Console Choice OT

[cgrafx]

My own experience with SAC on XP32 was that I would setup my environment for the 3 person ensemble I was in. And it would include SAW and SAC would have channels for the inputs as well as coming back from SAW, and three monitor mixes so we each could have 'more - me'. And several VSTs for front of house, but also for each monitor mix. I'd get it all setup and it would work great. And then later I would change one thing and then something would fail under the surface somewhere where I couldn't affect it. I'd have to scrap the entire thing and start over. That was especially bad during rehearsals because of all the lost time. I think that I was running out of RAM because that 32 bit OS couldn't address much more than it used. And all the copies of VSTs bit into that. Also, my processor, while a relatively strong one for its time, was not strong at single core stuff. My system just felt kind of unreliable and eventually the other guys refused to use it anymore. And then we were using the drummers board and the quality of the sound wasn't nearly as good, there were no individual mixes, and effects were limited to hardware or the shared reverb that came with the board. But we never had to think about it during rehearsal.

John,

I've been using the same SAC and SAW system on XP32 for 10+ years. I still haven't swapped out the motherboard in this system which is my live rig. It's a 32 channel in/out system that has been used to run small configurations of a few channels to fully loaded all with all 32 channels running and 8+ monitor mixes. SAC has been flawless during that time, with the only few glitches coming from user error on the SAW side when recording (which had NO effect on the live show).

I did take the time to chose all of my components carefully when I built this system. My studio rig I have upgraded to a modern win10 64 configuration in order to take advantage of the additional memory, newer VSTs and longer single session recording time.

I did also build a new rig for my live console, but have not deployed it as of yet, as it would require some reconfiguration of the rack currently housing that system and its not high on my priority list given that the system still works flawlessly.

The only thing I've had to do to that system in the last 10 years is replace the system battery.

[John Ludlow]

John,

Regarding your hard drive issues, data recovery facilities today are absolutely incredible!

I have personally seen them recover data from fire-damaged HDD's and dead SSD's!

I use "1stDataRecovery"...so, why not give them a shout!

PS: Great post, by-the-way!

Well... I don't know, Dell. I really screwed it up. I thought I was using W10's new formatting nomenclature, but actually I was using W10's new striping nomenclature. Instead of formatting this external drive (ironically meant to contain my backups...) it used it as the second drive of a RAID 0 setup and wrote half the stripes to it. In the process, it also re-formatted my original drive as the first drive in that RAID 0 tandem. And it all worked when I got done. So, I deleted the contents of the second (backup) drive and attempted to copy the contents of the first drive to it while I timed it. And obviously, it failed especially miserably. So then I attempted to re-boot. I tried multiple other things as I scrambled to recover - still not knowing what was wrong. But eventually I figured out what I had done to it. Then I took it to a shop and they worked on it for a week doing stuff to it, including writing to the second (backup) drive. They eventually gave up. In as much as every other stripe (at minimum...) is gone, and the original drive has been written over (with the other half of the stripes) I just don't have much hope.

The sheer scope of my error is reminiscent of that old song by Bryan Bowers (I think) wherein the guy attempts to use a barrel on a rope to haul bricks down to the lower level of a building - but ends up being hit by them repeatedly instead? "...And that's why Paddy's not at work today". It was also one of the very first tests done by Mythbusters back in 2003 in the episode 'Barrel of Bricks'.

But thanks for the link anyway.

[John Ludlow]

John,

I've been using the same SAC and SAW system on XP32 for 10+ years. I still haven't swapped out the motherboard in this system which is my live rig. It's a 32 channel in/out system that has been used to run small configurations of a few channels to fully loaded all with all 32 channels running and 8+ monitor mixes. SAC has been flawless during that time, with the only few glitches coming from user error on the SAW side when recording (which had NO effect on the live show).

I did take the time to chose all of my components carefully when I built this system. My studio rig I have upgraded to a modern win10 64 configuration in order to take advantage of the additional memory, newer VSTs and longer single session recording time.

I did also build a new rig for my live console, but have not deployed it as of yet, as it would require some reconfiguration of the rack currently housing that system and its not high on my priority list given that the system still works flawlessly.

The only thing I've had to do to that system in the last 10 years is replace the system battery.

And your original experience is not unique. It seems like people either had one experience or the other. Not a lot in between. I was also using a Firewire card to talk to my Fireface 800. In retrospect that was probably pushing my luck. Whereas my later Fireface UFX+, with Thunderbolt, works flawlessly on the 64 bit system.

By the way - I recall that you were working on getting a Thunderbolt system working in your machine. Were you ever successful?

[mr_es335]

John,

If the data is important "at all" it is still worth a call to "1stdata".

They have been excellent at letting me know at the outset what the "possibilities" are.
* Let then know what you did and they in turn, will inform you as to what they require. The less that IS done though, the better.

[jmh]

My attempt to get Saw into the school district may have been self serving to get the kids (particularly the few each year who just have the knack for mixing) and my audio inclined co-workers familiar with the software. It is great to be able to call somebody in who knows what they are doing. While that didn't work, I find that to young people, software is like water to a fish. In any case, we are going to wind up with a physical console in this room.

Microstudio, I find that the series III Presonus is about as straightforward as the Allen&Heath SQ - and the features are pretty much the same. Presonus had an earlier digitally controlled analog board that no casual user could run.

[cgrafx]

And your original experience is not unique. It seems like people either had one experience or the other. Not a lot in between. I was also using a Firewire card to talk to my Fireface 800. In retrospect that was probably pushing my luck. Whereas my later Fireface UFX+, with Thunderbolt, works flawlessly on the 64 bit system.

By the way - I recall that you were working on getting a Thunderbolt system working in your machine. Were you ever successful?

Not yet, as getting a working thunderbolt motherboard in an MATX form factor has been a challenge.

thunderbolt seems to only be supported on full ATX boards and the small IPX boards (which actually are an intriguing potential option).

Still hoping that I will find a working solution for this, but thunderbolt is just not well supported on the PC side of things.

As for built-for-purpose systems, (with the possible exception of thunderbolt if I can ever get that working), I would not recommend anything other than physical PCI card based solutions particularly for an installation based system. Firewire is functionally a dead technology and USB is CPU bound and has too many potential connection/interrupt issues to be 100% reliable as a leave-it-on/turn-it-on and it always works solution.

Thunderbolt has the advantage of really just being PCI on a serial bus so functionally pretty much just looks like a PCI card solution.

Portable rigs based around laptops are definitely convenient but are never going to have the same utility level reliability of desktop PCI hardware based solutions.

Its actually really easy to build a SAC rig these days that functions pretty much like any other physical console, but you have to build it with that mindset.

[John Ludlow]

Not yet, as getting a working thunderbolt motherboard in an MATX form factor has been a challenge.

thunderbolt seems to only be supported on full ATX boards and the small IPX boards (which actually are an intriguing potential option).

True - or else tlhey're like this one that don't have it soldered in, but rather pluggable on a header (which often doesn't work for DAW).

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Z590M-PL.../dp/B08VLNX5Q9