FAQS

Q: How much memory do I need?

A:

It depends what you want to do with the machine

1 GB memory is the practical minimum for running XP and Vista, or OSX

2 GB of memory is a comfortable standard

If you are doing Photoshop, digital video, digital audio, heavy multitasking or engineering/architecture/scientific programs, then go to the maximum the machine will allow.

Most machines will take 4 GB of RAM. 32-bit Windows will only recognize 3.0 – 3.5 GB of that. 64 bit Windows and OSX will recognize the full amount.

Q: How powerful is my CPU in comparison with others?

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Q: If my hard drive is almost full, will it make my computer run slow?

A:

The machine uses the hard drive as Virtual Memory swap space, so it is continually writing and reading temporary files to the hard drive. If you don’t have enough drive space, it has to write smaller files, more often, which slows the machine down. Same thing with many programs, they have to write temp files and changes to data files to the drive as you are working.

Also as your hard drive fills up, it slows down. The inner tracks of the drive are as much as 50% slower than the outermost tracks (it’s geometry, the amount of data that passes beneath the heads in one revolution is directly related to the track length, or the perimeter, of the track). So a full hard drive (where you are doing most of your new work on inner tracks) is slower than a mostly empty hard drive.

Finally, a full hard drive is more likely to be badly fragmented – where the OS is forced to store the segments of an individual file in many different sectors scattered all over the drive platters. This slows down reading and writing. A drive that is very full (less then 10% free space) can defeat defragmenting operations (some OS’s defragment in the background)

Hard drives are the cheapest they have ever been. Budget for a new, larger hard drive every year or two, and you’ll not only have more space, your machine will run faster and you’ll have less chance of a drive failing on you. Take your old hard drive and put it in an external enclosure as a backup. Then in a year or two, repeat the process, put in a larger one, and swap the previous out to the backup enclosure.

When installing a new hard drive, it’s easiest to clone the old one to the new one.

Acronis TrueImage or DiskDirector http://www.acronis.com/

HDClone http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

Your hard drive manufacturer may also offer some software by download

Seagate DiskWizard http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

Cloning Vista: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/cloning.html

Cloning XP: http://www.PCstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=418&page=1

Q: I need to get administrator access to a PC but I don’t have the password

A:

Illustrator Tutorials and videos

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/

http://www.ndesign-studio.com/resources/tutorials/

http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Illustrator/1

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/05/illustrator-tutorials-best-of/

http://www.good-tutorials.com/tutorials/illustrator

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/illustratortutorials/Essential_Tutorials_for_Adobe_Illustrator.htm

Q: iTunes burn songs to audio CD

A: You can burn songs in yout iTunes Library to Audio CDs (Including Fairplay DRM songs purchased from the iTunes Store.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301917

Don’t forget to back up your iTunes purchases. In that case you would want to burn them to a data DVD

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1382

Q: I’ve reinstalled Windows and my {sound, network, video} isn’t working

A: You need to reinstall or update the drivers for your motherboard and for any peripherals and cards you have on the machine. Start with the manufacturer’s website of the computer, or of the motherboard. Look up your specific model in the Support or the Downloads and Drivers section, and you should get a list of the available drivers and updates. Download and install these. (If your machine isn’t working, you may need to download them on another machine and burn them to CD or a USB memory stick.)Then go to the manufacturers sites of the video card, sound card, any optional peripherals printers, and download the drivers or installers for your specific items, and install them. If you are stuck for specific drivers, there are websites that can help such as WinDrivers: http://www.windrivers.com/NoDevice: http://www.nodevice.com/Softpedia: http://drivers.softpedia.com/DriverGuide: http://www.driverguide.com/

Q: I’ve reinstalled Windows and my sound, network, video isn’t working

A:

You need to reinstall or update the drivers for your motherboard and for any peripherals and cards you have on the machine.

Start with the manufacturer’s website of the computer, or of the motherboard. Look up your specific model in the Support or the Downloads and Drivers section, and you should get a list of the available drivers and updates. Download and install these.

(If your machine isn’t working, you may need to download them on another machine and burn them to CD or a USB memory stick.)

Then go to the manufacturers sites of the video card, sound card, any optional peripherals printers, and download the drivers or installers for your specific items, and install them.

If you are stuck for specific drivers, there are websites that can help such as

WinDrivers: http://www.windrivers.com/

NoDevice: http://www.nodevice.com/

Softpedia: http://drivers.softpedia.com/

DriverGuide: http://www.driverguide.com/

Q: I want to upgrade my motherboard? Will I lose all my programs and data? How about my video / sound / ethernet cards?

A:

Replacing the motherboard should not affect the software and data you have installed on your hard drive.

You will need to install the new software drivers for the new motherboard, you should not have to reinstall Windows or reformat. Make sure you download all of the driver software for the motherboard and your cards before you start. … BUT… Always do a full back up all of your data before doing any upgrading work to a machine.

Whether your video and sound card(s) need to be replaced depends on what cards you have now and what the slots of the new motherboard are. For example if you have an AGP video card, and you buy a motherboard with PCI-e slots, you will have to buy a PCI-e video card because you won’t have any AGP slot for your old card. Same thing goes for the CPU (Processor chip) – if you plan to use the same CPU then you have to buy a motherboard with the same socket type and that is specifically compatible with your CPU.

Almost all motherboards have Ethernet and sound built into them now.

http://www.PCworld.com/article/103811/stepbystep_upgrade_your_system_with_a_motherboard_swap.html

http://www.PCstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1755

http://www.theeldergeek.com/replace_motherboard.htm

http://www.PCtechguide.com/tutorials/MBoard1.htm

Q: Keyboards and synthesizers

A:

Roland http://www.rolandus.com/products/productlist.aspx?ParentId=83

Korg http://www.korg.com/GEAR/default.asp?categoryID=1

Yamaha http://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/CDA/Catalog/Catalog_GSMFCX/0,,CTID%25253D206300%252526CNTYP%25253DPRODUCT,00.html

Clavia http://www.clavia.se/main.asp?tm=Products

Novation http://www.novationmusic.com/products/hardware_synths/

Akai http://www.akaipro.com/products/index.en.php

Kurzweil http://www.kurzweilmusicsystems.com/ProductList.php?cat=13

Alesis http://www.alesis.com/synths

Q: Latency in recording

A: The time lag between playing and the sound coming back out is called Latency — it is the time required for you interface to digitize the sound, buffer it, the computer to read the buffer, process it, write the results back to the buffer, the interface to read the buffer, and finally to convert it back to analog for you to hear it. Look up the manuals of GuitarRig and your audio interface for instructions.

You can never completely eliminate latency, but you can bring it down to livable times.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr99/articles/letency.html

http://www.harmony-central.com/articles/tips/dealing_with_latency/

To adjust latency, you need to choose a good quality driver for the sound interface, then change the buffer size. It is also dependent on having a good quality audio interface card. If you are using onboard audio or a basic Soundblaster card, you’ll have fewer options.

First of all, go into the Audio settings or Preferences of the software, and choose the ASIO driver for your interface (not the WDM or other driver)

Make sure your audio software and interface drivers are up to date. If your sound interface did not come with an ASIO driver, try asio4all http://www.asio4all.com/

Then change the buffer size. It is expressed in bytes, you probably have it set to 1024 or more. Reduce this to 128 or less. You’re shooting for a latency of 20 ms. or less, which should be tolerable as a lag time to your playing.

The trade off us that when you reduce the buffer, you reduce latency (because it takes less time to fill the buffer) but you increase the chance that your computer processor won’t be able to keep up, and you may get audible glitching in your audio. You need to strike a balance between audio consistency and latency. You can try reducing the amount of things you are asking the computer to do at the same time — turn off all unneeded programs, use only the minimum EQ, compression and effects software while recording (you can add them later in processing the track or mixing), minimize the number of audio tracks you have playing as you are recording.

If you have selectable bit rates and bit depth for recording, then reducing the rate and depth will reduce latency problems. 16 bit / 44.1 KHz sampling is way easier for the computer to process than 24 / 96, so you can reduce the buffer size.

The other thing you can do is to reduce the buffer size for recording live, and the increase the buffer again for when you are mixing or working ‘inside the box’

Lastly, if you are relying on the computer to supply the effects, distortion, compression and EQ on your guitar sound, consider using outboard hardware effects to create the sound before recording it. You will lose some flexibility in modifying the sound later, but the load on the computer will be lessened greatly. Look at amp simulation and effects boxes from Line6, Johnson, Boss, Digitech, Korg and others. A bonus to this is that you can monitor the analog signal while you are playing, with no latency. If your track ends up out of time with the computer tracks, no problem, you can shift it forward or back on the timeline, or apply the software’s latency compensation features to line it up again.