We’ve recently run a few news and technical items in inSync that touched on host based recording issues and performance. There’s an interesting phenomenon occurring among users of host based systems where there’s a sort of need (perhaps for bragging rights) to expound the virtues of one’s system by way of track and plug-in count. Remarks like, “I’ve got 47 tracks with 32 equalizers, and 7 reverbs” are common (though the various counts vary), and our recent blurbs on the subject have certainly generated a fair amount of this. Since we sell a lot of host based systems these anecdotal stories are interesting, especially when we receive enough to reveal that two people can have almost exactly the same system, yet get significantly different results.
A friend of mine recently visited from Japan, and is beginning to consider a new DAW purchase. Being a smart guy, and having been around a while, he intuitively knew there were vast differences in both design philosophy and price between systems with dedicated hardware and host based systems. Yet he was also caught up in the conversation about track count and plug-in count.
I reminded him of the same thing I will now remind every inSync reader of. Let’s not get so focused on quantity that we forget about quality. Host based systems are great, and they provide an amazing value for the money, but you must understand that you are asking one processor to do what in some cases may be the work of 10 to 12 processors (or more) that you’d find in a system with dedicated hardware. The ability of host based systems to emulate the real-time processes of systems with dedicated hardware varies, and certainly the fact that you can get 47 tracks, 10 reverbs, etc. happening at once is way cool. But at the level of doing the actual number crunching to make all that happen most of us have no idea what is really going on. Does that 10th reverb you engage sound just as good as the first one did, or do they each become slightly more compromised as more and more stuff is added to the session? This is the type of issue people thinking of buying a system need to consider. My experiences have shown me that it’s all a sliding scale in these systems. Quality does seem to go down some as quantity rises. But not everyone notices this. Further, most people never have a need to push their systems to the ragged edge of performance, and as such tend to get the quality they need in the context of what they are working on. We will explore this and other related issues in more depth with upcoming issues of inSync, but for now keep in mind that more is not always better. Anyone considering a purchase should consult their Sweetwater Sales Engineer to discuss the specific pros and cons of each type of system.