I'm looking into buying EWQL complete composer/Omnisphere etc etc for more orchestral, soundscape and ambient work and I suspect my current PC won't cut the mustard for a number of reasons. Well one, it's an XP-32 machine.

I'm thinking of building a new machine for the big sample work and keeping the XP-32 machine for teh darnceh stuff.

Current specs :-

Intel Q9450
4GB DDR2
320GB OS drive
750GB data drive
Windows XP Pro 32bit


What I was thinking of doing was transplanting an i7 into this system and taking the Q9450 over to the new machine. The reason for this is that the i7 should be better for my VST heavy stuff and the new machine would benefit more from RAM, and the Q9450 is still a pretty kickass CPU.

My current thinking is going for W7-64 and 12GB (6x2) DDR3 for the orchestral/ambient machine.

There's no way i'm going to dual boot and I'm not interested in buying a Mac either.

Oh one other thing, could both machines share my MR816x which has two firewire ports? Assuming only one machine will use it at a time!

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You've got way better specs than I do and my last song ran about 12 different processes of Omnisphere on top of 30 or so other channels/samples. The CPU was perpetually at like 97% and the song clipped nonstop but it still works.

I have an XP 32 Dell with 1 gig of ram and a 30 gig hard drive. What you have would definitely run Omnisphere, but as far as working without clipping or lagging the interface, that's another story. I don't know how big of a deal that would be, I'm so used to it at this point I produce without really hearing every element together until I export the mp3.

I'm more worried about the EWQL and potentially LASS etc than Omnisphere. The recommended minimum is about 8GB RAM for the EWQL Play libraries so i'm not even going to bother trying lol.

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Ram and hardrive speed is really the key factor when using sample libraries. CPU does not really count as much as you think.

yeah its true that certen genures can take up a lot more of the pc power now i have to stray away from making trance and make stuff like techno and house.

thoe i have learned new ways of getting the best out of my set up i can do a lot more off what i want. just recently i have burnt loads of wav loops and sounds i often use on to cd/dvd and run the samples from my cd drive and it works a treat takes a lot more now to max out the pc lol

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Well, as I mentioned in the other thread, the new i7s are really advantageous for samples because they have really huge memory bandwidth. So you probably want one for your sampling machine as in that case, bandwidth is more important than clock speed AFAIK.

You can't use a firewire interface with two computers, the second port is for daisy chaining and thats it.

My advice, stick with one computer, buy some new RAM for it, wait 6 months then consider buying an SSD for it to store your sample libraries on. Install windows 64 on your current computer.

You haven't mentioned if you have a spare HD bay, some motherboards can support 3 HDs afaik, in which case my solution would be pretty perfect I think? Theres really no reason to be staying in the 32 bit environment any more I don't think, and there is less reason every month...

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quote:

Originally posted by tehlord I'm more worried about the EWQL and potentially LASS etc than Omnisphere. The recommended minimum is about 8GB RAM for the EWQL Play libraries so i'm not even going to bother trying lol.

IMO 12GB should be plenty and I'd guess that 8GB is probably even more than you'll need for ambient music, depending on how heavily orchestrated the music is. I frequently run several combined instanced of Omni, EWQL (RA, SC, VOP, SDII), Kontakt, and other heavy RAM users on my 32-bit W7 with 4GB RAM without encountering memory limitation issues. That said, if you plan on layering a lot of orchestral parts, you should stay the course and get as much RAM as you can. Also, don't underestimate Omni's RAM usage -it can be a RAM hog if you're using several sample-based sounds simultaneously, whereas the synth-based sounds are going to eat up CPU, of course.

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IF you aren't trying to do realistic orchestral mock ups, you really don't need that much ram. The ram killer comes in to play when you have 5 articulations of each instrument loaded at the same time. Chances are you won't be doing anything like this. But ram is so cheep these days, I don't see it as an issue anymore.

Thanks chaps.

There's absolutely no way I'm going to alter my XP-32 machine for the forseeable as it's doing exactly what I want, and I have no plans on making any major software purchases for that kind of music at all. It's filed under 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'!

I plan to spend the next year re-creating some classical scores to try and learn the trade (still as a hobbyist mind) so the layering may get fairly heavy! It'll also be a useful exercise for me to test out W7-64 which I may then apply to my tarnce machine at a much later date if I need to.

I'll probably just get an Echo Audiofire 4 for the sample machine as I won't need to do much in the way of audio recording on it.

Now, where's that EWQL complete composer/Omnisphere bundle I was eyeing up.

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for learning classical composition , you are much better off with Miroslav+sibelius than any East West orchestra library. Those libraries are extremely cumbersome and are really meant as tools to realize something you've already composed. Well in my opinion anyways.

If you have money

get the WVI collection as that covers brass+woodwinds and is synthesis based and sounds incredible. Better than any library at the moment. It is rather expensive but honestly it is one of the best breakthru in orchestral instruments in years. This program is the future and most developers will be trying to copy their approach going from huge cumbersome libraries so small physic modelling instruments that are realistic , adaptive and extremely versatile. I cannot say enough good things about this product. It really is the product of the decade.

and for strings get LASS as just the legato articulation and the scripts are good enough for most things so you don't need to be doing too many articulation changes.

quote:

Originally posted by Mad for Brad for learning classical composition , you are much better off with Miroslav+sibelius than any East West orchestra library. Those libraries are extremely cumbersome and are really meant as tools to realize something you've already composed. Well in my opinion anyways. If you have money get the WVI collection as that covers brass+woodwinds and is synthesis based and sounds incredible. Better than any library at the moment. It is rather expensive but honestly it is one of the best breakthru in orchestral instruments in years. This program is the future and most developers will be trying to copy their approach going from huge cumbersome libraries so small physic modelling instruments that are realistic , adaptive and extremely versatile. I cannot say enough good things about this product. It really is the product of the decade. and for strings get LASS as just the legato articulation and the scripts are good enough for most things so you don't need to be doing too many articulation changes.

To be honest i'm still not sure which direction I'll take for the source of the orchestral sounds yet. The reason I mentioned EWQL is that the complete composer collection can be had for about £600 here and I wanted RA and Stormdrum anyway.

I hadn't heard of the Wallender software before but I've just listened slack jawed at their sound demos. Most impressive indeed.

Over the amount of time it'll take me to build up the collection money isn't really that much of a factor. I'm guessing it's going to take me a couple of years to befome even vaguely proficient at writing a basic score, although I've got a good few years classical training behind me, two of which were solely about classical score.

LASS is definately on teh list though. Not heard a bad word said about it!

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the greatest thing about WIVI is that you can customize everything. You can have just 1 player , or 100 players. You can position them around the stage, there is just so much you can do with the software. It really is such an amazing product. They are working on strings although it won't be released for quite some time.

But if they do the same with strings , that would be fantastic, The installers for the winds and brass are 300 megs each. Imagine having an entire realistic orchestra at your hands without having to rely on those ridiculous sized libraries.

My problem with EW is that they are constantly increasing the size rather than making the instruments more efficient.