Your wisdom and experience sought!

[Eden-X]

Hello all!

I returned home today to find my MoBo causing all sorts of problems on my current system and so decided that it was time to upgrade and move onward.

I was still in the process of evaluating Reaper, but had pretty much decided to buy it.

As a result, I wanted to make sure that the new system I bought was likely to produce good performance and stability with Reaper. Most importantly, I want the audio interface to work well.

Currently my system will include:

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Processor i7-960 (3.20GHz) 4.8GTs/8MB Cache
Memory (RAM)
12GB CORSAIR XMS3 TRI-DDR3 1333MHz
Motherboard
ASUS® P6T: DDR3, 3-Way SLI & CrossFireX on Demand
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
80GB Intel® X25-M (34nm) HIGH PERFORMANCE 2.5" SSD (upto 250MB/sR | 70MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
150GB WD VelociRaptor® SATA 16MB CACHE (10,000rpm)
3rd Hard Disk
1TB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
Graphics Card
512MB NVIDIA GEFORCE 8400GS PCI EXPRESS
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Firewire
1 x IEEE 1394a FIREWIRE PORT ONBOARD

My current sound card is PCI based (and unusable on this setup). I am therefore looking to buy a Firewire or USB based interface. My thoughts are settling on two potential candidates but I am open to alternatives within the same price range. They are:

Focusrite Saffire Pro 40.
or
MOTU 8Pre Firewire Interface.

I am leaning towards the Saffire thanks to the SPDIF Interface.

The thoughts, wisdom and experience of those that have good experience with Reaper would be very much appreciated as this is a fairly hefty investment and I would love it to benefit from the excellent potential of Reaper! So any comments that you may have on the system setup or on the choice of audio interface would be welcome.

Many many thanks in advance to any who can help with this!

Jo

[QuIcK]

if your loving your interface at the moment, you can get pci-e -> external pci card convertors.
eg
http://www.micomonline.co.uk/product...=PEX2PCI4GB&go

it'll be cheaper than a new interface. mayb buy some new preamp or something.

ive had the motu 196hd before, and i found the preamps to be really noisey/unusable. i presume they would have updated & changed this for a box they are selling branded as '8Pre'

without much research, tho... my 2cents:
the focusrite has 2 inputs on the front. if you are planning on racking this up, that will make it very useful for recording in your mix room/studio.
the motu also only has 2 analogue outputs (from what i can tell), making the focusrite more flexible again.
so if you get a lovely outboard compressor, or you want to patch in some guitar pedal effects, re-amp something, or a client rocks up with 'their favourite grunge box they want over the drums', then it would be tough to mix with this in.

they both have dsp mixing (which you may or may not use), both have midi.

from the face of it, i would say go with the focusrite. unless anyone can slander it

[Eden-X]

Hi Quick.

Thanks for your thoughts. Much appreciated.

I think that the old PCI card is ready to be discared. It's an EMU1212M which, whilst fine for the time, is not really up to scratch for present needs.

I think that I am leaning towards Focusrite who are currently in Beta stage testing of Windows 7 drivers. So this is encourageing. Also, the Saffire 40, as you say, offers much more flexibility.

I came across a thread or two that seemed to indicate that the Saffire 40 worked well enough with Reaper. But if anyone else has any thoughts on its compatibility then that would be welcome.

Thanks again!

[beingmf]

So i'll share some of my "wisdom and experience" after having lots and lots of problems with a presumably damaged mainboard, i did
a) read through every possible thread on every forum i stumbled across about the MoBo/cpu/ram topic (i7/x58 of course)
b) asked the guys at the shop i bought the parts at

Seems like the ASUS P6TD Deluxe is reported to have the least problems. Though (as an interim board) i bought a cheapo AsRock X58 extreme, and it works perfectly (you have to spend some time tweaking the BIOS but that's normal i guess). Under all circumstances have a look at the RAM compatibility charts of the mainboard manufacturer, it should save you some time/pain.
I'm not so sure about your cpu choice. If you have money to spend, you might stick with the 960, but from my experience now, it's almost impossible to max out even my 920 (which you'd still be able to OC - given the proper board. The AsRock is not first choice AFAIK).
And: do the Windows 7 x64 compatibility check (especially with drivers and programs that you're used to use daily). I've had to find out the annoying way: no driver for USB-Ethernet adapter, no more drivers for Firewire based network, either, printer not supported (had to set up a detour via VirtualBox...) etc.
Is a 10.000 rpm drive really worth it? It's louder and much more expensive - what do you expect from it? I mean, looking at your interface, you won't be able to e.g. record 60 tracks simultaneously anyway?
But as i said: if you CAN spend the money, there's nothing wrong about all that...

EDIT:
@QuIcK: you have to be extremely careful what kind of cards you'll use such a chassis with. They all seem to suffer from not enough power for audio related PCI cards. Except for the Magma chassis' which were designed for ProTools cards...

[lawrs]

i had my worst experience as an audio engineer for 5 years with Focusrite Saffire 26 io . They write crap drivers for windows. Mac is okay but still unstable. Try loaning another interface and test it on your pc. I swapped the saffire 26 for mbox 2 pro , flawless rock steady after that.

[Eden-X]

Originally Posted by beingmf

So i'll share some of my "wisdom and experience" after having lots and lots of problems with a presumably damaged mainboard, i did
a) read through every possible thread on every forum i stumbled across about the MoBo/cpu/ram topic (i7/x58 of course)
b) asked the guys at the shop i bought the parts at

Seems like the ASUS P6TD Deluxe is reported to have the least problems. Though (as an interim board) i bought a cheapo AsRock X58 extreme, and it works perfectly (you have to spend some time tweaking the BIOS but that's normal i guess). Under all circumstances have a look at the RAM compatibility charts of the mainboard manufacturer, it should save you some time/pain.
I'm not so sure about your cpu choice. If you have money to spend, you might stick with the 960, but from my experience now, it's almost impossible to max out even my 920 (which you'd still be able to OC - given the proper board. The AsRock is not first choice AFAIK).
And: do the Windows 7 x64 compatibility check (especially with drivers and programs that you're used to use daily). I've had to find out the annoying way: no driver for USB-Ethernet adapter, no more drivers for Firewire based network, either, printer not supported (had to set up a detour via VirtualBox...) etc.
Is a 10.000 rpm drive really worth it? It's louder and much more expensive - what do you expect from it? I mean, looking at your interface, you won't be able to e.g. record 60 tracks simultaneously anyway?
But as i said: if you CAN spend the money, there's nothing wrong about all that...

EDIT:
@QuIcK: you have to be extremely careful what kind of cards you'll use such a chassis with. They all seem to suffer from not enough power for audio related PCI cards. Except for the Magma chassis' which were designed for ProTools cards...

Hi!
And thanks for your thoughts. Very useful.

The MoBo difficulties I have are on an old Gigabyte motherboard that has always been slightly dodgy but I have found workarounds until now. But I think that, after 4 years, it has decided to give up the ghost.

Money is not so much an issue and so I thought I would go as high as I could on the cpu...but I see what you mean. Maxing out this one might be a challenge...but I am always up for that one!

The 10,000RPM drive...yes. Noisy indeed. And is it worth it? I take your point. So perhaps to be reconsidered. You are right that I don't record many tracks simulataneously...not my way of working. But I have been known to have sessions with unreasonable quantities of tracks in read...so it might be worth the outlay. I shall see. It can always be removed.

Thank you for your advice and very pertinent thoughts. I shall have a good cogitation session!

Take care

[Eden-X]

Originally Posted by lawrs

i had my worst experience as an audio engineer for 5 years with Focusrite Saffire 26 io . They write crap drivers for windows. Mac is okay but still unstable. Try loaning another interface and test it on your pc. I swapped the saffire 26 for mbox 2 pro , flawless rock steady after that.

Hi Lawrs...

Thanks for that.

If you have a moment I would be curious to know what kind of problems you had. Focusrite have not yet released drivers for Windows 7 but they are in Beta testing stage.

I had a look at Digidesign. On their site they don't even mention 64bit drivers for Windows XP or Vista, let alone Windows 7. Are you aware of any developments on this front? I like the package, but it certainly seems Mac-centric.

Anyhoo, any expansion on your troubles would be greatly welcomed.

[Driven1]

Another thing you'll want to be checking into if going Firewire is that there's a Texas Instruments Firewire chipset built into the board. They are the most stable. If not, I would install a card that is.

Also, in my opinion a 10k rpm HD is overkill. 7200 should be just fine.

[beingmf]

Originally Posted by Eden-X

The 10,000RPM drive...yes. Noisy indeed. And is it worth it?

It's probably (that's how I do it at least ) better to have "more" hard disks on dedicated SATA ports than "1 faster" hard disk. Or am I wrong? Or does it just not matter?

[lawrs]

Sorry for this late reply.

I'm not sure if it's texas instrument shazam, but if my mbox 2 pro works flawless, then it must be the focusrite , rite? Anyway, here's what I tested .

On windows XP = trouble detecting upon boot up, cumbersome start up process every restart, dropout, glitches, undetected randomness

On windows 7 = stable for 30mins then start dropping out, glitching all over me face. Less problems than windows xp but still nothing to write home about.

On mac osx = Stable with occasional clicks and pops.

3 months mate. And the power supply has a hum so I use bus power most the time. It's not a power issue though, because with power supply, the same problems persist.

Don't get it. Go for Motu ultralite usb/firewire combo if budget is tight, or RME if you can afford. Please. In this case, don't do the "rite" thing.