Pete Leoni

Roll Your Own Thunderbird

Sat, 30 Jun 2001 20:00:00 GMT

Once again it's time to build a new "Roll Your Own" Computer for audio!

A lot has changed since I wrote the last installment of "Roll Your Own". The price of both CPUs and memory modules has dropped dramatically. So much so that some of the cost cutting measures we used in the past RYO's aren't really necessary now. And, while in the past we staunchly supported Intel processors for providing the best performance, we now have an improved AMD Athlon chip which provides substantially better performance than any Intel processor, and at a bargain price.

We will first describe the specification for the new Roll Your Own computer, and then we will provide a detailed, step-by-step instruction for how to build it.

Upgrade It!

An outstanding feature of the RYO computers is the continuing ability for them to be upgraded. In fact, before I get into the new Roll Your Own recipe, I have some good news for those of you who are still running the previous versions. Yet again it has become both viable and financially feasible to upgrade. This time it is simply a matter of flashing the BIOS, plugging in a PIII 1000, adding more memory, making a few adjustments and rebooting the computer. If you have a first or second generation RYO and want to upgrade, here's how to do it.

If you have a RYO computer then you are using the ABIT BH6 motherboard. First go here:

http://www.aBIOS.com/abit/upgrade.html

and carefully read about how to flash your BIOS to the latest version. Note that there are two versions of the BH6 in production. Be sure that you download the correct BIOS for your version of the BH6!

Be very cautious during these next steps, as it is possible to erase your BIOS chip and render your computer unbootable, at least till you acquire a new BIOS chip. After you've successfully flashed your BIOS, go here:

http://www.pricewatch.com/

and do a search for a slot 1, 100 fsb, (1gigahertz) PIII, note that you must use the 100 Mhz FSB, 1 version of the chip, not the 133 FSB PIII "EB" model. I realize there are adapters available but the PIII slot 1at 100 MHz FSB is now very low in cost and still widely available at the time of this writing. Installing the slot 1 CPU is a simple plug and play operation.

While you are at it you may as well add more memory. Unless your are living in Antarctica you must have noticed that memory prices have dropped to an almost obscenely low price. Shame on you if you don't take advantage of it now! I recommend 384 Megs of name brand PC 133 CAS 2 memory. The folks at

http://www.advanceddesignky.com

can help you select a good grade of memory or you can do a search at http://www.pricewatch.com. With memory prices at a record low, now is not the time to be stingy.

Once you have flashed the BIOS to the latest version, plugin in the new CPU, lock in your new memory, and re-boot. Hit 'del' during the startup screen, go into the BIOS screen and set the FSB speed to 100 mhz and the multiplier to 10 or the highest speed possible under 10. You may notice that upon booting up, you will see something like "Pentium III @ 956xx. Don't be concerned, your CPU is running @ 1 gigahertz.

In order to prevent overclocking, Intel has a habit of locking the multiplier to the speed they desire the chip to run at. Your computer POST screen may tell you differently, but your CPU will nevertheless be running at 1 gigahertz. With extra memory and more CPU speed (150 MHz more if you are upgrading from a Celeron 850, and a whopping 550 mhz more if you are still using the first RYO at 450 Mhz!) you will notice a definite increase in performance and stability. The total cost of this upgrade will be less than $300, not bad at all for a 1-gigahertz rig with a ton of memory. It goes without saying that this would be an ideal second computer for running GigaStudio and soft synths.

The New Roll Your Own DAW!

I don't want to seem like I'm an Intel basher, because I am decidedly not! I love Intel products, but lately Intel has developed a strange habit of shooting itself in the foot. In the past that habit has worked in our favor by providing us with the powerful, overclockable and economical Celeron. This time Intel's self-destruction complex has not helped us to build a reasonably priced DAW nor has it helped Intel to make a profit. Because of a premature and legally binding agreement with a the memory manufacturer RAMBUS, Intel was forced into designing a new chip and chipset to take advantage of the higher bandwidth memory bus that these RAMBUS modules would require. To make a long and sad story short, things did not work out quite the way that Intel intended.

First, due to royalty issues the new RAMBUS RDRAM memory turned out to be a lot more expensive than the standard SDRAM that is nearly universal now. Second and even worse, Intel's new P4 chip turns out to be slower "clock for clock" than Intel's own PIII and AMD's Athlon, both older chips! Thirdly and most important for us, the floating-point performance of the P4 is not good. So where does this leave us? If we want to go faster than the current 1000 MHz limit of the PIII, it leaves us with the decision to go with AMD's Athlon Thunderbird.

Why the Thunderbird?

Some of you may recall the compatibility issues that I had with the Athlon chips in the last RYO article. Although the Athlon has decidedly superior floating point performance when compared the PIII, the original Athlon CPU's and associated chipsets simply refused to work with some soundcards. Other cards such as EMU's Paris absolutely loved the Athlon. The Athlons excellent floating-point capability provided greatly increased effects performance. Still, the compatibility issues were enough of a worry to keep a lot of DAW users away from AMD Athlons.

Now I am happy to report that for the vast majority of all hardware, these compatibility problems are a thing of the past. The Athlon has become the platform of choice for audio / video work. Athlon T-birds are available in clock speeds from 1 to 1.4 Gigahertz and soon to be much higher. Prices currently range from less than $100 for a 1-gigahertz chip, to around $200 for a 1.4-gigahertz model. These prices will only continue to fall as always. With prices this low, overclocking - although quite easy to do on this RYO system - is really no longer needed. Simply buy the fastest CPU you can afford and get a good heatsink and fan.

The Iwill KK266 Motherboard

For this version of the RYO I am choosing the Iwill KK266 motherboard. Note this is NOT the KK266R "RAID" version. I do not recommend using RAID motherboards: there are many compatibility issues that may arise with a RAID configuration, even when using the RAID simply as an additional IDE controller. Although it is possible to get decent results with RAID boards, a lot of tweaking and trial and error may be necessary. With the RYO we prefer to keep thing simple and reliable. And the bottom line is that when a $120 hard disk will get you 60-80 tracks of 24-bit / 44.1 KHz audio, RAID is simply not needed for any DAW. It's unnecessary overkill.

Although there are a lot of motherboards using VIA's KT133a chipset I am recommending the Iwill KK266 for a number of reasons. The VIA KT133a chipset, along with the Athlon Thunderbird has proven itself to be a fine performer and compatibility issues are extremely rare. Iwill, being a relatively small player in the motherboard field, is well aware of competition from the big guys. Their response to this has been to make a product line that is just a bit more solid than the competition. The Iwill KK266 is very similar to the popular ABIT KT7 series mobos, but bit more robust. I have found this board to be extremely stable and reliable. Among many useful feature of the board is the ability to use either 100 FSB or 133 FSB Athlon T-bird chips, along with ability to run PC 100 memory if necessary. Most of these settings are software-configurable in the BIOS, via Iwill's "Smart Setting". Very handy if you want to use your older PC 100 memory sticks. The KK266 has the ability to use up to 1.5 gigs of system ram in three slots. The board has 6 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot, and 1 ISA slot.

This motherboard has a built-in sound chip, a feature that perhaps only a few of you will use, and some of you may object to. However I would like to point out a few things that may change your mind.

First of all, you are not stuck with the onboard sound chip, it is easily disabled via a jumper on the motherboard. With the onboard sound chip disabled, it uses absolutely no system resources. And there are a few reasons why you might want to use the onboard sound in addition to your high-dollar card. First, the chip does not use the usual software-based AC97 CODEC that we are used to hearing in "SoundBlaster" type cards, instead it uses a hardware based C-media CMI-8738 sound chip. This chip is quite a bit better than the old AC97 standard, with a significantly higher signal to noise ratio, and support for up to 24 bit files. If not quite up to audiophile standards it is at the very least usable for audio "yeoman" duty. Another great use for the chip is the built in MIDI port. With the addition of a $15 adapter you have a standard MIDI that port may very well come in handy. I have found, for example, that the port works well in Windows 2000, something that a lot of external midi devices are either having a bit of trouble with or lack drivers for. If you set your computer up in a dual-boot configuration, you can boot the computer in "pro audio" mode using your good soundcard, and in "everyday" mode using the onboard sound chip.

The Case and Power Supply

All of the previous roll RYO computers have used tower cases. Tower cases are fine, and are readily available locally, but if you can afford it I would recommend a rack mounted case. Many studios these days have two or more computers. Even more important than the obvious issue of space is the need to control noise levels. A few computers in a control room can at the very least produce enough noise to be irritating if not damaging in a studio environment. Having the ability to rack mount your computers in a soundproof rack case simultaneously solves both issues.

Rackmount cases used to be unreasonably expensive, but now the price of rackmount cases is rapidly falling. You can get a very fine case for less than $140. I purchased mine at

http://www.compute-aid.com

for the grand total of $138, without power supply. The lack of a power supply is a good thing, though, because it allows us to get a high-performance, whisper-quiet power supply appropriate for studio use. Get at least a 300-watt ATX power supply unit that is approved for use with Athlon CPU's. Most tower cases today will come with an Athlon approved supply, but it doesn't hurt to check. For those of you going the rackmount route, you might want to consider one of the quiet Enermax "Whisper" power supplies from

http://www.directron.com

. I am using four of these and they are extremely quiet. Soundproof racks in which to install the computer are available from http://www.eastcoastmusic.com.

The Memory

Many of you will wonder why I opted NOT to use the new DDR ram. At the time of this writing I have tested several motherboards and either I have not seen an appreciable increase in performance or worse, I have encountered stability and/or compatibility issues. Although DDR ram shows promise, I don't think it is quite ready for prime time use in our DAWs. Therefore I am sticking to SDRAM @ 133 FSB. 133 Mhz SDRAM (and FSB speed) provides a significant increase in performance over 100 Mhz SDRAM, and is proven and stable technology.

CPU speeds have evolved to the point that memory has became the weak link in the chain. Always buy name brand memory that meets or exceeds the PC 133 spec. In doing so you will ensure that the memory will be fast and reliable enough to keep up with whatever CPU you choose to install. Be aware of the fact that in the future FSB's are likely to exceed 133 Mhz, so you may want to purchase memory that is rated even higher. I see often PC 166 rated memory for sale. There is no reason not to use high speed rated memory, as all SDRAM memory is backward compatible with regard to speed. With memory prices as low as they are at the time of this writing, cost is not an issue, therefore I would consider 384 Megs to be the minimum. Remember that newer versions of Windows always seem to require more and more memory, not to mention apps like Gigasampler and Halion.

The Hard Drives

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus drives are still the best choice for audio work. The DiamondMax plus series all feature very high-density platters which allow them to achieve maximum sustained transfer rates of 25 Mbs and better. Maxtor drives realize a fine balance between high sustained transfer rate and low CPU usage, a combo hard to beat in a DAW. Many users routinely stream up to 100 24-bit audio tracks from only one of these drives. Also quite worthy are the latest crop of 7200-rpm IBM and Western Digital drives, however, anecdotal evidence suggests a problematic failure rate in the 75 GB IBM deskstar drives (the other IBM drives are OK). Model numbers are becoming irrelevant as all of the latest 7200 RPM drives produced by these manufacturers have excellent audio performance.

Hard drives are indeed becoming more reliable and efficient. A lot has been said about using a separate drive for audio, and it still is a good idea for the very best audio streaming performance, but I feel that these new 7200 RPM drives are fast enough that many users could easily get by using only one of these drives. You can find these drives around the web (and often on special at your local computer super-store) for about $100 for a 20 GB drive to $275 in sizes up to 81 gigs.

Video

I'll make another recommendation: get a Matrox G450 dual display card. They are capable of high resolution and are very reasonably priced at about $85 or less. Believe me, if you don't already know, you will soon find you need dual monitors. Matrox cards are quiet, dependable, do not hog up the PCI bus and have more than enough resolution to run 2D audio graphics at any reasonable rate. Moreover they are well known to be compatible with most if not all audio hardware and other devices. Never underestimate the importance of buying hardware that "plays fair."

Put it All Together

We will provide the following "quick-start" guidelines for the expeienced computer builder, or click here for a detailed "how-to" guide if this is the first computer you have ever built. If you haven't built a computer before, at least have someone on the hook that you can call to bail you out if you get in over your head.

Quick Recipe for the Experienced

1. Attach the motherboard to the case using the standoffs that are included with the case.

2. Insert your memory in the proper slots. The memory is keyed to the slot and will only install one way.

3. Lift the metal locking arm on the CPU socket and drop in the CPU (you will see a notch, which allows the CPU to drop in only in the correct position.) Do not force the chip, it will drop in by itself if properly aligned!

4. After applying a thin coat of thermal paste to the CPU, attach the heatsink across the chip and to the clips on the motherboard. Be very careful! The Athlon Thunderbird chip is a bit more delicate than the Intel chips we have used in the past.

5. Attach the floppy drive (You have one of these laying around right?) to the case and run the cable from the board to the drive, remember the end with the twist in it goes to the floppy drive and the red stripe always goes to pin 1 on both the drive and the motherboard. You may have to look closely, but pin 1 will be indicated somewhere on the drive. On the motherboard pin 1 will be indicated by a mark in the schematic in the motherboard manual as well.

6. Attach your hard drives, remember that your boot drive needs to be set as master (look on the back of your drive for proper jumper settings) on the lowest numbered IDE channel, again per schematic in your manual. Remember that pin 1 always goes to the red stripe. (Note that in many cases this will be determined automatically by keys on the cables, but just in case remember "RED STRIPE TO PIN1". I have found it is best to place both of hard drives on the lowest numbered IDE channel as master/slave and put my CD devices on the second numbered IDE channel.

7. Install the graphics card in the AGP slot.

8. Squint your eyes (unless you have the those of a hawk) and hook up all of those tiny little connectors that go to the switches and LED's. On most PC cases, the white wires are the common leads and the multi-colored wires are the positive leads. Polarization does make a difference with LED's. Consult the schematic in your manual.

9. Assuming that you got this far, and everything is hooked up correctly, it is time to set the BIOS. Plug your keyboard, monitor and mouse in the proper holes, plug in the AC and push the switch. As soon as you see the boot screen, push Del and make the proper adjustments to the Iwill smart setting section of the BIOS. On this motherboard, I found that the automatic settings worked just fine and no initial tweaking was needed. Your mileage may vary. Read the manual.

10. If you are running Windows 98 or 98/2000 in a dual-boot configuration, use a Windows 98 startup disk to boot up F-disk and format. The Win 98 startup disk is a great tool that automates the f-disk and format procedures, and automatically places DOS drivers for your CD-ROM in a virtual hard disk that it creates in memory. Use F-disk partition your drives and format the audio drive using the /z:64 switch so you will get the largest block sizes available. If you're using Windows 98, you can use the optimization tips listed in Catena's Virtual Memory and Hard Disk optimization articles. If you're using Windows 2000, read his latest article on Windows 2000 optimization.

11. Install Windows of your choice from the CD-ROM, install your soundcard, software and get ready to upgrade again in about 6-9 months, because by then we are all going to be running dual CPU machines. Aren't we?

Get the complete recipe for rolling your own. Read On for Complete Detailed Instructions and Photographs >>

Choosing the CPU

Mon, 01 May 2000 00:00:00 GMT

Anyone who has had to fool with audio cards knows that compatibility is a real consideraion when putting together an audio computer. Clearly, the Intel processors are the benchmark for compatibility. What are the viable options then?

1. The PIII Coppermine FCPGA "EB" which runs on the 133 Mhz bus and a Motherboard using the VIA Apollo 133 Mhz chipset.
2. The PIII Coppermine FCPGA "E" which runs on the 100 mhz bus and may be successfully overclocked using the Via Apollo chipset at 133 Mhz bus speed
3. The PIII Coppermine FCPGA "E" running on the venerable BX chipset, which is also capable of being overclocked on the 133 Mhz bus.
4. The new Celeron Coppermine FCPGA (AKA "The Celermine") which natively runs at 66 Mhz FSB but may successfully be overclocked to 100 MHz FSB on appropriate motherboards using the Intel BX (or VIA Apollo) chipsets

CPUs: The Issues

1. The PIII Coppermine "EB" chip is made to run natively at 133 FSB. We have already established that the Intel i820 motherboards that Intel intended to be used for this CPU are not suitable because of expensive memory requirements and/or poor or faulty performance in general. Another consideration here is the cost of the chip itself. At the time of this writing an Intel PIII chip at 850 Mhz (our nominal CPU speed goal) costs around $800!

Those of us who built the first "Roll Your Own" computer know by now that we don't have to spend that kind of money to get high audio performance. We know a few tricks! Right off the bat we can rule out Intel CPU's made to run natively at 800 Mhz or better, simply on financial grounds.

2. The Coppermine PIII "E" chips. These are identical to the Intel PIII "EB" chips with one exception. They are made to be run natively at 100 Mhz FSB, so they may be overclocked by using the 133 Mhz FSB. Therefore it would seem to be viable to purchase a low cost 600 Mhz chip and run it at 800 Mhz at 133 FSB.

But here we run into a problem or two. As we have established, Intel does not have a decent or affordable chipset which is designed to run at 133 MHz, so we will be forced to either overclock the venerable BX chipset, a chipset that was never designed to be run at 133 mhz, or use the VIA Apollo chipset. Remember, both the Intel i820, and the Via Apollo chipsets have reduced memory performance when compared to the venerable BX chipset.

It would seem the ideal situation would be to run the BX at 133 MHz. If we chose to overclock the BX chipset, there are several motherboards available, such as the MSI BX- Master which will have great memory performance, and can be run at 133 FSB, but we will still run into one big issue. There is no way to run an AGP video card within specifications using the BX chipset at 133 Mhz, therefore we must either use a PCI video card or find an AGP video card which is happy to run in an overclocked state. Both of these solutions are certainly viable and I have used them both in my DAW designs, but again, for the purposes of this article I prefer to keep things as simple and foolproof as possible

Celeron To the Rescue (Again)!

I don't know if Intel just loves musicians or, maybe the "Cyber Gods" are rewarding us for living good clean lives (not!), but once again Intel has given us a quite a gift with the new Coppermine-based Celeron.

As most of us know by now "Coppermine" Is Intel's name for it's newest .18 micron CPU core. Both the PIII Coppermine and the Celeron Coppermine now include Intel's SIMD instruction set, a real plus these days as many apps are now optimized for these instructions. Like the original Celeron "A" chips the new Coppermine chips (Both Celeron and PIII) use on-die L2 Cache which runs at system CPU speed instead of a fraction of CPU speed as in the case of earlier PII's PIII's and current Athlon chips. As many of you know by now, for audio a fast L2 cache is highly desirable, In fact the speed of the L2 cache is arguably more important that the size of the cache in audio applications. Why am I making this point? Here are the facts:

There are only two primary differences between the expensive PIII Coppermine Chip, and the affordable Celeron Coppermine chips. On the PIII, there is 256K of onboard L2 cache, On the Celeron there is 128K. Difference number two is simply Intel intends the PIII's to be run at 100, or 133 FSB and intends the Celeron version of this chip to be run at 66 mhz FSB. You will notice that I said "intends" As you may have already guessed by now, we aren't going do things the way Intel intends!

When I wrote the first "Roll Your Own" article, the subject of overclocking a CPU was a lot more controversial than it is now. Things have changed since then, and overclocking has become almost mainstream. We have even seen even the Wall Street Journal cover this issue! With so many overclocked units functioning perfectly in the field for years now, and with many resellers offering pre-tested and guaranteed overclocked CPU's, I am going to base this DAW Recipe on a particular, and highly overclockable Intel Chip, the Celeron 566.

Get Your Kicks With a 566

With every new CPU core that is produced, there is a top speed a core is capable of and a "sweet spot". In the case of the .18 micron Coppermine core the top speed seems to be about 1000 Mhz (1 Gigahertz). As most of you know by now, Intel is selling Coppermine chips at 1000 Mhz. Getting that speed out of the Coppermine core is not easy even for Intel. In fact, Intel uses large heatsinks and higher core voltages to achieve these speeds. If that sounds like Intel itself is using overclocking techniques to squeeze 1 Gigahertz out of the Coppermine core, it's because that is precisely the case!

At the time of this writing an Intel CPU running at 1 GHz costs over $1300! Instead of paying that kind of cash, we are going to use the Celeron 566 overclocked to 850 Mhz on the BX chipset at 100 MHz FSB. I feel this configuration hits the Coppermine's price / performance "Sweet spot" and will give us about 85% of the performance at about 20% of the cost.

We like that.

Ok, I'm convinced, let's build the damn thing! >>>

RYO2K Specification

Mon, 01 May 2000 00:00:00 GMT

The Case

Let's begin with the case. For our purposes we need at least a mid-tower ATX case. These have at least three 5.5 inch drive bays, a couple of 3.5 bays and most important of all, plenty of room for air to circulate. Most of the items we are going to discuss today I am going to recommend that you purchase on the web, but the case is one that you might want to consider getting locally, as any savings you may accrue will most likely be eaten up with shipping charges. In any case, (no pun intended), an ATX mid-tower case with a 250 to 300 watt power supply should cost you around $70. One more thing, if the case you find has only one fan (and most do) it would be a good idea to add and additional fan to the front of the case, where you will likely find a port made this purpose

The Motherboard

For our purposes, we will use the ABIT BE6-II. This board still uses the Intel BX chipset which unbelievably is still the highest performing desktop chipset on the market. Although it does not officially support higher bus speeds than 100 mhz FSB, its memory performance and compatibility still make it somewhat of a better candidate that the VIA Apollo boards. Simply stated, the BX chipset has inherently better performance than the only other reasonable alternatives at this time.

Because we are going to be running the Celeron 566 overclocked to 850 at 100 FSB, this board with it's jumperless soft menu setup is the ideal candidate. The BE6-II has three dimm slots, which can hold over 768 Mbs of cacheable memory, 5-pci slots, 1 ISA and one AGP slot. Consider as well the ABIT Soft Menu. This menu eliminates the typical jumpers found on other motherboards. All parameters of the BIOS including CPU speed (up to 1000+ Mhz), CPU voltage, multiplier etc. are set in software from the computer screen.

The BE6-II incorporates an on-board UDMA/ATA 66 controller, as well as standard IDE controllers. Not only will this allow you to use up to eight IDE devices, but will also allow the use of future hard drives that will soon exceed the 33 Mbs limit of the standard ATA 33 controllers, an important point. Another nice feature of all ATX boards is that all external connectors (i.e. parallel, serial, USB, mouse, etc.) are directly mounted on the motherboard itself, thus eliminating the need for cables and one more source of confusion when assembling the computer. The ABIT BE6-II is widely available around the web for about $110 to $130 dollars

The Memory

The speed of today's systems and buses are rapidly increasing to the point where memory is starting to become the weak link in the chain. Therefore always buy a major brand memory that meets or exceeds the PC 133 spec, in doing so you will ensure that the memory will be fast enough to keep up with whatever CPU you choose to install, whether it runs at the 100 or 133 Mhz clock. Be aware of the fact that future FSB's are likely to exceed the 133 Mhz, so it may be a good idea to be prepared. I use PC 133 CAS 2 memory which costs a little more, but the extra insurance is worth it. You will pay about $175 for 128 Mbs of high quality PC 133 CAS 2 memory. I would consider 128 MBs to be the bare minimum in a DAW and would recommend 256, especially if you are using soft synths such as Gigastudio.

The Hard Drives

Here again I can make a specific recommendation. The best choice at this time is the Maxtor 40 series DiamondMax Plus drives. The Maxtor 40 series run at 7200 rpm and incorporate high-density platters that allow them to achieve sustained transfer rates of nearly 30 MB/s. That is no misprint, and yes it is more than twice as dense and fast as the original Maxtor 2800 series drives used in the first incarnation of the "Roll You Own" computer.

Nashville producer Brian Tankersley reportedly routinely streams over 60 24bit audio tracks off of one of these drives. A lot has been said in the past about using a separate drive for audio, and it still is a good idea for the very best audio performance, but I feel that these new Maxtor drives are so fast and reliable that the majority of users could easily get by using only one of these drives when properly partitioned. You can find these drives around the web (and often on special at your local computer super-store) for about $150 to $250 depending on the size. I would recommend buying the largest you can afford. Remember, 24 bit recording is here, and it is 1.5 times more "drive hungry" than 16 bit recording. 24/96 recording will simply eat a small drive alive - and plug up your CPU quick. 'Nuff said.

There is another feature available now, and that is removable hard disk bays. If you are used to backing up your disks to CD-R or DAT so that you can reformat your audio disks for the next project, have we got a deal for you. For as little as $20 you can install your audio disk in a unit that makes it a removable drive. Since a 20 GB disk is easily capable of storing all the audio from a music project, and since said disks are already cheap at under $200 each, it really makes sense to put these disks in a removable drive bay. When the project is complete, just pop the disk out and toss in another. Inclose makes a decent and quite affordable drive bay. Kensington makes a more expensive and robust drive bay as well.

Note that if you wish to have two removable disks, you can. But on most computers this will require you to set up all your disks as slaves (so that any disk will work in either drive bay), and set up your boot disk and CD-ROM as master devices. Some CD-ROM drives do not like to be master devices. Fortunately, Yamaha CD-ROMs seem quite happy as channel masters, and Yamaha CD-ROM drives are also great CD burners, so again we can categorically recommend the Yamaha CD-ROM drives.

The CPU

As mentioned above we are once more going to take advantage of the ability of the Celeron chip to be successfully overclocked (read above for more info). Because the Celeron 566 is a FCPGA socket 370 device, and our motherboard is a slot one board, we are going to use a Celeron 566 in combination with a FCPGA "slocket adapter".

Be sure to order an adapter made specifically for the Coppermine FCPGA chips: the earlier PPGA adapters will not work and may damage your chip!

Although many "slocket" adapters exist, I prefer those made by Matrix (available from Advanced Designs of Kentucky for around $20) because of the lack of confusing jumpers which could easily cause you to burn out your chip if set incorrectly. When using the Matrix device and the ABIT BE6-II, all voltage settings will be done on-screen in the BIOS, where they are easily visible.

Another good recommendation is the ABIT adapter which does not require jumper settings when using it with ABIT boards. A number of people have had good success with this slocket adapter.

If you use another brand of adapter, be sure to set all of the jumpers in the appropriate positions, usually the default. Caution! It is very easy to burn out your chip at this step! Be sure to get a good heatsink at the same time you purchase your chip, because we are going to be raising the voltage above the standard and it is good insurance against overheating.

I highly recommend that you purchase you Celeron 566 pre-tested at 850 Mhz from many of the online venders who specialize in selling them. Many of these dealers will sell you a pre-tested unit which consists of CPU Adapter and heatsink tested together as one unit. To me it is well worth the extra money. Remember this although the majority of these chips have no trouble reaching 850 Mhz, if you don't get a pre-tested unit, it is possible that you will be stuck with a chip that will only run at 566 Mhz! At the time of this writing, you can purchase pretested Celeron 566 CPUs from Advanced Design as well as others.

Note to Existing Roll Your Own Owners

As you read through the specification for the Roll Your Own 2000 computer, you will quickly notice that it is very similar to the design of the original Roll Your Own. That's no mistake. Most of the design decisions made in the original Roll Your Own computer are still valid decisions today.

That's great news. Because if you already have a Roll Your Own computer, we can quickly cut to the chase: the best way to spend your money today is simply to replace your existing Celeron 300A chip at 450 MHz with a 566 chip at 850 MHz. Your computer will scoot like a scalded alligator.

Current UDMA/33 controllers can already support the performance of today's fastest drives. Since your current drives (as well as any drives you're likely to add any time soon) don't require UDMA/33 for top performance, you can keep your current BH6 motherboard. Your existing 100 MHz RAM will work fine. And since we're not changing the motherboard, your other peripherals should be completely unaffected.

So - for about $200 - you can just about double the performance of your existing Roll Your Own computer. All you need to do is update your ABIT BH6 motherboard with the latest BIOS update from ABIT, and set up the BIOS. The only changes you need to make to the BIOS are:

1. set the voltage to 1.7V
2. set the multiplier to 8 (though it really shouldn't matter, see below)
3. set the "Speed Error Hold" to Disabled

Note that the BIOS updates for the BH6 Rev 1.1 are different from those for previous versions. Make sure you get the correct update.

How to put it all together >>>

Roll Your Own 2000

Mon, 01 May 2000 00:00:00 GMT

It's hard to believe that nearly 2 years have passed since I wrote the original "Roll Your Own" Article!

I have heard from hundreds of you who built the original machines, and I want to take this opportunity to thank every one of you for all of the kind words and input. This time we are going to more than double the performance of that machine, and for only a bit more cash. And for those of you who already own the original Roll Your Own, you will be glad to know that you can pretty much double your machine's current CPU performance for only about $200.

Needless to say, there has been a lot of advancement in computer hardware since the first article was written. As with the original Roll Your Own, our goal will once again be "how to construct a DAW that has the highest possible performance within reasonable economic boundaries".

I realize that this article will be read by those of you who built the original machine and have since achieved a degree in "Geekdom" as well as those of you who will be building your first computer. The first section of this article may be a bit technical, so some of you may chose to skip it and get right down to the construction. For those of us who have graduated from "Geek 101" however, I think these points will be pretty interesting.

I have started to update this article at least three times and, each time I was sure I had a viable recipe for a new DAW, there was a significant development in the industry that caused me to re-think the issue. (Not to mention spend more money on gear to test.) However, there has recently been a convergence of several technologies that create a new price / performance benchmark that we can capitalize upon.

Here are some of the factors that have kept the water muddy for the last 12 months:

1. Running the Athlon

Because AMD's Athlon chip has very high FPU performance, for a time it seemed like the Athlon would be the CPU of choice for audio. We soon learned however that using the Athlon and its associated VIA chipset limited our sound card choices. In fact, cards by Echo, Lexicon, Aark, Guillemot and a few others would not work at all in these machines. In addition, many audio applications are now being optimized for Intel's PIII SIMD instruction set, and the Athlon does not support these extensions. Make no mistake though, the Athlon is a fine audio performer, but it is not "everyman's" chip.

2. The Intel PIII

The first PIII that Intel produced was little more than a PII with SIMD instructions. Like its predecessor the PII, it had its L2 cache off-board the main CPU die and it ran at half the CPU speed. Most of us were already using an overclocked Celeron chip, which had equal, if not better audio performance. True, the original Celeron lacked SIMD instructions, but few apps took advantage of them at that time (this is now changing rapidly and many audio apps are now being optimized).

3. The Intel Coppermine PIII

At last! A chip with high FPU performance, high speed, and fast onboard L2 cache. Perfect, right?

Except for one small problem. Amazingly, Intel made a monumental blunder and put all of its eggs into a new memory technology call RAMBUS. Unfortunately, RAMBUS memory costs about 5 times as much as SDRAM memory and has very little performance gain at all over SDRAM (the current standard). In fact, the situation is so bad that Intel itself was forced to manufacture motherboards with chipsets that included a converter to translate from RAMBUS memory to SDRAM. These boards (using the Intel i820 and associated chipsets) have poor memory performance, and In fact at the time of this writing, Intel has recalled over a million of these motherboards. Quite a costly mistake!

The debate about Athlon versus PIII performance has been very heated in the DAW world. Processors are religious issues with some people. We decided to benchmark the PIII against the Athlon to determine if the Athlon chip's reputedly superior performance would actually prove itself in real world applications (read about our Benchmarks here). What the benchmark showed us is that, yes, the Athlon does enjoy a slight performance improvement over Pentiums of the same clock speed. The difference ranges from negligible to noticable, but not the order-of-magnitude improvement that early reports were touting. And, yes, the Athlon chips are cheaper than their comparable Pentium counterparts.

However, remember that these small improvements in performance will be completely negated if your audio app supports Intel's SIMD instructions! Audio apps that support SIMD will enjoy a healthy advantage on Intel chips versus similar chips from other manufacturers.

More >>>

Building RYO2K

Mon, 01 May 2000 00:00:00 GMT

For the purposes of this article I am going to assume that most of you have a fairly good knowledge of computers and know how to do things like F-disk and format. If you don't, I bet you have a friend that does. Invite him over, order a pizza, make him some coffee, offer him your significant other.

No, wait a minute, that's going too far.

At least have someone on the hook that you can call to bail you out if you get in over your head. In any case, my intention here is to outline the basic procedures for assembling a bare-bones high performance audio computer from the components that I am using and recommend, and not to go into fine detail.

1. Attach the motherboard to the case using the standoffs that are included with the case.

2. Insert your memory in the proper slots. Consult the schematic in your BE6-II manual.

3. Lift the metal locking arm on the adapter and drop in the CPU (you will see a notch which allows the CPU to drop in only one way) Do not force the chip - it will drop in by itself if properly aligned.

4. Attach the heatsink to the CPU (you'll figure it out) and push the adapter firmly, but carefully into the motherboard. Be sure it is all the way in! I have seen many reports of trouble associated with this simple mistake.

5. Attach the floppy drive (you did buy a floppy drive didn't you?) to the case and run the cable from the board to the drive. Remember the end with the twist in it goes to the floppy and the red stripe always goes to pin 1. You may have to look closely, but pin 1 will be indicated somewhere on the drive. On the motherboard pin 1 will be indicated by a mark in the schematic in the BE6-II manual.

6. Attach your hard drives. Remember that your boot drive needs to be set as master (look on the back of your drive for proper jumper settings) on IDE channel 1, again per schematic in your manual. Remember that pin 1 always goes to the red stripe. (Note that in many cases this will be determined automatically by keys on the cables, but just in case, chant this mantra to yourself over and over: RED STRIPE TO PIN 1, RED STRIPE TO PIN 1 RED…………. Note* I had to place both of my hard drives on IDE channel 1, as master/slave and put my CD-ROM on IDE channel 2 as this was the only way I could get busmastering (more on that later) to work. You may find a different arrangement is necessary. Another note* Even if you plan on running your drives on the ATA 66 bus, you should first install Windows with the boot drive attached to the Standard ATA 33 ports, then switch them over and install the necessary ATA 66 drivers. If you do this out of order, the ATA 66 Port may not be able to "see" your drives and you will get nowhere fast.

7. Put your monitor card in. I will make another recommendation here: get a Matrox G200 display card. They are capable of high resolution and are very reasonably priced at about $60 or less. They are dependable and do not hog up the pci bus, while having more that enough performance to run 2D audio graphics at any reasonable resolution.

8. Get your glasses (if you are an old fart of 40 or more like me) and hook up all of those tiny little connectors that go to the switches and LED's. Interestingly, although it is not noted in the manual, the white wires are usually the common and the multi-colored ones are the positive leads. Polarization does make a difference with LED's. Consult the schematic in your manual.

9. Assuming that you got this far, and everything is hooked up correctly, it is time to set the BIOS. Plug your keyboard, monitor and mouse in the proper holes, plug in the AC and push the switch. As soon as you see the boot screen, push Del and make the proper adjustments to the Soft menu section of the BE6-II bios. In the case of the Celeron 566, we will be setting the FSB speed to 100 mhz and the multiplier to 8.5 or the highest speed possible under 8.5. Note: if your older ABIT motherboard doesn't have an 8.5 multiplier, don't worry: your chip will still be running at 850, as the multiplier is locked at the chip, and is set by the CPU, not the BIOS. You may notice that upon booting up, you will see something like "Pentium III at 806 EB". Don't be concerned! Your cpu is in fact running at 850 Mhz.

10. Set the voltage to "User Define" You will note that the default voltage is 1.5 volts. Increase that to 1.70 volts. That is well within the specs for a Coppermine core (Intel uses even higher voltages on some Coppermine Pentiums) and should cause no undue thermal stress, provided you are using a good fan. Still, a warning is in order: as always, overclocking is to be done at your own risk! Although many, many hundreds of these are performing perfectly, you could be the unlucky one that has trouble. After your computer is up and running stably, you might wish to experiment with lower voltages. There are a number of Celeron 566's that will overclock fine at 1.5 volts. As usual, less is more.

11. Go to the proper section of the BIOS screen and set the drive detection to auto.

12. Use a Windows 98 Startup disk to boot up, fdisk, and format. The Win 98 startup disk is a great program that automates the fdisk and format procedures, and automatically places dos drivers for your CD-ROM in a virtual hard disk that it creates in memory. Using fdisk partition your drives, format using the /z:64 switch so you will get the largest block sizes available (read Catena's articles for more information about setting up your disks, virtual memory and vache for best audio performance).

13. Install Windows of your choice from the CD-ROM, check the DMA box in the hard disk section of Windows' device manager, install the standard busmastering controllers in the hard disk controller section of same, (if they are not installed automatically), install your soundcard, software and get ready to Rock and Roll!

Really Nice

Mon, 01 Mar 1999 00:00:00 GMT

I can hear it now.

"What do you wanna do tonight honey?"

"I dunno. What do you wanna do?"

"Why don't we design the best compressor in the world for under $1500?"

"OK, dear. That sounds like fun"

Not your ordinary domestic conversation, but the couple who designed and market the RNC (for Really Nice Compressor) aren't your ordinary couple. They are of course, both electronics engineers. Unsatisfied with the way that most compressors sounded, and in need of a high-quality compressor themselves, they simply designed their own unit.

Well, one thing led to another and before long word got around that something special was happening in a little shop in Austin Texas. FMR Audio was born.

Don't like to shop around and compare? Need a compressor? Don't have about two grand or so to spend?

Save yourself some time and don't even bother to look at any thing else. This has got to be the all around best sounding compressor at anywhere near it's price and many hundreds of dollars above. I was simply astounded the first time I heard one, and I was even more astounded that it cost less than $200 directly from FMR (http://www.fmraudio.com), or a small handful of distributors.

If you haven't heard of FMR or the RNC it is probably because the unit up to now has not mass merchandised. If it were, perhaps it would be more well known but advertising expenses would undoubtedly bring the cost up many times. So much the better. Madison Avenue's loss is our great gain!

The unit is a tiny 1/3 rack space module in a gray metal case with a white face and black/blue knobs that somehow seems to project the businesslike image of precision medical equipment. An eight segment LED registers gain reduction and the five smooth feeling knobs control threshold, comp ratio (1:1 TO 25:1) attack in msec from .2 to 200, release time in seconds from .5 to 5.0, and gain from 15 to +15.

Two buttons with on/off LED indicators control bypass and give you the choice between a standard one element stereo compressor, and the famous "Super Nice" mode. On the rear panel you will find 5 jacks: 2 for left I/O, 2 for right I/O, as well as the usual sidechain jack.

One Really Nice Thing is that the RNC can be wired in two ways: using TRS or TS cables. TRS cables allow you to connect the RNC directly to mixer inserts with one cable per channel, a feature that I found to be very useful and tidy, and regular TS cables for standard patchbay connections. The sidechain uses a TRS connection, so you must use an adapter to break it out for standard I/O, or use an insert cable to connect it to a normalled patchbay.

The connectors, while convenient, might upset people looking for balanced inputs and outputs. You will have to use adapters to use this unit in a balanced signal path. For myself, I feel this is an extremely small price to pay for the super high quality and low price of this remarkable piece of equipment, furthermore the use of balanced TRS connectors would have precluded the 'one cable insert" trick that I have found to be so handy.

The "Super Nice" Mode

Everyone who has ever recorded vocals or solo instruments has had to deal with the what I will term "rogue dynamics". It goes some thing like this:

You get the compression ratio set just right. Say a 3 or 4 to one ratio happening at about a -6dB threshold, things are looking good and Bam! Along comes a transient peak or maybe just a plain old rock and roll shout that pegs the meters. Splat! goes the preamp, or even worse your digital recorder goes into the "over" range. The only thing you can do is dial in a higher ratio, or maybe a lower threshold, and it's time for another take.

So far so good. This time, you don't go into the red and things seem to be going OK. You play the take back and you begin to notice that the whole track has just a bit too much of that overly compressed sound, and aren't those breaths getting just a little overbearing? Well, that won't do either, so you gently suggest that the performers go out and get a cup of coffee while you chain up a compressor to smooth out the dynamics, followed by a hard limiter to tame those errant, yet oh-so-tasteful screams.

Finally we've got something that works right? Well, all except for the fact that we have now added the noise from two different devices, and two different power supplies to our vocal channel and either somebody left the water running in the bathroom or you've got hiss, baby! Maybe it's not that much, but the vocal or solo instrument is definitely not the place to be adding those extra stages of gain - and noise. (You always reserve those extra stages of gain and noise for those Marshall stacks turned up to "12" right ?).

The solution to all of this is the RNC "Super Nice" Mode. The Super Nice mode actually chains three compressors in a row each gently and incrementally reduces the gain in such a way that it is musically transparent. You really have to use some radical settings to get this thing to sound anything but sweet. It completely solves all of the above mentioned compression woes - and all without adding extraneous noise.

Without the "Super Nice" mode, the RNC would just be a great stereo compressor. WITH the "Super Nice" mode, however, it achieves superstar status as one of the best vocal compressors money can buy. It must be heard to be believed.

Did I mention this is a quiet unit? The signal path of the RNC is completely analog, but the controls themselves are digital. Somehow all of this adds up to an extremely quiet and smooth sounding device, even with the three compressors chained together in the Super Nice mode.

For you guitar players out there who like the sound of compression attack, all you have to do is use the regular (non Supernice) compression mode, and let me tell you this little box is capable of putting some real snappy twang in a Stratocaster, only without all of the inherent noise the usual guitar stompbox or effects unit. It is quite at home on all kinds of tracks from guitars to bass ("Super Nice" is great on bass) to drums.

There isn't much more to say about this little box, except that it very well may be the last compressor you will ever need to buy. You simply can't go wrong. You will have to get in line to buy it though, cause with this kind of quality and performance, at this price, there is about a two week waiting list

PS: Did you hear these guys are working on an equalizer? The DNE for Damn Nice EQ? And a preamp - the KAP - Kick-Ass Preamp? Maybe. Let's keep hoping…

Making Waves

Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMT

Note from the Editor: Waves sent us a full CD of software for review. Always the overachiever, Pete reviewed all the software sent to him - many of which are not included in the Native Power Pack. The Native Power Pack includes the Q10 EQ, the C1 compressor, the S1 StereoImager, the L1 Ultramaximizer, and the TrueVerb. The other plugins reviewed here - Renaissance Compressor, DeEsser, and MaxxBass - are part of the Native Power Pack II. You can read a full review of NPP II here.

Either ya's got class or ya' ain't.

The '57 Chevy is a classic. The '62 Stratocaster is a classic. So are the Rolling Stones.

Add to the list the Waves Native Power Pack.

The minute you first lay eyes on the box you begin to understand that Waves cares about quality. This is one product that wasn't rushed to market in a half-baked state. The abundance of quality is again apparent in the manual. A beautiful black loose-leaf type notebook with heavy pages that even your puppy would have a hard time destroying.

Besides aesthetics, I am very pleased to report that this attention to detail extends to the coding of the program itself. You will likely experience no mysterious Direct-X computer glitches or crashes when using these babies. NPP performs all of its functions flawlessly, and is about as solid as software gets. A full list of compatible programs may be found at the bottom of this article.

NPP is foremost a professional product. No serious DAW based studio should be without NPP. The pack includes the Q10 (EQ), the L1 (a mastering compressor and limiter), the C1 (compression, gate, expansion), the TrueVerb (high quality reverb), Renaissance (a vintage type compressor) MaxxBass (similar to the BBE processor for low end), the S1 (stereo imaging enhancer) and the DE (a de-essing device). All of these plugs were written with the professional in mind and are very tweakable, but on the whole, the interface is written so well that even a novice will have little trouble negotiating them.

I will now try to cover the important features of each device in three words or less (well, maybe a few more) but I'll try to keep this as concise as possible.

The Q10 Paragraphic EQ

First of all let me say that this EQ sounds great. A lot of EQ's exhibit minor phase shifting character that sometimes becomes quite audible. This one seems to avoid that somehow. The interface is almost self-explanatory at first glance, and allows you to just grab and drag a graphic EQ line into whatever shape you need. The interface allows you to easily control frequency, gain, and Q in high-resolution increments, with output meters to keep you from clipping. Simple and elegant.

Waves Q10 EQ

Waves realizes that for most EQ applications, only one or two bands of EQ are needed. Why chew up precious CPU resources crunching 10 bands of EQ when you aren't using 9 of those bands? Waves kindly packages the Q10 in several flavors - the Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, Q6, Q8 and Q10. These versions allow you to choose the equalizer that provides only the processing you need, saving valuable CPU cycles.

And, the Q10 includes access to Waves excellent IDR dithering algorithm, to get the most out of the 32-bit EQ algorithms when using 16 bit media.

The L1 Ultramaximizer

I will not master a project without using the Ultramaximizer. This device alone is worth the price of admission to the NPP Club. What it does is allow you to use compression and brick wall limiting on your final mixes, while applying IDR noise shape dithering to ensure that every last bit of resolution goes into the master, even at low volumes.

L1 UltraMaximizer

The cool thing about L1 is it does all of this so smoothly. You really have to get into some extreme settings to get non-musical results. If you are one of those people that insists on your mix being the loudest thing over the airwaves, this is the device that can do it gracefully. Conversely, if you are recording classical music with wide dynamic range, this is still the tool to choose! Elegant compression on the peaks, and perfect noise shaped dithering for high resolution on the valleys.

There is nothing quite like the L1 plugin available at this time. It is so popular and powerful that Waves has released the L1 as a rack-mount hardware device, the L2 UltraMaximizer. For those people who still use rackmount gear.

The C1 Dynamics Processor

The C1 was famous in the Mac world long before it was available on the PC platform. More than just a compressor, it is also capable of gating, expansion, sidechain gating and filtering. It is an efficient and powerful compressor. I use it on virtually every mix I do.

The full C1+ compressor with IDR

As with other Waves devices these may be used as separate modules to conserve CPU power. For example, you can select just the compressor or gate / expander, a compressor with sidechain, a compressor / gate / expander with sidechain, or compressor / gate / expander with sidechain and dithering. Use only the CPU cycles you require.

This tool is as flexible as any compressor you've ever seen. You get complete control over all compressor functionality. Graphs depict the transfer function for both compressor and gate / expander, and full metering is available indicating gain reduction and output level. When used in real time, a bar is displayed on the transfer curve, allowing you to easily see where your audio falls with respect to the transfer function.

One very nice feature of the compressor is PDR (Program Dependent Release) very useful for dealing with rapidly changing transients. PDR follows the stated release time for sustained signals, but shortens the release time for transients. This allows more compression without breathing or pumping.

The C1 also incorporates lookahead processing. This will allow you to set gates, for example, that open right before the signal actually occurs, thus preserving the complete attack and not truncating the first few cycles, as noise gates are prone to do without this feature. There are many more features in this plugin than I have the ability to get into at in this short review. Suffice to say that the C1 is the most flexible and probably the best sounding dynamic processing plugin available anywhere.

The S1 StereoImager

Ever wonder why your mixes sometimes sound a little flat compared to some of the major label releases? One reason is that it's very hard to get a good stereo field happening with only a few mics, and perhaps not as many tracks as you would like to have. The S1 can be quite a miracle worker when it comes to widening the stereo image and adding that extra "space" that we hear so often in commercial releases.

The S1 is unique in that it is able to widen the stereo image without "smearing" the lower frequencies. It employs "shuffling" algorithms to increase the width of the stereo field in the lower frequencies without destroying the phase relationship between the stereo channels. This is something that I found to be quite amazing: every other device that I have tried to use in this way played hell with the bottom end. The S1 effectively minimizes this problem.

S1 StereoImager

I use S1 in two ways. First of all, it's great to use instead of panning to create positioning with space. Use this on individual tracks in a sparse mix to get real space in the mix. Secondly, it's excellent to use this on a 2-D sounding final mix. S1 is a great mastering tool.

The S1 also includes an excellent mid-side matrix option, capable of bringing out an excellent stereo image from mid-side miking. And it includes the IDR option to allow high-resolution dithering, perfect for use in mastering. As with the Q10 and C1, the S1 is available in its full-function mode with or without IDR, or without shuffling (when there is little bass content), or just the MS Matrix.

TrueVerb

TrueVerb is one of the few reverb plugs available that can accurately simulate real environments. Waves has obviously spent a lot of time getting a true mathematical representation of actual environments. How does this relate to the way is sounds? Well pretty darn good. TrueVerb is one of only a small number of software reverbs that can effectively compete with high-end hardware units costing thousands of dollars.

TrueVerb Reverb

TrueVerb is no doubt one of the better reverb plugins available, but I have to say I have a few problems with the interface. Although the rest of the NPP is very clear and intuitive, I find the TrueVerb interface to be somewhat obtuse. It is almost as if the engineers got carried away with room simulation and forgot that we are trying to use it to create music. I have at times found myself avoiding TrueVerb and choosing another device when pressed for time. TrueVerb is also quite CPU intensive. However, this is usually the price you have to pay for good resolution and smooth, clear tails in a reverb, and TrueVerb's sound is unquestionably first-class.

The Renaissance Compressor

The Renaissance Compressor seems to me to be a sort of Urie tube compressor meets Valley People meets Cubase interface. It re-creates the sound of the older tube and optical type compressors. Currently I just happen to have at my disposal an old Urie unit (no I don't want to sell it). These kind of devices are very subjective. I preferred the clear, distortionless sound of the C1 for vocals but I have to say I really got some excellent results using the Renaissance Compressor on bass and guitar.

Renaissance Compressor

It has a very "amp like" sound, and similar in some respect to the Urie unit which I also use for guitars occasionally. When driven hard is has a natural breathing and pumping effect, like tube compressors, and once you let up a little bit you are left with a warm, "soft-clipped" sound.

You will have to make up your own mind about the interface. Some people like it, and others refer to these interfaces as "cartoonish." It is clearly a new direction for Waves.

MaxxBass

This one works great! What MaxxBass will do for you is give your mixes that "Pumpin" bass sound without causing your speakers to jump out of their baskets. When you hear the bass produced by MaxxBass, you may be left scratching your heads wondering, "How dey do dat?" It sounds like your speakers are producing bass an octave lower than they are supposed to be able to produce!

MaxxBass

MaxxBass creates the harmonic cues that "fool" our ears into thinking that the fundamentals are present in higher amount than they actually are. It is possible to get these harmonic effects to some degree with painstaking miking and excellent room acoustics. MaxxBass allows you to get these effects on any track. It's really amazing hearing more bass and simultaneously seeing your speakers moving LESS.

This plugin is essential for doing House or Techno where there's never enough bottom in the mix, and also very useful for correcting a lack of apparent low end in a re-mastering job. without skewing the rest of the mix toward bass. A truly useful and essential tool.

The DE

A very complete de-essing tool featuring very sharp filters which can rid your vocals of S "splatter" without harshly affecting the general spectrum. With proper de-essing, you can INCREASE the trebly wetness of a vocal and yet hear LESS sibilance on the consonants.

Great interface, easy to use and again probably the best of its kind. What more need I say?

DE DeEsser

The Complaint

Waves is the only software company I have worked with that uses a hardware key (dongle) to copy-protect its software. The WaveKey dongle attaches to the computer's parallel port and includes a passthrough so that you can use your parallel port devices with it. Without the WaveKey you cannot use the software.

In all fairness, I have never experienced any problem using the WaveKey. MIDI adapters, printers, and scanners that I have used all work fine with the WaveKey. However, it's the principle of the thing that bothers me. There have been a lot of complaints about it, and I for one would like to see Waves use a more common form of copy protection. Imagine if ALL software companies used dongles! What a nightmare!

The Conclusion

There's class and there's Class. You want Class? Stick Waves NPP into your DAW and give your mixes a new level of Class.

Compatibility:

(compatible with these versions and higher) Sound Forge 4.0a, Cakewalk 6.0, Cubase-VST 3.533, WaveLab 1.6, CoolEdit Pro 1.0, Samplitude 2496, Samplitude Pro 4.5, Logic Audio 3.5, Sonic Foundry Acid 1.0, SAWPlus32 2.9, SEK'D Red Roaster, Ensoniq PARIS 1.8, WaveConvert Pro 3.1 and any other application that supports DirectX plug-in architecture.

Mac versions are also available.

for more information: http://www.waves.com

Auto-Tune Direct X

Tue, 01 Dec 1998 00:00:00 GMT

Ever heard this one?

" If you spend one more *&^% penny on that &^%$ studio we're getting a divorce!"

Well, I have some bad news for you. You are very likely going to spend that penny and a little more, because here is one product that you absolutely have to have.

All of the tweaking, all of the endless hours you spend getting that "perfect" guitar tone, or that "killer" snare tuning doesn't amount to a hill of beans if you blow it all when you lay down the lead vocal. How many times have you put all your heart and soul into a lead vocal only to play it back and find that although the feeling was there, and the emotion was there, on a few phrases the pitch just wasn't quite in the pocket?

Ok, here we go again.

You punch in here, you punch in there, you finally get the intonation right, play it back and discover the emotion is gone, the moment is gone and you may just as well take it all from the top once again.

Frustrating as hell isn't it?

Well, thankfully and finally, that's no longer true. Now we have Antares Autotune. In my entire recording career (and this spans a longer period of time than I really care to admit) I have never encountered a device that is as remarkable as the Autotune plugin.

When I first installed it I was looking forward to a long session of tweaking to get the pitch correction working properly. The last thing I expected was for it to work flawlessly and transparently right out of the box, but to my amazement that is exactly what happened! All you do is choose the key signature, select the scale type and push play. Bam! the pitch problem is gone! No character change, no weirdness at all (unless you get really crazy with the adjustments)

In short, this is simply the finest example of an audio device, hardware or software, that I've ever encountered, and I have seen and used them all.

Normally, at this point in a review I would be going into a lengthy diatribe about the best way to use the product, the tricks, the tweaks etc., but the fact is Auto-tune is so simple to use that would really be a waste of your time.

Instead I'll simply outline the basic operating procedures and offer you some tips as to what not to do.

There are two basic modes: auto, and graphical. You will most likely use the auto mode for 99% of everything you do. When used as an effect insert you simply choose the key and scale as I stated before, and Autotune will do the rest. The only real thing you have to watch out for is that you don't set the retune slider too far toward the fast position or it will grab the note and correct its pitch so quickly that it may sound unnatural.

The only other major controls in the auto mode are the detune setting, allowing you to use the plugin at pitch centers that are not standard 440, and the tracking slider which gives you a little control over what may be considered a periodic (that is, containing pitch) tone. This may be useful with raspy voices or instruments that contain more harmonics and less of the fundamental tone.

I will also point out that this device works so well that it will actually remove vibrato if you set the retune slider too far toward the fast position!

Some of this may sound a bit complex but it really isn't, as I said previously in nearly all cases you can just use the default settings and forget about it.

For those of you that just can't get enough tweaking, there is the graphical mode. The graphical mode analyses the pitch, displays it against a chart of the chosen scale, and allows you to move specific notes closer to the scale. I'm not going to go into detail about this portion other than to say it will give you complete control over just how much the program changes your tracks.

I will now deliver a word of caution: don't overuse Autotune! It works so well you may be tempted to do so.

Like any form of quantization, if overused it is capable of rendering your performance sterile. Remember the stiff tracks of 80's dance music? The last thing we need is for this to occur again in a different fashion.

I have already heard of live performers using the hardware version of this device (yes, there is a hardware version) in their live concerts (shudder) I'm certainly not going to get in a discussion of musical ethics, ala Milli Vannili, but this device works so well that I can easily see this type of thing happening in the near future.

That being said, here is my favorite method of using the plugin and thus preserving the "feeling" of the original performance, while still getting the speed and simplicity of the "auto" mode. Simply record your lead track vocals, horns, guitar leads, or any monophonic line (the autotune does not work with chords, of course), highlight the offending phrases, and select autotune offline. Then choose the key signature and press OK.

That's about all there is to it: the pitch problems will be gone! You may have to be aware of any key signature changes in your song that occur during highlighted portions, but again most of the time, Autotune will plow happily through these transitions and adjust pitch chromatically. I'll conclude by making a simple statement: You really need this plugin, in fact you have to have this plugin, and your significant other is just gonna have to understand.

See ya' in divorce court.

Is it Live, or is it Sampleblaster?

Sun, 01 Nov 1998 00:00:00 GMT

What in the world have we here?

Can it really be true? An $85 high quality sampler?

Well, err, yes! It seems so!

For years the very word "SoundBlaster" has been enough to send shivers up and down the spine of any self respecting digital audiophile, and rightfully so! From poorly written drivers to, shall we say, "somewhat misleading" advertisements, to package info that boldly claimed "full duplex" when such was not the case at all has left a bitter taste in the mouth of those who have attempted to use these cards with a digital audio sequencing app.

The real truth is that these cards were not primarily designed for digital audio they were designed for gaming and here, as any rabid "Unreal" player will tell you, they have greatly succeeded.

However, in an attempt to garner a bigger market share, Creative Labs decided to try and grab a share of the rapidly rising "computer musician" market. With the release of the SoundBlaster 32 series of cards, Creative labs introduced something called a "Soundfont".

A Soundfont turns out to be nothing more than a silly name for a sample. The problem with the AWE 32 and 64 series of cards was that the audio and sampling engine really didn't quite make it up to what could be termed "Hi Fidelity" standards. Although claiming to use 16-bit resolution, astute users soon discovered there was some internal digital finagling occurring. The AWE 32/64 cards were somewhat noisy and in general just weren't cutting it as high quality samplers, but hey, that was not the primary purpose of the card to begin with. These were gaming cards, right?

Ahh, but now the fun starts! Like so many other facets of the computer industry, progress in sound cards is so rapid and competition so fierce, that before the marketing department of a manufacturer knows what in the hell they have on their hands, someone in R and D has already handed them a "New and Improved" version. Witness: The Intel Celeron A processor, primary subject of my column last month. Intel barely had the PII series of CPU's out of the door when they were forced by market dynamics to introduce a less expensive version (the Celeron "A" series) which actually outperformed the original PII in most applications!

Where is this all going? And what has it got to do with the SoundBlaster Live?

Well, I am happy to report to you that the same kind of thing has occurred again, and what we now have on our hands is an $85 high quality sampler!

This time we have two products sharing nearly the same internal devices (with some important limitations of course) being introduced under two different banners.

1: The $700 EMU APS (Audio Production Studio) and
2: The $85 (street) SoundBlaster Live! Value Edition

How close are they? When it comes to the sampling and DSP abilities, very close it seems.

Here in a nutshell are the salient features common to both cards: These are small PCI cards, which allow you to use system memory for your samples. You may load as many 32 Mb banks of samples as you have the system ram to handle (above what you need to run the system, of course), but note, only one 32 MB bank at a time.

Both products share the same new EMU synth engine with all internal processing is done at 32-bit resolution. (No misprint.) Does that lead you to believe that this card may be capable of some high quality sampling? Read on!

Both cards also share one of the most advanced DSP chips ever produced. The reverb algorithms are very dense and dare I say "Lexicon like" in character. They can be applied either in front or in back of the signal chain, and yes this does allow the use of this unit as an outboard processor. There are several effects included. All very tweakable and depending on the amount of processor power required, you may have multiple effects loaded at one time.

Before I forget to mention this, these effects can not only assigned on a per channel basis, but can be assigned on a per sample basis. For example it is possible to have reverb on your snare and toms, but not on you kicks and cymbals, while all samples are using the same midi channel. This feat is easily accomplished with the free "Vienna" sample editing software. For those of you who are familiar with Vienna, it is now up to Ver. 2.3 and now supports the SF2 sample format.

Creative, incidentally, has made the Soundfont 2 spec open to the public, so there is little doubt that it will soon be supported by the major sample venders. In addition, utilities exist which are capable of converting samples in other formats (Akai, Kurzweil, etc.) ensuring there will be plenty of grist for the mill. Another common feature is the capability 64-voice polyphony. Not bad at all for any sampler and superb for less than $100!

Ok what do you get with the APS unit for $600 more? Well, you do get this nifty breakout box enabling you to hang wires out of one of the 5 ½ bays in the front of your computer, and oh yeah, you also get a lot of "neato" mixing software to put with your rapidly growing collection of other "neato" software. You get a back plane with the SP/DIF I/O nicely connected to RCA jacks for those who are too, shall we say "mentally challenged" to figure out how to get the SP/DIF I/O hooked up to the connector on the Live! Value card.

OK, OK, I don't want to get too cocky and carried away here, the APS is rumored to have cleaner digital converters. This would probably be more important if I was recommending the SB Live! as a primary soundcard, but the fact is I am not. I feel there are better cards, with multiple inputs and SP/DIF I/O becoming available now that are far better choices for a primary audio card than either the APS or the SB Live! Also true, the APS does include a nice collection of EMU samples and true, it does have some other extra features not included in the SoundBlaster Live! card but in $600 worth of them? You be the judge.

All right you say, this is sounding pretty good so far, but there has got to be a catch. What's the downside? Where are the negatives?

Semi-big point number one: All internal processing is locked at 48 Khz, which means the SP/DIF out is also locked at 48 KHZ. Bummer. The SP/DIF input however, is capable of on the fly sample rate conversion at all the standard frequencies. As with any sample rate conversion, results will vary. In any case the SP/DIF limitation isn't quite bad as it would seem as due to the fact that the analog output on this card is fairly quiet and certainly on a par with most outboard samplers. In any case, most of the time we will be importing samples into the unit from outside sources, and not depending on the Live's inputs.

Semi-big point number two, also true of both cards: Only one pair of stereo in/outs.

Semi-big point number three: Although you can layer multiple samples at different velocity ranges, and the sample editor is otherwise very comprehensive, as of yet the Vienna editor, includes no direct VCF implementation. Odd, as VCF is definitely included in the Soundfont 2 spec, and the hardware is capable of it as well. This may or may not be a big problem to you depending on your use of the unit. There may well be other issues that emerge, and if I were paying $1000 for this unit I might be tempted to nit pick, but at this price I still have to say, this is one great unit.

Again, I would like to point out that I feel that the card is somewhat too noisy to use as a primary audio card and stress its use only as a sampler. In fact, here is how I would recommend setting up the card: After installing the card, load ONLY the drivers and necessary software, go directly to Device Manager and disable SB16 emulation, all multimedia features, joystick, etc. Proceed from there to Multimedia Properties/Advanced and turn off all audio features leaving ONLY the midi features, this will leave you with just the sampler and none of the other IRQ and resource robbing items. When configured in this manner there will be little chance of conflicts, and you will be left with only a clean Soundfont/sampler interface to deal with in your applications and not a lot of other audio devices popping up in your apps that you probably wont need.

In conclusion, this is one fine little sampler, just don't expect it to be perfect and capable of all your production chores. Combine it with one of the new low cost, high quality audio cards such as the upcoming Gadget Labs 8*24 and you will be rockin'!

This is "More For Less" at it's best!

Audiophile Audio File Compression

Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMT

Hey Ted? How about laying down some funky rythym guitar on this track, I'll zip it over to you.

Hey Pete? Could y'all put some of that New Orleans/Dr. John style piano on this file, using that 9 ft Baldwin at your place? I'll e-mail you the rough track and oh, by the way, I need it back in LA in an Hour.

Huh? What am I talking about?

I'm talking 'bout MP3 compressed audio, and I'm here to tell you that it's better than you may think. Imagine taking an entire stereo 2 track mixdown file (usually about 25 MBs) and compressing it down to less than 2 MBs with barely any audible degradation of the sound quality.

Are you getting the picture?

The time is coming when we can all collaborate over the e-mail, and I'm not talking about MIDI files, I'm talking about that '63 Fender Strat plugged into that Mesa Boogie.

MP3 is capable of compressing audio at a 12 to 1 ratio and still producing very fine results. The question is "how dey do dat?" And the answer is your ears are playing tricks on you, in fact right now they are playing tricks on you.

There are sounds all around you that you can't hear because they are being masked (covered up) by another sound.

Think of it this way: suppose I took a photo of a man standing behind a house. Of course we wouldn't see the guy 'cause the house is in front of him and effectively "masking" him from view. He was behind there all right, but we don't need to know that, all we need to know is "picture of a house."

It is a fact that we can do the same thing with audio, that is, only record the part that we can hear, and ignore the part that we can't hear!

Of course I am oversimplifying this, but the fact is it works, and we have already been living with it. Every time you hear a Minidisc, or watch digital TV you are experiencing compressed audio. Why not take advantage of what it has to offer us?

I have been using a program called Mp3 Producer from a German firm named Fraunhofer ILS. Once installed on your system it gives you the option of several sample and bit rate coversion choices in varying degrees of quality from low quality (but very tiny file) to a quality level that is almost identical to what we are used to hearing from a CD.

The best news is that a 12 to 1 ratio is possible without signifigantly altering the the quality of the file. True, you might not want to send your record project to the mastering plant through E-mail, but for adding guitar tracks, background vocals etc, this may indeed prove to be a invaluable option.

Once installed on your system, Mp3 Producer will intall codecs in your system that allow the files to be opened in the standard Microsoft Media Player, auditioned, then re-saved in the uncompressed state as standard wave files, which can then be opened in your DAW software. It is a great way to collaborate, to put your songs on your website, and for pros, a commercially viable way to offer your talent and services.

Mp3 producer is available @ http://www.iis.fhg.de/audio and http://www.opticom.de