Re: [linux-audio-dev] Soundcards

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Soundcards
From: Benno Senoner (sbenno_AT_gardena.net)
Date: Mon Aug 07 2000 - 13:24:56 EEST


On Sun, 06 Aug 2000, Mr. White wrote:
> > I think you should better invest in a powerful CPU (high MHz) and
> > enough RAM, rather than to buy a soundcard with onboard FXes and
> > other fancy (but often useless) stuff.
>
> Mmmmh, then which CPU should I buy? Intel? AMD? Would SMP help?
> Suppose I'd like to build a dedicated audio server... What would be a
> great idea?

I heard the AMD Duron is almost as fast as the Thunderbird / PIII at same
clockspeed plus it is quite cheap.
(It was called "Celeron killer" by Tom's Hardware ,
 see here http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q2/000619/index.html )

But if money is not a problem for you you can buy the highest MHz PIII
too.
The FPU of the AMD Athlon family (K7, Duron / Thunderbird) is as fast
if not faster than the PIII FPU, thus very suitable for audio processing.

As for SMP: lowlatency-audio on SMP boxes is still a research area
(eg having your audio sequencer running with 5msec latency which
runs the audio plugins in parallel on all your CPUs),
thus SMP would only help a bit when using multithreaded apps or
using multiple apps at the same time.

In my opinion, I'd invest into a faster uniprocessor box , rather than in a SMP
box.
This does not mean that I'm not interested in the "lowlatency on SMP" issue.
I have an SMP box and plan to do some research on this area.

> The problem is that I do not know even where to start.

start to do what ?
If you are a newbie , then I'd suggest you to read the Sound-HOWTO,
and read some books about this topic.

(Dave Philips will certainly be able enlist a few titiles, including his own
one :-) )

Benno.
 


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