can anyone please help, im currently runnig xp on a AMD xp 2000 with 512 ram with a soundblaster audigy ex sound card but finding it realy unstable when running music production software like reason + cubase, even when using real player it crashes, ive tried reinstalling xp, updating drivers and bios, but still having problems, would changing over to linux halp stability at all? thanks for any help in advance.

well linux is generally a very stable product, so you're likely to have generally better success. What you're trying to do with it may well be more of an issue about getting to functionality you require. I have seen numerous issues abot audigy support, but know nothign of it myself. I would expect it's pretty complete these days though. As for software... there is a pretty comprehensive cubase-u-like app around, that i saw last week, can't remember what it's called now though. You may also be able to run the real cubase app via wine, but that nudges a long way back to windows proccesses again, which can be a bit hairy.

You may just need to make a few tweaks to the system. Here are a few things I did for my spouses system, who happens to only use it for recording music.

These were the original specs.

ECS mobo
Pentium 4 - 2.0
Video - Onboard
Sound - Onboard
Memory - 512
Burner - 52x24x52
Hard drives - 2, one 80 gig & one 40 gig
Winxp sp1 Professional
Sonar 4
Project 5 v2


These are the specs after a few tweaks

ECS mobo

Video - Onboard memory taken down to 32 megs from 128 megs.

Sound - Onboard turned off. Instead used Creative Audigy LS, later replaced with Tascam US122 audio/midi interface.

Added another 512 memory stick pc2700 bringing it to a total of 1 gig.

Winxp SP2 installed onto 40 gig hard drive all music files placed on 80 gig hard drive

Sonar 4 & Project 5 v2

Also used Blackvipers Winxp SP2 Safe & Power user (Power User pretty much turns off everything, however I kept the printer on so that sheet music could be printed) tweaks (to bad his website is down. Those are some excellent tweaks)

Ordering an video card so that onboard video can be turned off.


once I configured the system this way it has run with relative ease. I tend not to update the system often with microsoft updates for two reasons. One the system is not used for internet access. Two the updates tend to mess up the tweaks.



peace V

I too tried to run a music production system mine was windows 2000 and i found what was a generall and stupid and petty battle going on over which stupid program was going to preview or have controll over media formated files (and presumably upload information about me somewhere) so the system was unstable and clicking a music file caused the entire system to crash and all the audio drivers to unload.

I switched to Linux and have been very happy with it -- the music apps are very powerfull and i can do everything i need (audio recording combined with midi from a keyboard).
Running a music system on Linux is an advanced undertaking and took some time to figure out so you might want to go with an audio production distribution like this.
http://demudi.agnula.org/
avoid the redhat on fedora based ones because performance is so bad as to render them unusable
or you can just alter an instalation of something like
http://www.libranet.com/
you can actually install Libranet then alter you sources to Demudi and install Demudis' core within Libranet i'm almost sure
when i first started out Libranet was a lifesaver because it's Debian with a better installer that is easier for noobs to use and once you get it going it's fast as lightning and stable as a rock with alot of cool features like the menus for all window managers work and other basic stuff that in debian is a headache.

Is the cubase-like app you're thinking of called Rosegarden4? I've never actually used cubase but I've used rosegarden and I seem to remember seeing a review that compared the two.

btw - there are two rosegardens. One is OLD, the other is a Qt based app and is very good.

yeah that's the dude... rosegarden. looks pretty hot. If i was only 50 times better at bass, i'm lay some stuff down..