Sound Recording Studio Hardware Recommendations

[RogerPodacter]

I searched the forum but didn’t find much. I recently moved here to Cali to help with my friends sound studio. I’ll list his PC specs below. Basically he is using Samplitude software and raised the recording sample rate from 44kHz to 96kHz. But the PC is now struggling to keep up when we are tracking 16 tracks simultaneously.

During recording the program gives a CPU and Hard Disk readout in realtime. The CPU is not using more than 50-75% at any given time during recording. However the Disk meter is peaking out at 100% a lot. So obviously this is the bottleneck, IMO. BTW, I haven’t looked yet but I’m sure his hard drive is either 5400 or 7200 RPM at most. My question is, what hardware solution could we use to upgrade the PC? Maybe a 10,000 RPM drive, SCSI or RAID?

Also, he is using a P4 2.4 GHz CPU (because he didn’t know about AMD) and 1 gig DDR RAM. Would AMD be a better or more efficient CPU to handle this type of application? He currently runs 2 sound cards for a total of 16 recording channels simultaneously. I was thinking of just rebuilding his system with AMD 64 chip, faster RAM and faster HD. I was just wondering if anyone has advice or experience with digital studio recording, I’d appreciate it. Thanks for any help.

RP

 

[RogerPodacter]

Dagnabbit, i assume that there isnt anyone with the experience i'm looking for.

 

[Order]

I was running a dual Athlon MP 1800+ rig off a MSI K7D Master with a gig of PC2100 ECC/Reg and a Terratec DMX6Fire and everything absolutely flew.
You can get that exact same thing now for less than $750 I'm sure and you'll be able to use an incredible amount of stuff at the same time.

Now that I mention it, you can pick up a low-end dual Opteron MB and 2x Opteron 242s for about the same price as the aforementioned system which means you'll have the 64bit ability as well as the amazing performance of these recent chipsets.

PM me if you have any more questions.