Advice: just inherited a older PC with Giga Studio

[El_Professor]

Hi,

First off, let me say up front: I’m a longtime Mac user and this is my first experience with a PC.
I am not in the position to go buy anything as I have a fully working Mac based system.
But a relative died and left me his rack mount PC with Gigastudio 3 on it
and I thought I’d see if I could ‘EASILY’ incorporate it into my studio as an additional sound source.

The PC is:
A Pentium 4 with 2 gigs of RAM running MS Windows XP service pack 3.
It had a frontier card in it that I pulled out.
I wish to put in a MOTU 424 card w/DSP and run the external MOTU 2408 Mark II Adat 8 ch x 3 outputs from the PC
to my MOTU 424 card’s MOTU 2408 Mark III in my MacPro 8 core.

I’d use the MacPro 8 core as the sequencer and send midi out from my MOTU MTP USB to a STeinberg MIDIEX 8 thats connected to the PC using the audio cards for a return when the parts are finalized, but using the stereo analog out of the PC’s 2408 unit to a keyboard mixer that I use for my rack mount midi keyboards prior to printing audio - for playback and hearing to decide on what needs to be done next prior to finalizing the parts and printing them to audio.

I can print to audio via analog cables and patchbays setup for this to avoid clocking issues or higher sample rate incompatibility issues (the 2408 mark 3 can work at 88.1 and 96 khz 24bit recording setups). I believe the 2408 mark 2 is still at 44.1 and 48 rates. Or if I choose to work at 44.1 or 48 for video, I could use the ADATs from the mark 2 to the mark 3 and get it into my Mac that way. So I have both options. Not an issue that I’m raising here at all.

Now that you know my scenario. Here’s the questions from anyone who is a PC Gigastudio 3 user and that uses Windows XP Service Pack 3 and has experience (good or bad) with the MOTU 424 pci card.

Have you have good results with a MOTU 424 card? If so, how about with a 2408 mark 2 attached?
Was it fine to run with Giga Studio 3?
Did you need to run it all with Service Pack 3?

why? - because when I got this rack mount PC it had a Frontier card (only one ADAT out, one small midi connector and a digital co-axial in and co-axial out). It was setup with Windows XP using Service Pack 2. And I know my cousin who owned this had access to the best cats for setups before he passed away. I wondered why he hadn’t updated his PC to service pack 3?
When I went to the MOTU website and looked at the system requirements for PCs running windows xp, it said you had to have service pack 3.

So, I was wondering if I upgrade to Service Pack 3 and install the MOTU 424 drivers will GigaStudio be ok or can I anticipate problems.

I’m trying to get a heads up from anyone who has gone thru this and might have some pre-install trouble shooting news (though this is all old stuff, they may remember how they solved or avoided this).

One tech told me that when he did build these machines years ago, he always had the best luck with RME Hammerfall cards. So the friend helping me set up the PC says he has one laying around he can sell me.
Is it worth keeping the MOTU setup (for no new expense) or purchase the Hammerfall card and avoid any hassles (that is, if you folks who have had this setup, say there can be a problem with the MOTU setup that can be easily avoided with the Hammerfall setup.

hope someone who has some great advice can chime in on this,

el profe

[Paul_Bryce]

@El Professor

I wondered why he hadn’t updated his PC to service pack 3?

When I went to the MOTU website and looked at the system requirements for PCs running windows xp, it said you had to have service pack 3.

Probably for the same reason I’m still on XP Pro SP1, if it ain’t broke…

Having dealt with Motu for yrs, I don’t believe everything they say

They said I couldn’t run a 324 card with XP and I would have to upgrade to a 424 card, they were wrong

I don’t use Giga Studio so I guess I can’t really help you other than to say if you already have the Motu card then you have nothing to lose by trying it.

It’s possible the 424 card would require SP3 but I can’t say yeah or nay

I always said I would switch to RME when my Motu 324 died but it’s still going after using since the late 90’s , under Win98, W2K Pro & XP Pro, go figure

If you do go to SP3, then make sure you back up the system completely first just in case.

[El_Professor]

Thanks, had a program that was designed to do backups installed and thought it was taking care of biz.
Upon getting past problems updating the service pack 3 (kept fighting us with a error code about a something or other was being shared with another program and please quite that program, but there was no other program running…yada yada yada… and some google-ing for a solution…we were able to download the service pack 3. It completed and started to install and froze 1/2 way thru. After much attempts at trying to get the backup software to run, it’s only backup was the most current boot-up which was frozen…haha wow, welcome to the world of PCs.

So we re-installed Windows XP (with the service pack 3) and started from scratch.
What a hassle. It’s still over my friend’s place as he is making sure all the problems are conquered with all the options (PCI 424 card and drivers) GS3 install, sample library recognized and working, etc.

Was advised by another composer, that when I get tired of all this to possibly give G-Player a try.

So, for now if my friend can get it all running smoothly. I’m done.
If not, I’ll consider g-Player.
I have Kontact 3 and folks say that’ll work, without the cool GStudio 3 built-in efx in place
or G-Player which reports say is even better than Kontact for playing back GStudio libraries.

let the journey begin…

any other info is still welcome on this subject and even desired, so as to learn all the ins and outs on this stuff,

el profe