[PlanetCCRMA] A few questions - SB Audigy LS, Athlon 1400, dual boot

[Mike Mazarick]

I getting ready to embark on the Linux DAW journey.

I had previously successfully upgraded a pre-existing RH 7.3 installation to
the Planet CCRMA standard - however, I noticed that the m/b soundcard that
was built in (I was also getting the report back from the lspci command that
the soundcard was Intel 82801DB AC'97 and noticed the thread that was posted
shortly after I discovered this).

I then went straight to Best Buy to pick up a cheap soundcard, but because
it was 5 minutes before closing, ended up with a mid range one (SB Audigy
LS) - because it advertised 24 bit 96khz sound capability as well as Dolby
5.1.

After doing a little thinking about what to do next, I elected to put it on
my "home" computer rather than my "work" computer (for obvious reasons).
There are a couple of questions that I would like to have a little more info
on before proceeding:

(Background info)
    I have several old GadgetLabs cards (8 in/out with 24bit 48 khz
capability).   There has just been released a new WinXP driver for it by a
volunteer (since the company is bankrupt).  I would like to be able to put
the cards in the computer I am getting ready to use for the Linux DAW, but
don't want to screw up the Linux portion, since there is currently no driver
for linux (now, the future may be a different story if I can get the source
to the XP driver).
    I am currently running Win2K, and I have a new 150 gig drive that I plan
to put Win2k on (for migration purposes), WinXP (to test the GadgetLabs
cards and drivers), and Fedora CCRMA so that I can run Ardour, Jack, and
test out/use all the the cool linux tools and generally become part of the
Planet.  I plan to use the SB Audigy for this purpose (until such time as I
can get the GadgetLabs cards to function with linux, but this is longer
term).
    Eventually, I would like to utilize the Opteron or Athlon 64 bit linux
when it becomes available.   I would also like to utilize VMWare for any XP
or Win2K stuff, so this is the reason for selecting Fedora;  it will
probably be available earlier for 64 bit computing than other solutions.

So my questions are:

1.  Is the SB Audigy LS really capable of doing 24 bits with the current
linux drivers, or would I be better off to take it back and just get a
cheapo model or SB clone before I open the Audigy box?

2.  Is the hardware "able to be isolated" such that I can keep the GL cards
installed in the system and just not use them without undue impact to the
systems performance?

3.  I plan to partition my new hd into 3 parts, a Win2K partition (gives me
something to copy to and upgrade later), a WinXP partition (let's me check
out the GL driver without worrying about all the other diddling I've done in
Win2K), and a Linux partition, so I can get on with the Linux stuff.   The
question is:  is this a practical or workable solution?

There is a small community of musicians that utilize a web site
http://rocketears-online.net (yes, they are the refugee customers from the
old Rocket Network), and there are several "mac-heads"/protools users who
are following how this goes and are interested in how to use some of the
Linux tools with MacOS X.   The general s/w in use by this community is
Cubase, but, the techical direction is leaning towards Linux and OMF.  They
had developed a set of scripts to do Flac compression, ftp syncing and
locking, etc. so that the std s/w in use (ProTools, CakeWalk, Cubase) could
be used by several musicians in different parts of the world almost
simultaneously.  However, it is recognized that integrating file
syncing/locking into the DAW code could make the updates faster and better
(bringing us closer to real time jamming).  I bring this up because
utilizing the Linux DAW with other musicians in different locations is the
ultimate goal of the exercise.

Sorry for the long post for just 3 questions, but thought it better to put
it in context (they'll be shorter from now on).

Regards,

Mike Mazarick
mazarick@bellsouth.net