and 24/96KHz doesn't change the fact that the Envy DSPs are near-useless junk on Linux. Besides... Most home users are going to introduce more noise anyway, through their cheapo mics and mixing boards, than any of these soundcards produce, and then they're going to master CDs at 44 KHz. Anyone else that needs to do serious audio work, beyond what I mentioned, probably won't use Linux anyway.
I'll probably stick with my Santa Cruz until someone starts making decent DSPs (with balls) again. UNCreative is probably the only future option that even comes close.
Capacitors are silent. Inductors store energy magnetically and thus create magnetic fields. The magnetic fields cause the inductor windings to shift slightly. In a switching power supply the windings are charged and discharged over and over. This makes a tone. As the load on the power supply changes the frequency can change. Thus you get the up and down slide chirps.
this is true. I helped build a studio that does 24 tracks simutaneous, with two Echo Laylas which do 8 ins and outs each plus 24 bit optical and coaxial S/PDIF. It has a breakout box that is rack mountable which feeds into their PCI or (get this) a PCMCIA cardbus card.
That's only true if you're only doing recording of two channels for... say a concert. The second you start doing multitrack (and what's the point of a DAW if you aren't?) work, things balloon quickly.
I'm in the finishing stages of putting together a CD. 16-bit, 44.1 kHz (48k for one project). Here are some numbers.
Acoustic projects---one or two instruments and voice, 2-4 minutes
Smallest: 1.04 GB
Largest: 1.37 GB
Band projects (4-10 minutes)
Smallest: 2.23 GB
Typical: 5-6 GB
Largest: 14.61 GB (7 minutes)
These generally include anywhere from 10 to 20 mix-downs of each project (the 14.61 GB is the exception, and just hit 40).
In total, between the CD and four or five "extra" tracks, I'm sitting at 54.32 GB total. The CD itself is probably 45 of that. I can't even imagine trying to work in 2 GB....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.