G'day Matt,
unfortunately, my BIAB experience is somewhat limited - I ONLY use it as a practice tool (though I may be using it as a teaching aid in the next few months).

As a result I can't give you a definitive answer, BUT there are some general Windows related considerations which would have a direct bearing:
  • RAM - insufficient RAM will slow things down.
  • RAM - matched modules (for speed and size) will allow those M/B's that bank switch (pretty much all modern ones) to do so more efficiently
  • RAM - some of the more recent M/b's don't actually NEED matched RAM but performance will still be better if it is.
  • HDD I/O - a slow drive or drive interface will slow things down - the faster the drive the better.
  • HDD I/O - the faster the better - talking spindle speeds here - MINIMUM 7200 RPM IMHO (bearing in mind that HDD I/O speeds are below SATA II capabilities anyway...)
  • Plenty of free space. The usual rule of thumb is a minimum of 20% free space however I prefer to try and work on a minimum of 50%. Especially on systems where there is a lot of read/write disk access (like decompressing wma's f'rinstance)
  • Keep the drive defragged.
  • Keep the TEMP directory empty - Windows is a dreadful houskeeper and directories with lots of files become slow to access - this also applies to your IE (or preferred browser) cache
  • A cacheing HDD controller will improve performance but it should have a fair bit of RAM - also it should be battery backed in case of power loss
  • Disk array - I usually recommend RAID 5, but there is an overhead generated by the parity calculations - if redundancy is not an issue and performance is (I.E you have great backups) then RAID 0 is the way to go - at least 3 or 4 drives to maximise the I/O performance - these days use SATA II or SAS.
  • Disk array - better still if there is a battery backed write read/write cache.
  • CPU - faster is better, but the CPU isn't the bottleneck it used to be for most applications. In the case of BIAB I would consider it to be of less importance than disk I/O and RAM
  • CPU - AFAIK BIAB is not a multi threaded application so there will be little or no real advantage to multi core CPU's other than the ability for Windows to offload some things to the other core(s). For this reason I think that clock speed is going to be more important than number of cores. PG Music may see fit to correct this assumption.
  • Video hardware - for the most part this is only REALLY important for gamers and high end video editing. I don't see there would be much improvement for BIAB with changes to video.
  • Sound card - almost irrelevant WRT speed, but vital for quality. Choose one that has as low noise figures as you can while still providing the other features you want. E.G sufficient channels (both recording and playback)
  • * SYNTH - software or hardware? Internal or external? Soundfonts? Hardware has less CPU overhead and lower latency (as a generalisation - ASIO changes this somewhat) but usually is less flexible when you take VST and DX into account. Latency problems with software synths can usually be overcome.
  • * MIDI/outboard hardware I/O interface - USB, Firewire, 5 pin DIN? USB 2 is pretty fast and easier to get reliable I/O than Firewire. For Firewire the concensus seems to be that you MUST use the Ti chipset or you will likely have throughput problems. 5 pin DIN suggests there is a MIDI interface in the PC - most unlikely these days... You normally see USB to MIDI adapters now. Choose a reliable one that works with your other gear - USB and MIDI are both standards that are well established so this shouldn't be a problem.


* Not really applicable to RealTracks but I included 'em anyhow.

That's about all I can think of for now...

OK - reality check - all the above is good info, BUT when you take into consideration the capabilities of most modern mid level PC's the few percentage points of improvement you're likely to see would make the extra expense of some of what I've mentioned hard to justify.

OTOH the housekeeping suggestions will help and cost nothing but a bit of time.

Last edited by Lawrie; 08/25/09 01:41 PM.
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