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What are the bottlenecks of a DAW ? Does the the processor play the most important role ?


In my experience, the CPU is not the bottleneck (although it IS important!). Normally it is the drive or RAM (lack of RAM actually causes the drive to work harder, so the drive would be the problem but RAM could be a cause).

You didn't mention what you have now so it is hard to say how much difference you will notice with a given upgrade.

As for system components; drives are cheap now and a regular 3.5 SATA hard drive should perform fine. SSD is obviously faster, but you get less space for the $$ so it's a personal trade off.
I'd rather have two SATA's than one SSD, but that's just me. Know that I do have SSD systems and know how they perform compared to SATA. I'll explain why I'd rather have two drives down below.

DDR3 is cheap now so I'd get a system that uses that and load up with as much a reasonable.

In my simple mind I think of it like this;
The CPU does things super fast. It is often waiting for something to tell it what to do.

RAM is where the data being worked on by the CPU is held. If it needs more room, it creates a 'swap file' on the hard drive and then (guess who) the CPU has to step in and tell the system which data to shove on the hard drive temporarily and which to keep and load in .. then it can go back to work doing what it was doing.
Both CPU and RAM are way faster than the hard drive, so every time the hard drive is used the other parts are often just waiting more than working.

The best solution I know of for this dilemna is to have two hard drives working at the same time!
The CPU has plenty of time (cycles) to control both, and the data stream can be doubled at the weak point.
In RB efficient use of this system uses one drive to read the seq file from, and another to write data to, including:
a. incoming audio data being recorded
b. the temp generated realtrack
c. temp buffer adjustments needed

So while the system reads from one drive it writes to another.

Picture a record player that also records. If the needle had to play this section .. then jump over to a blank space to write this section (incoming data) .. then jump back and try to keep playing ..

This is what a single drive system is doing when in a DAW situation.

Th drive being used to write to is called the Temp Audio Directory and many DAWs give this option to select a separate drive, as does RB.
Tip for the day wink






Last edited by rharv; 10/02/14 04:36 PM.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!