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Best of Both Worlds

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In Reply to: RE: SSD Drives posted by Mercman on November 06, 2009 at 13:22:41

As seems to be so common in the audio world, we have yet another example of someone who knows a lot about audio hardware, and very little about computers, making silly, unfounded proclamations about computer hardware.
Most of the writing that is being done by an operating system is for the pagefile and logs and caches. If you put the pagefile on a different drive (or disable it altogether) that will solve the biggest problem, then disable as much logging as possible and this issue that is caused by too much writing won't be a problem for most users. Also, be sure to not use a disk defragmenter on an SSD (or internet caches and that type of thing...configure your browser to put these files elsewhere).
I'm told that Windows 7 is more "SSD aware" than previous versions of Windows and will minimize writes to the SSD drives, by the way.
Here is an excellent guide to setting up your Windows system for an SSD from drive-maker OCZ (written for Windows Vista, by the way...much of this may be unnecessary with Windows 7):
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47212

Edits: 11/06/09 11/06/09

Follow Ups:

RE: Best of Both Worlds - fmak 22:15:14 11/06/09 (29)
'As seems to be so common in the audio world, we have yet another example of someone who knows a lot about audio hardware, and very little about computers, making silly, unfounded proclamations about computer hardware.'

The reverse is so true in this Board as well. We have 'Computer Experts' who are not really interested in audio making stupid statements on how perfect and how much better computer audio is. A lot of this is related to product marketing.

The OCZ forums referred to is a prime example. A manufacturer makes a piece of hardware. It offers little or no information on how to use it properly on an operating system. It is then up to a user to spend a lot on time trying to find the info on the web and then spendtime to find out if 'tweaking' things will improve results on a computer. One has to read the forums with double care to discriminate amgonst product strands, OP strands etc etc to find the right receipe. How much 'difference' this makes to a particular set up cannot really be determined properly as the manufacturer specifically asks you not to test the hardware on commonly availabe HDD test software. So the advce given on these forums sometimes diverge. Asking the manufacturer through 'Support' can actually result in a lot of gibberish showing that the person behind the 'Support' knows little about the subject.

Would any one buy a car which only works properly with tweaks?
- RE: Best of Both Worlds - riboge 06:24:40 11/07/09 (5)
  How about that, I agree with you about something! We are crazy to go along with manufacturers coming out with their stuff prematurely and leaving it to us to figure out how to deal with the actualities of using their product.
  
  In particular I tried exploring the OCZ forum in anticipation of trying an ssd and was put off by how much reading and figuring out I faced, much as you described, and the obvious need to complete/tweak their product in hard to pin down ways to us it successfully.
  - RE: Best of Both Worlds - fmak 22:09:09 11/07/09 (0)
    Actually, all one needs to do is to use Diskpart to prepare the drive. There is so much noise that it is deafening.
  - RE: Best of Both Worlds - Tony Lauck 09:59:44 11/07/09 (3)
    "In particular I tried exploring the OCZ forum in anticipation of trying an ssd and was put off by how much reading and figuring out I faced, much as you described, and the obvious need to complete/tweak their product in hard to pin down ways to us it successfully."
    
    To me, a brief scan of the OCZ forum was all I needed to know. The technology is almost here. I am not ready to trust my data to unproven firmware and complex file system / firmware interactions. Maybe in a year or so. It's fair game to play with SSD technology on a computer system intended for experimental use. Right now, all of my computers have active jobs to do, so I am not in a position to play with unproven technology.
    
    In all fairness, similar diffiulties exist with spinning rust. Both WD and Seagate have run into their share of obscure firmware bugs in their drive microcode. Some affect the reliability of RAID systems. Some affect the service life of the drive (e.g. excessive load/unload cycles). Some randomly "brick" the drive on power cycles. I spent a lot of time reading various forums before settling on a NAS and selecting drives for it. I found the pre-failure web surfing much less stressful than how I have felt in the past when I have suffered drive crashes and was down to hoping that my backups were going to be OK. (They have been, so far .)
    
    Tony Lauck
    
    "Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
    - RE: Best of Both Worlds - fmak 22:13:36 11/07/09 (0)
      For a music PC, all one needs is 1 30G Vertex for the OP. I'd even go for a 16G if a good one is available. Instead, we have all these brands with very low write speeds.
      
      Creating 2 partitions is another matter, and no scanning of the Forum or asking OCZ support provide any answers.
    - The tech is fine, the OS is the problem - Scrith 11:30:59 11/07/09 (1)
      Windows Vista (and, I assume, the Mac OS from that time period) were written with regular hard drives in mind, not SSDs. Now that SSDs are becoming more commonplace new versions of the OS's are being released that are a lot better at dealing with the different requirements of SSDs. But if you insist on using an older OS with an SSD (e.g. Vista or XP) be prepared to do some tweaking to make it more SSD-friendly.
      - RE: The tech is fine, the OS is the problem - fmak 05:02:06 11/08/09 (0)
        
        In Reply to: RE: The tech is fine, the OS is the problem posted by Scrith on November 07, 2009 at 11:30:59
        
        It's like growing and selling tomatoes that only some people should eat.
- RE: Best of Both Worlds - Mercman 04:54:19 11/07/09 (7)
  I thought you liked your new OCZ SSD drive?
  Fred, admit the truth. You like hanging out with us even though we feel computer audio sounds better than optical players.
  
  Edits: 11/07/09
  - RE: Best of Both Worlds - fmak 05:22:41 11/07/09 (6)
    My post was in direct reply to Scrith's, complaining audio guys of not understanding computers. The response is that computer guys are not really that interested in audio. I think you belong to the audio guys who want to play with PC and MAC toys which I do out of interest.
    
    The sad thing is that less experinenced inmates are misled by all this loose talk.
    
    I like my Vertex, but it doesn't mean that I want to spend several hours 'optimising' it when the maker should have done so.
    
    The most diffciult thing to 'optimise' is to give a sound device its own IRQ, and I don't see any PC expert writing guides on how to do it. The programmers of MBs and OPs actually make this very difficult.
    - RE: Best of Both Worlds - Ryelands 11:03:48 11/08/09 (0)
      The most diffciult thing to 'optimise' is to give a sound device its own IRQ, and I don't see any PC expert writing guides on how to do it.
      
      http://cplay.sourceforge.net/pmwiki.php?n=CMP.Headless (Para 7 Configuring USB) is a little guide on ensuring that a USB sound device has its own IRQ.
      
      Of course, the writer might just be making 'causual insinuations'. One never knows, do one?
      
      D
    - RE: Best of Both Worlds - Dawnrazor 07:52:45 11/07/09 (2)
      Fred,
      
      You are right about the IRQ, it is important.
      
      Cics tells one exactly how to do it for his recipe. It is on the current site about soundcards Step 6. It was very easy to do given the instructions.
      - RE: Best of Both Worlds - fmak 05:03:22 11/08/09 (1)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by Dawnrazor on November 07, 2009 at 07:52:45
        
        As usual, you omit the fact that it is for a particular make of MB only.
        
        RE: Best of Both Worlds - Dawnrazor 09:57:45 11/08/09 (0)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by fmak on November 08, 2009 at 05:03:22
        
        No I didn't.
        
        I did mention that the info was for his recipe.
        
        And the info is generic enough that I was able to get a separate IRQ in other pcs as well.
    - RE: Best of Both Worlds - Mercman 05:47:31 11/07/09 (1)
      The OS has to manage IRQs since the damn things are shared.
      
      On a different topic, I read a review of my Wilson Sasha speakers in a UK magazine. I can't believe how much they cost in the UK-- 27,900 pounds. They retail for $26,900 here. The UK price comes to $46,301.00 dollars!
      - RE: Best of Both Worlds - fmak 06:49:34 11/07/09 (0)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by Mercman on November 07, 2009 at 05:47:31
        
        They typically sell US stuff at 1.6 (= exchange rate)cost. Add 12% duty and 17.5% VAT to the US list price plus margin is the excuse. I don't buy it.
        
        I only buy US stuff in Hong Kong where it is generally the US list minus perhaps something.
        
        I would buy stuff from the US except for the 110V transformers and the poor service from majors plus silly postage prices being charged. There are exceptions though where vendors use USPS which is perfectly good and much better than FedEx or whatever when they get overseas. These guys even have 'the power' to tax you on the government's behalf and then charge a fee for doing so.
        
        I have just bought a big scaffold (> 100kg) from the UK with a postal cost of only £150 by TNT!. The whole thing which is made in China is much better and cheaper than a French system presumably made much much closer. The delivery distance is over 2200 miles! Total Nuts.
- RE: Best of Both Worlds - AbeCollins 22:41:02 11/06/09 (14)
  "Would any one buy a car which only works properly with tweaks? "
  
  Huh? People have been buying rust bucket American Detroit cars for years! I can think of a few others including Jaguar, MG, and other oil dripping electrically hazardous brands from across "the pond". ;-)
  - RE: Best of Both Worlds - fmak 01:12:51 11/07/09 (13)
    Not anymore in Europe. Consumer legislation ensures recourse and manufacturers' responsibility.
    This does not apply to computer software and hardware as manufacturers rush to market and make all kinds of excuses to evade liability (such as Samsungs's in warranty but out of region guarantee).
    Another example is an 'expert on PC audio' posted here a few days ago that the Juli@ soundcard is as good as others costing 3 to 6 times as much. What he did not say or was aware off was that the blue screen of death afflicts this card when asio is used as found by quite a few in the esi forum. This problem does not appear to have been fixed over the last years.
    
    Edits: 11/07/09
    - RE: Best of Both Worlds - Tony Lauck 09:40:57 11/07/09 (12)
      I believe the problem you mention with the Juli@ card concerns the ASIO driver and its handling of power management. If the computer doesn't go into standby or sleep while the ASIO interface is actively in use, I don't believe there are any problems. At least, I haven't had any. Since my computer is not able to play music while it is on standby, all that is needed to avoid this problem is to make sure that ASIO applications aren't running when the computer goes into standby. The entire time I have had my Juli@ I have had exactly one BSOD. That caused me to read the forum and figure out the cause and the workaround.
      
      There are many other power management problems with Windows, some probably due to hardware, some due to drivers, and some the consequence of poor design decisions on M$'s part. Personally, I believe that the Energy Star certification should be revoked if it depends on buggy power management implementations.
      
      Tony Lauck
      
      "Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
      - RE: Best of Both Worlds - fmak 01:06:56 11/08/09 (11)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by Tony Lauck on November 07, 2009 at 09:40:57
        
        Does the card work on KS? If it does, the problem may be solved this way.
        
        RE: Best of Both Worlds - Tony Lauck 06:06:58 11/08/09 (10)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by fmak on November 08, 2009 at 01:06:56
        
        I don't consider the power management problem a significant bug. I don't use power management while playing music, and one blue screen in five months isn't exactly anything to worry about in the general scheme of things involving M$ software. This issue might be more serious if I were running the system "headless" and missed seeing the blue screen.
        
        Sometimes I have the card set to be the default Windows device, so that I can play sound clips or other music from the web. It could be that the problem is associated with this. However, I think not. If I see another blue screen I will take more careful note how things were set up. I suspect that some hardware device register is not being properly restored when power is restored. So it seems unlikely that this would be associated with the ASIO portion of the driver, but the serious failure might manifest only with the ASIO interface.
        
        This problem is by far the least frustrating aspect of this computer. Much more frustrating is the mouse interface, where there is some interaction between the mouse hardware, a four port KVM switch, the computer hardware, the BIOS, and Windows XP which causes the mouse to fail to initialize on about 50% of system restarts or reboots. The problem doesn't happen when connected directly or through a two port KVM switch, only with the four port switch. Of course the switch works perfectly with my two other computers.
        
        Most likely, the root cause of the mouse problem comes from the same source as the root cause of the Juli@ problem: computer programmers being ignorant of how computer hardware works and not properly defending against common hardware faults. Usually, when these problems are pointed out, the programmers reaction is to say that "the hardware isn't working correctly, so it's not my problem". Of course the whole point of operating system software is to deal with the reality of hardware and try to make it appear to be following the laws of mathematics which are more regular than the laws of physics. In the past when I came up against programmers with this attitude I suggested they should be fired. Later, after seeing how one of them did quite well when moved to a tech support position, I adapted a somewhat tolerant attitude.
        
        Tony Lauck
        
        "Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
        
        RE: Best of Both Worlds - fmak 07:20:23 11/08/09 (9)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by Tony Lauck on November 08, 2009 at 06:06:58
        
        'In the past when I came up against programmers with this attitude I suggested they should be fired. Later, after seeing how one of them did quite well when moved to a tech support position, I adapted a somewhat tolerant attitude'
        
        For the same reason, I found that it was much better to hire graduates in Computer Engineering as opposed to 'Computer Science' or Software. They understand hardware a s well as software.
        
        Does you Juli@ work on KS? I am thinking of buying one as I need another 192k source. KS on my PCs seem to work well with smaller buffers than Asio. On the Lynx AES16, KS sounds fine too. The problem is that not all sound devices support it.
        
        RE: Best of Both Worlds - Tony Lauck 09:01:38 11/08/09 (8)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by fmak on November 08, 2009 at 07:20:23
        
        Yes, KS on the Juli@ works, provided that sample rate on the device control panel is set to correspond to the file sampling rate. This was tested on both Channels 1 and 2, (analog out) and Channels 3 and 4, (SPDIF out). If the sample rate settings aren't in agreement, foobar2000 gives an error message when using KS. With Direct sound the music plays, presumably because there is a hidden SRC somewhere. With ASIO the sample rate on the sound card is set by the application program automatically.
        
        The Juli@ user interface has a control over latency. When running with KS it worked at the lowest setting (48 buffers) while playing a 192 kHz FLAC file using foobar2000. Switching to the ASIO interface produced a buzz until I set the buffering to 256. (It may be that this control affects only the buffering on the ASIO interface, so I am not able to comment on whether there are fewer latency problems when running KS. Also, there may be troll programs on my system that will cause 256 buffers to run into occasional problems. I normally run with more.)
        
        Tony Lauck
        
        "Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
        
        RE: Best of Both Worlds - fmak 05:48:52 11/09/09 (4)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by Tony Lauck on November 08, 2009 at 09:01:38
        
        Thanks, this is interesting and what I have found on on other cards as well.
        
        With the RME9632, KS works well on 32 buffers and ASIO 128.
        
        With the Lynx AES16, KS works well on 64 buffers but ASIO requires 256.
        
        The Musiland 01USD, however, requires only 10 buffers on ASIO. KS, however, does not work.
        
        This is with Foobar 0.9.5.x.
        
        RE: Best of Both Worlds - Dawnrazor 07:53:30 11/09/09 (3)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by fmak on November 09, 2009 at 05:48:52
        
        Weird Fred,
        
        I can get 192k realtime upsampling with my Lynx and an asio setting of 32 using cplay.
        
        Must be my dedicated optimized dual processor machine....
        
        RE: Best of Both Worlds - fmak 08:35:23 11/09/09 (2)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by Dawnrazor on November 09, 2009 at 07:53:30
        
        I am saddened by your lack of discrimination in your responses. You have a Lynx 2; I have the AES16.
        
        On what basis do you claim that your system is optimised. It is minimised; period.
        
        RE: Best of Both Worlds - Dawnrazor 19:40:19 11/09/09 (1)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by fmak on November 09, 2009 at 08:35:23
        
        Hey Fred,
        
        You can play semantics all you want.
        
        I am betting that if you had a 2b you still couldnt get it to work with a latency of 32 and upsampling to 192k.
        
        And fwiw cics has that same card (the aes16) and he also can run with a setting of 32:
        
        http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=pcaudio&n=34152&highlight=lynx+aes+16+cics&r=
        
        Call it what you want, but the combo of a dual core processor and cics window settings and bios settings produces a platform that can work with the lowest of latencies Lynx can offer.
        
        What saddens me is that you continue to dismiss something that works very effectively (without trying it) but continue to whine about computer audio and how hard it all is...when it is staring you right in the face.
        
        I'd sing a Christmas Carol for him, but Fred makes Scrouge look like a philanthropist! - ForgotPassword 15:45:37 11/10/09 (0)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by Dawnrazor on November 09, 2009 at 19:40:19
        
        Maybe he's intentionally badmouthing cMP^2 so that less people will take advantage of the great platform. It's possible that he truly does not grasp your meaning, but it would require him to have an IQ three standard deviations below average.
        
        "We should no more let numbers define audio quality than we would let chemical analysis be the arbiter of fine wines." N.P.
        
        Latency - Old Listener 13:05:36 11/08/09 (2)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Best of Both Worlds posted by Tony Lauck on November 08, 2009 at 09:01:38
        
        I don't hear any glitches playing a 176.4 samples/sec file using J. River MC 12 and the ASIO interface with 48 samples latency. (J. River was outputting at source sample rate and the ASIO driver was not changing the sample rate.) I tried both the Juli@ card and a AudioTrak Prodigy HD2 card also made by ESI with very similar drivers. CPU utilization was at 6%.
        
        For a couple of years I have used those cards' ASIO drivers for an average of 3+ hours a day while I'm not on vacation. I saw the power management hangup once and fixed it. No other crashes at all. I haven't heard any buffer underrun glitches either. This is on a mildly tuned XP system with a 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 2 GB of Ram.
        
        Bill
        
        RE: Latency - Tony Lauck 13:55:42 11/08/09 (1)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Latency posted by Old Listener on November 08, 2009 at 13:05:36
        
        May be your Core 2 duo that keeps you out of trouble. I have a 2.93 GHz PIV which is also running a fair number of services when I have underrun problems. Normally when I am doing critical things I turn off my Ethernet NIC cards.
        
        I don't see any particular reason to be concerned -- I increased the buffers until things were OK. I am much more concerned with problems causing overruns when using an ADC. I have had glitches in the past with various USB sound cards. I have never had any problems when recording using the Juli@ card, but I have only been recording at 88.2 kHz, which appears to do a good job with digitizing cassette tapes.
        
        The drivers for the Juli@ may not be perfect, but they seem perfectly usable as far as I am concerned.
        
        Tony Lauck
        
        "Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
        
        RE: Latency - Old Listener 14:09:55 11/08/09 (0)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Latency posted by Tony Lauck on November 08, 2009 at 13:55:42
        
        > May be your Core 2 duo that keeps you out of trouble.
        
        I agree with that surmise. I think that a modern dual core CPU (Intel or AMD) is significantly better than a single core P4 cpu for audio playback. I think that it has more to do with interrupt handling. DPC handling and process level context switching than CPU horsepower.
        
        > I have a 2.93 GHz PIV which is also running a fair number of services
        > when I have underrun problems.
        
        I have used a 2.8 GHz P4 laptop with 512 MB of Ram and AGP graphics to play audio in the past. It was very susceptible to buffer underuns when there were large screen updates. Hooking up an external monitor with higher screen resolution made the problem much more obvious.
        
        > I don't see any particular reason to be concerned --
        > I increased the buffers until things were OK.
        
        I agree. That's what buffering is for.
        
        Bill
RE: Best of Both Worlds - bryan 18:52:44 11/06/09 (1)
If you eliminate paging and as much logging as possible, is there any benefit to solid state storage for the OS?
- Benefits of SSD - Scrith 11:23:52 11/07/09 (0)
  Definitely. Fast boot and shut down times, faster application loading, a generally snappier feel to the system (many resources, such as sound and images, are read from the C: drive whenever they are needed, rather than stored permanently in memory, in order to reduce the memory footprint of the OS and applications).
  
  In my system, which has 6GB, I didn't notice any performance loss after relocating the pagefile to a regular hard drive.
  
  Some claim an SSD makes a system sound better, but the SSD has made no difference in sound quality on my system.

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