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Music PCs and Piracy
Here I will discuss how the individual components within a modern PC affect the performance of an audio sequencer, in this case Logic Platinum. I will also compare CD, DVD and Minidisc, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of CDs over the other two. Finally I will tackle the question of how the internet has facilitated music and software piracy.
Personal Computers (PCs)
Personal computers consist of many different components. The main ones are the mother-board, hard disc drive, RAM memory, processor and expansion cards.
The mother-board connects all other components together and will determine the overall speed of the system (the bus speed), the maximum possible processor speed/type, the maximum RAM memory configuration and the expansion card interfaces. The “bus” is a communications channel, which routes signals between the different components connected to the motherboard e.g. from the processor to the RAM memory. Bus speeds are typically 533MHz for Pentium 4, and 333MHz for Athon XP.
Hard Disk Drives are where data is stored when the computer is powered off. Most modern IDE drives range from 40 – 120 Gigabytes in size. They also vary in speed. The most important factor is the rotation speed. The faster the disc rotates the faster it is possible to access the information on them. Modern IDE drives typically rotate at 7200 rpm. Older drives tend to run at 5400 rpm.
SCSI drives are more expensive than IDE but are typically faster with a rotation rate of 10,000 rpm. USB and firewire drives are also modern alternatives to IDE and SCSI but being external to the PC and often requiring additional interfaces many other factors influence their effective speeds.
Random Access Memory is temporary storage (i.e. everything in it is lost when the computer is powered down) but is much, much faster than hard disk storage. Modern DDR is probably the fastest although even old SIMMs are much faster than Hard Discs. This is because RAM memory is purely electronic and has no mechanical parts, which are obviously limited in how fast they can move.
There are two main models today. Intel’s Pentium 4 and AMD's Athlon. As was seen above the Intel uses a faster bus speed and so while internal processing may happen at much the same speed the processor may be left waiting idle for outside information to arrive if the bus cannot keep up. To counter this problem both of these processors have what is called cache memory on board, that is a small amount of RAM memory where data can be stored for almost immediate access when the processor needs it. Cheaper processors such as the Celeron and the Duron have less of this cache memory.
These include graphics cards, modems, sound cards, network cards and many others. All of these cards place a drain on system resources and will slow the system down to some degree so where speed is crucial minimising these is ideal. Very old systems may have ISA (a 16 bit system which routes all communications via the processor) slots for these cards. But most now use the much faster PCI (a 32 bit system which routes communications directly to the required destination) system (or AGP in the case of graphics cards), which can take advantage of the faster bus speeds on offer today.
High quality digital audio requires very large amounts of data e.g. one minute of CD quality (16 bits, 44.1 KHz) audio = 5 MB of storage space. For higher quality audio, say 24 bits at 96KHz this leaps to 16.6MB for one minute (source: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul98/articles/digitalbasics3.html). If you have 10 channels of audio running together speed of data transfer and the capacity of the storage becomes very important.
Another big drain on resources are audio plug-ins. For these, Logic uses the main processor to create effects, such as reverb, or virtual instruments. These are very processor intensive and a fast processor is essential to use plug-ins in any quantity.
By its nature most of the tasks Logic undertakes are time critical. To get around this Logic prepares certain elements ahead of time. The virtual sounds and audio data thus created need to be stored until required and made available to Logic exactly on schedule. Logic tries to store as much as possible of its resources in fast RAM memory. Where there is insufficient RAM memory, windows will substitute virtual memory, which basically means hard disc space. However this virtual RAM is much slower and cannot keep up with the real-time processing Logic needs to carry out. Therefore large amounts of RAM are essential for any serious work in Logic.
Finally the quality of the sound card will determine the quality of what is actually heard/recorded. The quality of the digital to analogue conversion and vice versa will normally vary with price and the best systems actually move this process into an external box to prevent interference from other components within the PC.
The MIDI side of things is relatively un-demanding and so long as the signals are sent in real time and not delayed by other factors all is well. Continuous controllers can use more bandwidth than most other signals but compared to the elements described above this really is a minor consideration.
As mentioned above CDs store audio at 44.1 KHz with a 16-bit resolution (source: http://www.cdpage.com/Compact_Disc_Books/redbook.html). Typical CD-Rs have a maximum capacity of 80 minutes. DVDs will store approximately 7.2 times this (source: http://www.cdpage.com/DVD-ROM/dvdrom2.html).
Minidiscs can store between 60 and 80 minutes of audio. However, this is at a lower sound quality due to data compression. The CD quality signal is divided, by frequency into 52 sub-bands, each of which then has information removed from it in an intelligent way enabling the files size to be reduced to one fifth (source: http://www.minidisc.org/minidisc_faq.html - audio topics, question 3).
CD is therefore equal in sound quality to DVD and superior to minidisk. It is also currently the most universally available/used of these formats. It does not however have the capacity of DVD and while it is certainly possible to record on CD (as on DVD) minidisc is more versatile in this respect and is more suitable, for example, for small-scale, on-location recordings.
Piracy has been a growing problem for copyright owners ever since the cassette became popular. However in order to make an illegal copy of something you had to gain access to it, so unless your friend/neighbour/etc owned a copy you would find it difficult to pirate. However, the internet has done away with such a requirement. Starting with Napster and now with programs such as the Kazaa Media Desktop and Filtopia, anyone, anywhere in the world, has access to almost any music or software imaginable for simple download. These programs use a peer-to-peer network whereby each user has limited access to every other users computer and can download shared files form it.
This has given copyright owners grave cause for concern over loss of sales. However, it has been said that the free availability of such audio/software has actually led to, those impressed by what they heard/used, actually going out and buying products they would otherwise not have.
Computers are very complex objects but by considering the requirements of a package such as Logic, and studying the available options, it is possible to build a system that is ideally suited to Logic’s needs.
CD is more universally acceptable than most other formats and provides high-quality audio, but where flexibility or capacity are an issue may not be the best choice.
The internet has made piracy quick and simple to anyone who is online and a major headache for the copyright owners but which has arguably also increased sales to customers who may not otherwise have existed.