The software

After many years of using an Atari ST system for midi recording and arranging, I am finally using a PC based system running Steinberg Cubase VST SX3. The system allows much more than the original Atari Cubase did and not least audio recording as well as Midi recording.

The licensing on SX3 allows you to retain your older version 5 of VST as well, so I have 2 dongles, one USB and one parallel and run version 5, SX2.2 and SX3! WHY? My answer:

I have found that many tracks written in 2.2 and VST 5 REFUSE to load in SX3 and hang the application on startup! There is something odd in the format of the certain saved songs that is kept even if you delete -everything- and then save! I tried getting "support" from Steinberg but - you guessed it! I now just use SX3, having given up and re-written all my earlier stuff. Life is too short!

SX4? Not yet, but soon probably. There are some new features I'd like but its another 100 and something quid and I'm a bit scared of not being able to load stuff like last time! Lame I know. :\

I am running this on a dedicated rack music machine which I built to the specification I needed - stability reliability and lots of p o w e r!!!

The OS specification for Cubase is Windows or MacOS and sadly not a *n*x style operaing system such as Linux and so I am using Windows XP professional locked down with all extras disabled or removed and no non-music applications loaded.

Incidentally, for Linux there are several DAW type apps available, search for Rose garden and Dyne:Bolic, to mention a couple of interesting topics. I've had a play but at the moment am sticking with good old Charlie Steinberg. Of course, if Steinberg want to support Linux (and sort out ALSA, jack and all that LOL), I'd be there in a shot!

Screenshot of VST SX3

This picture shows a screenshot of Steinberg Cubase VST SX3. This now uses their Nuendo interface, everything has a track, each VSTi, FX insert and all automations are visible within the trach they automate. This is a great improvement over the old automation track concept, which often caused me crashing issues, as I used it heavily! On the left is a pane with specifics for the highlighted track, shuch as transpose, plugins, or track levels. You can now either draw the parametric eq curve or select it using dials. The transport bar is at the bottom as usual.

Screenshot of one of my tracks in VST

This picture shows a screenshot of Steinberg Cubase VST version 5. Underneath all the front windows are the midi and audio tracks for the song. Towards the top is the audio input list showing the 6 inputs of the Delta 66(4 analogue and 2 digital) Next down is a double delay effect control screen and at the bottom, the chopper effect is shown allowing the sound to be chopped, or pulsed in time with the music. Underneath  towards the bottom is the channel settings for channel 1 showing use of the parametric EQ with visual display. At the bottom is the audio mixer showing the 16 audio tracks currently in use. Finally is the transport bar

The hardware

 
I have built a dedicated rack music computer has the latest components as well as a nice rack case and is very quiet. Below is a list of the parts used - click on items to view pictures!

Home built DAW

I have recently rebuilt my original machine with new components. This has allowed running great many plugins on the dual core CPU with no hastle. The main reason for the rebuild was the Virus control application performance was quite poor on the old machine.

OLD PC Hardware Specification
Item	Description
Intel P4 1.8 G	This CPU has been brilliant and even though its getting old now, is still up to the job. I don't use heavy software samplers, though do play with things like Novation V station. It allows operation at the quickest Delta 66 latency.
ASUS P4B266 mother	Favoured by overclockers for it's extensive tweakability and reliability, I chose this because of the latter. Though a little more than most boards this is worth every penny!
ASUS I-Panel	Nice little interface to the mother board shows internal temperatures, fan speeds and voltages. OK it's a gimmik :)
Memory 2G	Lots of good memory essential! DDR in this case.
Adaptec U160 SCSI	SCSI is the ideal solution for VST as it takes alot of the HD related processing from the CPU. This new card is marvellous for very high speed transfer and allows fast and slow SCSI devices to co-exist.
Seagate Cheetah 36G SCSI 3	This drive is ultra quiet (20dB) and performs the best of any SCSI drive I have ever had. It is well worth the extra cost to get a 'pro' spec drive in a climate of such low prices!
IBM * 75 18G	This drive was originally purchased for music use but makes quite a lot of noise. It is now only for offline backup. I also use an IDE drive and the DVD for backups.
Matrox M550 Dual head	Good quality graphics card with not too many frilly bits. Now I am using a wide screen Phillips TFT and it CAN'T drive it's native rez on DVI. BUMMER! I need a new card, probably NVIDIA!
Sony Dual layer DVD Rewriter	Essential for offsite backups and making music CDs :)
Rack PC case	This was bought in Digital Village, Croydon and is really nice.
Enermax active PSU	This PSU again more expensive than most is worth it because it is quiet, has a variable fan speed and and impressive number of connections!
Silence and Cooling devices	I tend to use Silenx fans and Coolermaster coolers in all my machines now as they are quiet and cold. Errm yes.

Building the system
Step	Description
	This case was bought in music Village in Croydon and it was pure luck I came across it - the cost was around 170UKP as I remember which included a power supply I later upgraded..
	This is the front view - note the space for a large 5 inch fan in the front. The fan was supplied but it makes so much noise I have never used it
	Inside bare view showing the loom from the PSU and the card bridging panel. This is really a very sturdy case and well made which helps keep the thing quiet :) On the top left is the drive carrier. This is totally removable and houses 3x 5.25 inch bays and one 3.25 inch bay exposed at the fron and another two 3.25 inch bays hidden.
	This is the Asus P4b266 mother and the Intel P4 1800 CPU. The CPU is mounted carefully in the ZIF socket taking static precautions and then the large heatsink (left) is carefully centered on the CPU. Finally the tension levers are closed which ensure a constant pressure on the CPU for good heat conduction. Apparently this also "bends the mother a little" by design!
	After CPU and memory is instered into the mother, the assembly is carefully mounted into the case using the fixings supplied. Note I like to work with the power cable inserted and plugged in but switched off at the wall. This allows the case to be earthed so I can be in contact with an earth at all times to drain any static charge I pick up so protecting the ESD sensitive devices. The rather large and antiquated power socket is plugged in - note the extra 12 volt connector on the left with black and yellow wires which modern boards seem to need. Progress?
	Now the internal connectios are made to the mother. Case switch and light and IDE and floppy cables to the drives. We're nearly done now! Rear view showing all the usual ATX stuff. Two small fan spaces. Note the Matrox card is now in and the SPDIF ports and extra USB riser have been installed.
	A rather arty top view showing the finished computer along with the card bridging panel installed. This is designed to keep large cards in place and reduce the affects of vibration. It also functions to strengthen the case some more.   That's it! All done :)
The system required little configuration and before long XP was installed and things were rolling along nicely.Tweaks have been made to XP to reduce the running apps and increase stability, but that's another story!

M-audio Delta 66 multichannel interface

The picture on the left is of my old old PC system and the breakout box of the M-audio Delta 66 card. It is a fairly modestly priced PCI card which comes with Direct X and VST ASIO drivers to fit right into Cubase with minimum hassle. The digital input and output are on the card itself. I chose this card because I wanted something with ASIO, more than 2 channels and with digital interfaces and low latency for a resonable price. As a bonus this supports 24 bit sampling and has balanced analogue too, hence the nice colourful cables I promptly made up :) I am impressed with the quality of build. The breakout Box is quite a nice bit of furniture, not the plastic case I expected but solid metal!

Setting up

The card was a doddle to set up - I was told (by the nice chap in Music Village) to install it before Cubase so I did and had no problems, once I had figured out to enable it in the VST inputs. Doh!

Another thing which did my head in for a small amount of time was setting of the latency which defaults to 750ms or something outrageous like that. Set it down to more like 20 ms and virtual instruments actually become usable!
 

Possible problems

The other minor head doing-in experience I had was that I then set the latency to its minimum of 3 seconds and got popping and clicking noises. 

After 3 days of trying to convince myself I had not bought a dodgy card (in true Englishman style ;) ) I realised it was the config!

Therefore if you get clicking and popping from the audio outputs of one of these cards, try upping the DMA buffer sizes a little as your CPU and system probably can't handle the minimum! The setting of these sizes is very CPU dependant but there are perfectly adequate warnings, it's just me that can't read, being an Engineer and all that.
 

Specifications

• 4 analogue in and outs (balanced) and 2 digital in and outs (SPDIF)
• Quarter inch jacks for analogue and phonos for digital
• 24 bit / 96Khz operation (and downwards)
• Nice pretty little mixer which lets you click many buttons and sliders
• D/A 0.0015% THD, A/D 0.0023% THD @0dBFS - that's stupidly low :)

Conclusion

I am not a reviewer or anything like that, but would I recommend one of these cards? Well I would and it's not just because I use one! I have not yet found anything I don't like about it and though I upgraded from a Sound Masker, I don't really think I'd be any happier if I'd spent twice the price. 

The only thing to watch out for is having a sufficient system to put it in if you are to get near it's limits, but let's face it, you'd have to try -really- hard to buy a PC worse than mine these days wouldn't you, after all, whats a few hundred tracks of simultaneous audio when you can run the latest version of MS hardWork instead ;)

OLD Opcode Midi translator PC 

I now use the Steinberg Midex 3 USB interface instead.

This is a picture of the MIDI interface I used to use. Try to stay awake. It has 2 MIDI ins and 2 MIDI outs and connects to the PC using a parallel port. As seen it works fine with the latest cubase dongle so that's not an issue. I chose this device as I - errm, needed MIDI on my, ummm - PC. It cost about 75 quid as I remember.

Possible problems

This device functioned reliably for quite a while, I didn't have any major gripes, however there are a few things to bear in mind if you don't want to have tearful music sessions.
 

• When I got the driver disk the files were corrupted. A quick visit to the Opcode site for a download fixed this. Apparently people have not been able to get drivers for this device any more so email me if you are having problems...
• NOTE The drivers I have seen only work on Windows 95, 98 and possibly ME, not 2000 or XP which is part of the reason I now use a Steinberg interface.
  
• Parallel port bios configuration of your PC reallly should be for a standard bidirectional parallel port as opposed to ECP or EPP types. Not doing this may cause instability.
• When sending system exclusive dumps from the JV1080 , the system would freeze unless the compatibility mode (seems to default to on) for the device was not chosen. This is modified in the multimedia setup of Windows.
• The device is supposed to take it's power from the port but for some reason it still requires the power supply. This is made horrible by the fact the device will not work unless it has power before the PC. This horribleness is made worse when there is a crash as the PC has to be powered off, the device off, the device on and finally the PC on again! How many times have I forgotten this and tried to work out why no notes are sounding!! Aarrgh!

 

© Alan Mathers

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Jan 2008