[PD] Buying PCs for PD: Quantity or Quality

[Ian Smith-Heisters]

> It all depends on what kinds of sound you produce. I regularly overload
> my
> dual 2 GHz athlon box during performances making only sounds. But
> those
> are all synthesized on the fly. For sample playback you need a lot
> less
> CPU so if you want a lot of simple voices more or less out of sync a
> couple a slow computers will do the trick.

Yikes, with my limited knowledge of sythesis, I don't think I've ever come close to overloading my single
Athlon 1.7ghz. This may be a consideration to take into account as the performance may use more complex
synthesis than I have been using. But even a dual Athlon like yours is out of range for this project. I'm sure,
however, that I'll be able to find some kind of work around, if only by avoiding complex sythesis.

> In a studio environment yes. A reasonably quiet of-the-shelf computer
> (not
> the cheapest allready) I have found not to interfere in a theater
> setting,
> with all the lights and aircondition etc. But in a recording studio
> with
> nice mics you really notice them. It all depends again on the kinds of
> sound manipulation you do and in what kind of environment. A noisy PA
> for
> instance will mask more than a high end one. I you have the  good mic
> and
> you want to have it take samples, so you are gating the input, you
> will
> notice noisy input a lot sooner than if you only amplify it since
> noise
> becomes more noticeable when it is interupted. That can be nice or not
> depending on your esthetics.

This is what I expected. In this case I don't think I will worry too much about quietness, as the audience's
distance from the machinery, the ambient noise, and the noise of the performance itself will drown out computer
noise. Also I probably won't be taking straight samples and rebroadcasting them, so ambient noise on the mics
shouldn't be too big a problem. Rather, I intended to use mics as a poor man's sensor, whereby if the analyzed
input to the mic has certain characteristics, another event will be triggered. Noise could easily be canceled
out by calibrating the analysis correctly.

Thanks.

-ian