PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Cost effective computing platform for BiaB

I looked around the forum for commentary on computing platforms for BiaB, and outside of generic Mac vx. Win discussions, hadn't seen too much specifically, so thought I would throw out some ideas as I've been looking into buying a second computer that would be more or less dedicated to running BiaB through my hi-fi system.

I currently have a quad core processor 64-bit Dell Win 7 system for work and I've been monitoring the use of the cores on my machine (Athelon quad-core, 64-bit fetch) by BiaB. I can see a reason for BiB to benefit from extra cores. On my quad core system I notice that the NT kernel seems to take one core (#1) and about 18 threads; all of the systems jobs -- around 30-40 with maybe 200 threads -- take the #0 processor; and BiB flips between processor #2 and #3 (only one at a time as far as I can see, but I'm not sure what is going on) with around 20 threads. Based on a response elsewhere on the board, I gather that PG Music is not optimizing their code for multiple cores (a tall order anywhere) and from this monitoring, it seems a fast dual core system may be optimal -- one core for the system, and one for BiaB. Intel's Hyperthreading and AMD's Framewave (which would give a couple of virtual cores to each physical core) would presumably help manage the threads -- I don't know how predictive these can be, but there is enough going on on the computer overall that it is probably very useful to have them. Since BiB would have its own dedicated core, there is less likelihood of it hanging or delaying because of other jobs in the system.


So what I've decided to buy (~$288 marginal cost at Amazon):

ASUS M4A88TD-M ATX Motherboard $98
CORSAIR XMS3 DHX 4GB ( 2 X 2GB ) DDR3 Memory $99
AMD Phenom II X2 3.2 GHz 2x512 KB L2 + L3 Cache Dual-Core $89

These are all 5-star products at Amazon, and I've always been a fan of Asus; AMD uses (I believe) the 45 nm Infinieon fab plants in Germany, and really delivers performance at the lower price points (e.g., $89 for a near state of the art processor)

And I already have (for the computer to hi-fi path):

Firestone Audio Spitfire 24-bit USB-DAC ~$140 (there are lots of low cost units like this that use high quality TI/Burr-Brown DACs and support components)
Carver Tripath Audio Amp $250 + good speakers $1500

I think this should wring out about as much performance (presuming I don't run other software simultaneously with BiaB) as I can get, and give me a hi-fi output as well.

Comments?

Chris

Looks good, question about he amp and speakers. Are you designing the system for a recording studio? I have some powered near field monitors and a soundcraft mixer that work well with a athlon dual core and a delta 44 pci card.
Just wondering what the end reason is. For me it's backing tracks and recording vocal.
Wyndham

Chris, a thought occurred that you have made some interesting observations in another thread about cores and hyperthreading etc. which are also mentioned here. You might want to contact PG Music Support and ask if they are interested in your findings, as they develop future versions.

Quote:

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Are you designing the system for a recording studio?

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No, this is just half of my home system (the other half is a Kef-Denon 5.1 setup). This is the system I installed in the lower level of the house, where the piano is. We live in two stories of a condo in Wrigleyville, Chicago; I'm pretty conscious of space utilization in my purchases, and when I'm not, my wife reminds me . I have two AIM-5 speakers and a Kef subwoofer, powered by an Audiosource amp which had failed FCC radiation tests (there were about 700 of these Tripath amps that the company dumped at $250 ... they are normally ~$700). I feed them from a Squeezebox powered by a Netgear network server and optically connected to the amp. It's a great system; I have around 30,000 Flac files of music that can be served up. The sound is not cutting edge audiophile, but very good. So I wanted to feed this with the output produced from BiaB -- I'm mainly concerned about the rhythm tracks, so RD/RT (which I'm playing with now, and really like) should reproduce pretty well through this system.

I'm mainly concerned that my computer system not hangup on any of the BiaB processing, which is why I looked into new hardware. I'm sure with the Phenom II processor and DDR3 memory I'll be safe -- the buses on the Asus board are pretty fast as well, and it is all very reasonably priced.

I guess I've skirted your original question, though. I'm using BiaB right now to accompany my piano. I'm basically playing the Jazz standards. Now that I've figured out the basics of BiaB (thanks to help from the board) I'm creating lead sheets for the songs I want to work on. I don't know where it will all go, as it's a hobby, but I'm having fun so far.

Chris

Thank you for the thought Matt, though I suspect there may be better folks out there (at least there are where I work) when it comes to understanding what the hardware companies are doing. I actually don't know how threads are managed -- on my system I presume it's some agreement between Win7 and the AMD microcode and onboard hardware. I can see what is happening on the monitor, but not why. In Visual Studio C# (which is my preferred programming platform) you can specify on the builds where you have separate threads, and priority, dependencies and so forth. But I haven't done this, because I don't really understand how Win7 manages this. I suspect the BiaB programmers would first be concerned with the congesting resources, and push modules that put a heavy load on these over into new threads, or perhaps a separate core. From discussions here, that would probably be the RT / RD modules. Might be interesting to talk to them about this though.

Chris

I wish I could remember what compiler is used for Band in a Box. It's nothing common, in fact the compilers were not there for Mac every time they changed the O/S. Maybe someone here knows. Lisp?

This article is 7 years old. This guy sounds like some guys I know. Retire to mess with Band in a Box, Sonar...etc. I never played the piano in a strip club like him, with a sideline of writing C programs and working for a Washington agency, but I did manage a building which ended up with a strip club on the main floor. All kinds of crazy stuff...calls at 4 a.m. for the alarms going off....well no longer. Adieu.. anyway this was a good read:

http://www.drdobbs.com/184405412;jsessionid=EUITIJRMHI3P3QE1GHPCKH4ATMY32JVN

So Pascal for the Amiga/Mac/PC then Mac drops Pascal then migrate to Delphi?

I would suspect that they would not be using Pascal (or Delphi which is an object oriented extension of Pascal) ... it is pretty rare these days. But I looked, and there is a 64-bit version of TurboPascal, which I suspect you would need for both the new PCs and the Intel Macs. So possibly.

But Apple has pushed Objective C -- a sort of mix of SmallTalk and C++ which is ostensibly open source, but really only used by Apple (I think it was promoted by Alan Kaye, the author of SmallTalk). And the primary .NET language on Windows in C#. Both have great interactive development environments, and both can share 99% of the code (which would be a simplified C++). This is definitely what I would want as a programmer. I could be wrong, reflecting my own biases, but this would be the most sensible way to build the product across platforms. It might explain why there isn't a Linux version as well, as you wouldn't automatically have access to all of the class libraries of Apple and Microsoft.

Chris

I can't say that for sure, but for some reason it jumped to my mind is all.

I just decompiled the main bbw.exe program, and it is making calls to modules with a '.c' extension ... this would indicate a C-language platform (C# would be .cs, and C++ would be .cpp) and that would make sense. Perhaps they are using something like Metrowerks' CodeWarrior, which would compile the same C code to Win and Mac platforms (and Linux and Unix too).

I remember it being either Delphi or some flavor of Pascal (based on comments made over the years). I know at one time, PGMusic was looking at the open source Lazarus project to support cross-platform development (I suppose with the intent of maintaining a common code base that could be compiled on other OS's). Don't know where that went, but that implies Pascal.

Chris, to get back to your original question any even semi modern system is fine for Biab. I'm still running a P4 2.8 with 2 gigs ram and my laptop is a 3 year old Acer core duo with 1 gig ram. Biab is not resource intensive at all. I never get hang ups or stuttering. I have a friend who's still using my old P3 1g with 512mb ram and that handles the RT/RD's just fine. The only thing is a faster PC will regenerate the RT's quicker but if you freeze the tracks after you get something you like then even that isn't a problem. A 5 track RT/RD song will load almost instantly in that case and play immediately.
Your set up is similar to mine. I also have an antique Knabe grand I completely rebuilt myself in my living room along with a stereo setup using a pair of Altec Model 14's. I found them locally off Ebay for $450 a few years ago and man, what a deal that was. Those are the best home stereo speakers I've ever had and I've had a bunch of what could be considered classic audiophile setups. They listed for $2,700 in 1985. Those things are definitely overkill for my living room but I couldn't pass them up. They caused me to finally sell my very nice pair of AR3a's. I'm pushing them with an SAE. Unlike 99% of everybody else I could care less about surround sound. Who cares about hearing crickets in the corner or choppers in the parking lot? But, that's just me. Biab sounds awesome through that setup with my laptop on the piano. Btw with the laptop, the audio is simply going out through the headphone jack. Newer laptops have a good clean signal, older ones not so much. When I'm mixing a live recorded project, I do the basic editing and a rough mix in the bedroom using my fairly simple studio setup but then take it to the living room for the final mix on the Altec's.

Bob

Just a note on the compiler RHarv ... it would have been reasonable to program in TurboPascal back in the 1980s when PG Music started. C and Java are more or less the standards today, and all you need is a cross-compiler to convert from Pascal to C ... a day to cross-compile, and a month or more to debug

Jazzmammal, it's good to hear that the load on the computer is minimal ... I've just ordered my upgrade for the Phenom-Asus setup. I would have done this anyway, as I like to change motherboards and chips every two years (on the computer I'm upgrading, the cabinet is 10 years old, and it is almost a challenge to see how long I can keep 'the same' computer).

Sounds like you have a great set of speakers. I have a brother-in-law who is an audiophile, and has about a $40K system ... it really does make a difference. I'm sort of optimizing on compactness downstairs; upstairs, I optimize for DVDs (thus the surround sound ... otherwise I agree)

Chris

Yeah, I'm in school taking some programming classes; well aware of current standards.

I happen to like Python .. it is relevant to my interests.

I like Python too. All of the Google Adwords APIs are written in Python.

Most of the structural internet is ...

Thanks for the info on usage of multiple cores. There are many threads used in BB, particularily during song generation, and the early part of playback (mainly first 20 seconds or so).
We just open new threads and don't get to decide which core handles the job - at least that's my understanding of it.

If it was me, I'd get as many cores as possible (at least 4), since there are likely programs other than BB running as well.