A lot of interesting comments, but some of them are simply not accurate.
First of all, ASIO will not enable you to use any DSP on the sound card. ASIO will simply allow you to get very low latency, by using small buffer sizes.
The smaller the buffer size, the bigger the overhead. Thus, you will actually need MORE processing power with ASIO, not less. Of course, ASIO is still essential - you can't do realtime processing with WaveOut, and DirectSound although faster than WaveOut isn't fast enough.
M Audio's Delta 44 is an excellent audio interface, but it has NO synthesis, DSP effects or anything of the sort. It's basically just an A/D and D/a converter, and a really good one too. (I have one in this machine, listening to it right now.)
As for processing power, the more the better. A 600mhz processor will not get you very far - a few realtime effects and you're at full load.
Also, for low latencies, it really helps having a dual processor system - will make skips/stutters a lot less likely when you're working on multiple programs. ASIO with small buffers is much more sensitive to this problem than WaveOut is.
I personally recommend Dual Athlon MP - plenty of power to spare for most things.///Leif
LD isn't uncompressed. LaserDiscs store composite video, composite video is by nature compressed. Personally, I'll take DVD mpeg-artifacts over colour dot crawl any day.
(This doesn't mean I don't love my LD player though. LDs are cool!)
700mb DivX movies look surprisingly good on my 36" HDTV (with SVGA inputs). Granted, there are compression artifacts, but compared to watching a DVD on an interlaced NTSC TV, the choice is simple to me.///Leif
(copy and paste the URL, tripod cares too much about the referrer field)
The picture only shows 6 drives, I've added a drive since it was taken, right under the floppy drive. The 400W power supply powers all of them, including the floppy, two dvd drives and a cd writer, apparently without breaking a sweat.
You're not trying to run that many drives on a standard 200W supply, are you?:)
Keep in mind that the 400W spec is continuous power handling - it should handle way more than that momentarily, and that's probably what makes my setup work.
Just my two cents.
By the way, the server was serving my domain leif.cx until I moved and lost the DSL line. Damn it!
How is that going to work, technically? Afaic, the only way to prevent current pirated mp3s from being played is to simply not play regular mp3s. Obviously, this would render thousands of legit mp3s unplayable.
This should be interesting...
Why are they doing it, by the way? After the trial you'd think they hate the RIAA =).
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A lot of interesting comments, but some of them are simply not accurate.
///Leif
First of all, ASIO will not enable you to use any DSP on the sound card. ASIO will simply allow you to get very low latency, by using small buffer sizes.
The smaller the buffer size, the bigger the overhead. Thus, you will actually need MORE processing power with ASIO, not less. Of course, ASIO is still essential - you can't do realtime processing with WaveOut, and DirectSound although faster than WaveOut isn't fast enough.
M Audio's Delta 44 is an excellent audio interface, but it has NO synthesis, DSP effects or anything of the sort. It's basically just an A/D and D/a converter, and a really good one too. (I have one in this machine, listening to it right now.)
As for processing power, the more the better. A 600mhz processor will not get you very far - a few realtime effects and you're at full load.
Also, for low latencies, it really helps having a dual processor system - will make skips/stutters a lot less likely when you're working on multiple programs. ASIO with small buffers is much more sensitive to this problem than WaveOut is.
I personally recommend Dual Athlon MP - plenty of power to spare for most things.
Comparing LD with DVD?
///Leif
LD isn't uncompressed. LaserDiscs store composite video, composite video is by nature compressed. Personally, I'll take DVD mpeg-artifacts over colour dot crawl any day.
(This doesn't mean I don't love my LD player though. LDs are cool!)
700mb DivX movies look surprisingly good on my 36" HDTV (with SVGA inputs). Granted, there are compression artifacts, but compared to watching a DVD on an interlaced NTSC TV, the choice is simple to me.
I've got 7 IDE drives in a regular ATX tower, all hooked up to a 400W power supply I bought at CompUSA for 80 bucks or so.
x -s erver.jpg
:)
http://leifcx.tripod.com/photos/hardware/leif.c
(copy and paste the URL, tripod cares too much about the referrer field)
The picture only shows 6 drives, I've added a drive since it was taken, right under the floppy drive. The 400W power supply powers all of them, including the floppy, two dvd drives and a cd writer, apparently without breaking a sweat.
You're not trying to run that many drives on a standard 200W supply, are you?
Keep in mind that the 400W spec is continuous power handling - it should handle way more than that momentarily, and that's probably what makes my setup work.
Just my two cents.
By the way, the server was serving my domain leif.cx until I moved and lost the DSL line. Damn it!
///Leif
A Swedish dvorak layout is available at
http://users.one.se/liket/svorak
I'm using it myself since about a year and absolutely love it!
How is that going to work, technically? Afaic, the only way to prevent current pirated mp3s from being played is to simply not play regular mp3s. Obviously, this would render thousands of legit mp3s unplayable.
This should be interesting...
Why are they doing it, by the way? After the trial you'd think they hate the RIAA =).