Today was another trip to the electronics recycler, picked up: a Samsung 850 M.2 SSD which is reported to be able to boot on non-UEFI BIOS's for $13 (for my cheapo workstation), a 40mm mSATA SSD for $15 (to hopefully turn my daughter's netbook into something more usuable), and a Surface Pro 4 for $150 which will hopefully satisfy my wife's request without having to buy new.
Recently bought an 8GB Nvidia Graphics card so that the current desktop (Ubuntu) could run Whisper Open-AI (needs to offload to GPU memory and has a high Cuda requirement).
Works a charm and the wife can now convert her audio from phone recordings to text for her studies. Works amazingly well for all and any recordings be they speakers at an event or lectures and even native speakers.
Then this past week I found a Philips dictation machine unused, bundled with Dragon Naturally Speaking for US$4.00 and installed on Win 10
I am currently training it so as to be able to read into and convert our decades old favourites recipe book.
Again, works like a charm ( but way less of a charm than Whisper) and only recognises me, but at a fraction of the cost of the Nvidia card.
Horses for courses... both give excellent results for their respective applications and I marvel at how the technology to achieve this has changed in the last few years.
Works a charm and the wife can now convert her audio from phone recordings to text for her studies. Works amazingly well for all and any recordings be they speakers at an event or lectures and even native speakers.
Then this past week I found a Philips dictation machine unused, bundled with Dragon Naturally Speaking for US$4.00 and installed on Win 10
I am currently training it so as to be able to read into and convert our decades old favourites recipe book.
Again, works like a charm ( but way less of a charm than Whisper) and only recognises me, but at a fraction of the cost of the Nvidia card.
Horses for courses... both give excellent results for their respective applications and I marvel at how the technology to achieve this has changed in the last few years.
Finally got around to upgrading my daughter's HP Stream into a "real" computer. Problem is it had an integrated 32GB SSD, a single SODIMM slot, and and a single M.2 slot keyed for WiFi card.
So, purchased an Aliex adapter for M.2 WiFi key to SSD key, a 256GB M.2 2230 SSD, an 8GB DDR3 SODIMM, and a USB nano WiFi stick.
The new SSD can't be the boot device, I think the issue is the WiFI key, but it does work. Win 10 and Chrome fit on the 32GB, and even the Windows installer was intelligent enough to not put any cache on the 32GB, but put the cache on the 256GB.
So, purchased an Aliex adapter for M.2 WiFi key to SSD key, a 256GB M.2 2230 SSD, an 8GB DDR3 SODIMM, and a USB nano WiFi stick.
The new SSD can't be the boot device, I think the issue is the WiFI key, but it does work. Win 10 and Chrome fit on the 32GB, and even the Windows installer was intelligent enough to not put any cache on the 32GB, but put the cache on the 256GB.
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None of the computers I manage have HDDs anymore. When I get the SSD how I want it, I use some drive copy program to back it up to the HDD, make sure the HDD boots to the same as the SSD - then it resides offline - sometimes in the bottom of the computer case - at the ready in case something happens to the SSD based system.
The computer equivalent of a "spare tire".
Bought a Intel 12100 for £115 and it seemed to run ok.
Later thought I could maybe do with something a little faster.
So bought a 14600k for £320. My usage tends to be single thread.
I compared the single thread speed and the 14600k is 25% faster.
So the prices dont rise linearly when looking from a ssingle thread point of view.
I guess I am paying for all the extra cores.
The 12100 had 4 p cores and the 14600k had 6 p cores and 8 e cores.
Later thought I could maybe do with something a little faster.
So bought a 14600k for £320. My usage tends to be single thread.
I compared the single thread speed and the 14600k is 25% faster.
So the prices dont rise linearly when looking from a ssingle thread point of view.
I guess I am paying for all the extra cores.
The 12100 had 4 p cores and the 14600k had 6 p cores and 8 e cores.
Everybody usage tends to be single thread. Unless you're serving up a storm out there.
You must not do software development.
All of my compute-bound programs are multi-threaded or multi-process.
Ed
That depends on the use case. Anyone who uses a PC to make, record or manipulate music, or audio will run up the thread / core usage. Run a Digital Audio Workstation program like FL Studio or Ableton Live and you could be running several threads across several cores just to play back some multi track music. Open up several channels of audio for recording through an audio interface while running a few software synthesizers, and controlling some hardware synths over MIDI.........
My "music PC" runs a Ryzen 9 5900X with a mild overclock 32 GB of RAM and a GTX 1660 video card and I can still run both CPU meters up into the 70% range. It is by far the most powerful PC I have. I am not a "power user" either, just a musical experimenter.
My "synth lab" experimenter box gets used mostly for compiling Teensy code that I write for some DIY music synthesizers I have built. It uses a 4th gen Intel core i7-4790K with a GTX650 video card and a mild overclock. I does well with the tasks I throw at it which involves writing and compiling Arduino compatible code, programming the synth, running a simple DAW (Mixcraft 10 or Anvil Studio) to send musical notes to that synth, while playing some other software or hardware synths.
I have another PC that is just a guitar amp. I plug the guitar cable into a Focusrite interface, connect a set of DIY speakers to the PC through a simple Parts Express chip amp, and run Overloud's THU amp and cabinet emulator. It does a nice job on the reverb heavy 60's surf music that I learned on.
There is a virtual modular music synthesizer called VCV Rack (the free version is great) that can be loaded with a few virtual modules, or a whole rack full. Each module will generally suck up one thread. You will need another thread to make audio output. Load up a whole rack only on a multicore CPU with a bunch of RAM and a video card (any video card). The video unit in the CPU chip will create a bottleneck that throttles the communication between the cores and memory since it must access the same memory. The old i7-4790K machine will handle a dozen to about 20 modules depending on complexity before it goes into audible degradation. I can fill a 4K screen full of modules on the Ryzen 9 without issue most of the time.
It's easy to think that overclocking can gain a performance advantage, but that's not always the case. If any one thread can't keep up in a multithreaded audio application the entire playback / recording session will usually be spoiled due to dropouts, pops or timing issues. Thermal throttling is a real consequence of overclocking, and sometimes UNDERCLOCKING is required to fix it. At least it is a good troubleshooting tool.
No serving happening here. Even the old core i5-2500K machine (my oldest) stands alone, and happily runs one or two simple tasks, usually making FFT plots of audio amps. I just upgraded it to Windows 10 because M$ is beginning to make the free upgrade path to 10 and 11 go away. All my PC's run 10 or 11 now, the 2500K was the last of the W7 machines, and the old XP machine just died. Too many bulging caps on the motherboard, I guess. As I found out years ago, bad motherboard caps can fry your CPU chip. The low voltage core supplies (2 volts or less) are derived from the 12 volt supply on the motherboard. If that buck converter stalls or its mosfet shorts the CPU core eats 12 volts and dies.
FL studio has a good article on the computer requirements for their DAW, which apply to many audio generation and manipulation programs. The short story is to pick a CPU with the fastest single core performance you can afford and choose one with at least 8 cores. 32GB of memory seems to be the sweet spot,
https://support.image-line.com/action/knowledgebase/?ans=214
Probably should have used the word Most instead of Everybody. I remember a friend years ago quipping; "You ever write a program a PDP-11/70 couldnt run?" No, I'd never written such a program...
I have written multi-process programs, but how the tasks were split in the CPU execution was handled entirely by the IDE I was working with; LabVIEW. That IDE did allow you to assign code to specific cores, but anything I wrote didnt need that to be as explicit - apparently. These days being retired I dont do any development ;')
I think that's a great use of PC hardware! Thanks for turning me onto Overloud - I've never heard of it until now.
One would think sometime we'll see on stage some non-descript cabinet with a big touch screen display atop it, showing the amplifier emulation being used. Shoot, if I were the guitarist for someone like Tool, I have an Airport sized display in front of my speaker stacks, just to geek out on the fellow guitar players in the audience!
Had a look - thanks for the link - they seem quite conservative in their recommendation. Versus saying you need a Bugatti Veyron to go get groceries once a week.
I'll have to look that one up too. I cant play keyboard though, though I could get MIDI into the PC to play on some module knob twiddling. Do you have a six string controller? I've read they say these days you can just put the 'ol 1/4" into some package and the software figures out whatever it is you're playing, transcribes that to oscillators, voltage control and the like - which I find hard to believe, but I'm so far behind it could be true for all I'd know.
I don't claim to be a keyboard player either, but I can program up some useful MIDI sequences in a DAW to play along with on the guitar and maybe record the audio result if I stumble upon something I like. I have a Korg SQ-64 hardware sequencer that can spit out MIDI, CV/gate or both which can be sent to the PC for use with a virtual synth, or directly used by a hardware synth.
I have played the guitar off and on for over 60 years. I think my guitar skills peaked at age 20. I didn't play at all for a few years when my old Hagstrom 1 was stolen in the early 70's.
I traded a RF power amplifier for an old Univox Mosrite clone just because I liked the "Ventures" look it had during the CB radio boom in the late 70's and started playing again, but not as seriously as before. My playing skills have declined quite a bit in recent years primarily due to numbness and tingling in my hands.
I had one of the early Roland guitar to MIDI boxes and it did work for most playing styles but demanded very clean playing. I eventually grew tired of it and sold it. The hexaphonic pickup that these units require had become one with face of my Univox due to the double faced tape turning to cement from the heat and sun in Florida, so the hex pickup is still on that guitar.
Sometime in the early 2000's I found a newer Roland guitar to MIDI box (GI-10 maybe) cheap at a flea market. I plugged the Univox into it and it does do a much better job than the older Roland did. I ran the MIDI out into a Roland JV-880 rack mound synth module and played it for a few years off and on. I have moved everything I own twice since then totaling 1200 miles. The Univox and the JV-880 are still alive and well but I haven't seen the GI-10 since I got here. There are still a few boxes in storage that haven't been searched though.
Sometime around 2010 I knew that my engineering career was on life support so Sherri and I began downsizing for the eventual move. I actually sold ALL of my guitar amps and sold or gave away some of my guitars. I rebuilt the little 4 tube 4 watt guitar amp I had made for the Hundred Buck Amp Challenge (a sticky at the top of the instruments and amps forum) into something I actually use and it remains the only "real guitar amp" I have. If I want to play around quietly or attempt to record my lousy playing, I simply stick the 1/4 inch cable into the Focusriite interface and use THU.
Will I ever build myself a "real tube amp?" I don't know, I have all the parts and know how, but haven't found the motivation. I would rather finish the MIDI guitar that I have started about 3 times, but never finished. I made a neck with a connection to each fret. Each string is isolated so that the whole thing becomes a 6 X 21 matrix keyboard. There have been several body styles made in a night time wood shop class at a high school in Florida. One can be seen here as my guitar and my friend's electric UKE both happened to come to the first (unamplified) music stage on the same night. This occurred in early 2014 and my job ended about a month later so the guitar remains disassembled in a box untouched.
A company called Jam Origin came up with a software program for the PC and Mac that was supposed to accept audio from a guitar cord and deliver "perfect" MIDI transcription of that playing with full polyphony and capability to track all sorts of wild playing styles. I got on the list for the public Beta trial and got a new download every week or so as the little details of having disparate users all over the world abuse their software were worked out. After about a year of this it got pretty good. My career and move #1 occurred during the last part of the Beta trial. I didn't play with it during the time I was in temporary housing and once our house was done and we had moved in the Beta had turned into a product that cost real money and the Beta code no longer functioned. This was about 2015 and I haven't tried it since. I just Googled and found it as I couldn't remember the name of the product or the company. There is a free trial so I may have to give it a try again. It now features DAW support which means that you should be able to record the MIDI stream that results from your guitar playing. If that's true and it works, I may go for it.
This turns guitar notes into MIDI data. To get CV and gate you would need a MIDI to CV converter. These have been around for years and work well. I have one in my modular Eurorack synth. Note that my modular synth houses three Behringer synths and the old Roland JV-880 is under the DeepMind. All of this can be controlled by the PC. Behringer has done a decent job of cloning the MiniMoog Model D and cost reducing it using SMD parts. I got this one used for less than the cost of some eurorack modules. I buy my modules as a "board and panel" only kit and build them myself with my own parts. Module choice comes down to something that interests me that can be built with mostly parts that I already have and are on sale at Synthcube. As seen, some of my "modules" are complete synths.
The big blue synth is a "virtual analog" synth of my own design. It uses a Teensy module for the brain and the Teensy drag and drop audio library for most of the code generation. "Blue" and its smaller companion ("Micro", not seen in this picture) are polyphonic synths with the usual set of controls found on an analog synthesizer.
The Teensy modules are small 24 bit CPU modules that run up to 600 MHz in clock speed and are supported by an "audio library" that does the heavy lifting for music making applications.
https://www.pjrc.com/store/
https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_Audio.html
The old quote, "It's so easy even your drummer can do it." is now, "It's so easy even a blonde can code it."
I have played the guitar off and on for over 60 years. I think my guitar skills peaked at age 20. I didn't play at all for a few years when my old Hagstrom 1 was stolen in the early 70's.
I traded a RF power amplifier for an old Univox Mosrite clone just because I liked the "Ventures" look it had during the CB radio boom in the late 70's and started playing again, but not as seriously as before. My playing skills have declined quite a bit in recent years primarily due to numbness and tingling in my hands.
I had one of the early Roland guitar to MIDI boxes and it did work for most playing styles but demanded very clean playing. I eventually grew tired of it and sold it. The hexaphonic pickup that these units require had become one with face of my Univox due to the double faced tape turning to cement from the heat and sun in Florida, so the hex pickup is still on that guitar.
Sometime in the early 2000's I found a newer Roland guitar to MIDI box (GI-10 maybe) cheap at a flea market. I plugged the Univox into it and it does do a much better job than the older Roland did. I ran the MIDI out into a Roland JV-880 rack mound synth module and played it for a few years off and on. I have moved everything I own twice since then totaling 1200 miles. The Univox and the JV-880 are still alive and well but I haven't seen the GI-10 since I got here. There are still a few boxes in storage that haven't been searched though.
Sometime around 2010 I knew that my engineering career was on life support so Sherri and I began downsizing for the eventual move. I actually sold ALL of my guitar amps and sold or gave away some of my guitars. I rebuilt the little 4 tube 4 watt guitar amp I had made for the Hundred Buck Amp Challenge (a sticky at the top of the instruments and amps forum) into something I actually use and it remains the only "real guitar amp" I have. If I want to play around quietly or attempt to record my lousy playing, I simply stick the 1/4 inch cable into the Focusriite interface and use THU.
Will I ever build myself a "real tube amp?" I don't know, I have all the parts and know how, but haven't found the motivation. I would rather finish the MIDI guitar that I have started about 3 times, but never finished. I made a neck with a connection to each fret. Each string is isolated so that the whole thing becomes a 6 X 21 matrix keyboard. There have been several body styles made in a night time wood shop class at a high school in Florida. One can be seen here as my guitar and my friend's electric UKE both happened to come to the first (unamplified) music stage on the same night. This occurred in early 2014 and my job ended about a month later so the guitar remains disassembled in a box untouched.
A company called Jam Origin came up with a software program for the PC and Mac that was supposed to accept audio from a guitar cord and deliver "perfect" MIDI transcription of that playing with full polyphony and capability to track all sorts of wild playing styles. I got on the list for the public Beta trial and got a new download every week or so as the little details of having disparate users all over the world abuse their software were worked out. After about a year of this it got pretty good. My career and move #1 occurred during the last part of the Beta trial. I didn't play with it during the time I was in temporary housing and once our house was done and we had moved in the Beta had turned into a product that cost real money and the Beta code no longer functioned. This was about 2015 and I haven't tried it since. I just Googled and found it as I couldn't remember the name of the product or the company. There is a free trial so I may have to give it a try again. It now features DAW support which means that you should be able to record the MIDI stream that results from your guitar playing. If that's true and it works, I may go for it.
This turns guitar notes into MIDI data. To get CV and gate you would need a MIDI to CV converter. These have been around for years and work well. I have one in my modular Eurorack synth. Note that my modular synth houses three Behringer synths and the old Roland JV-880 is under the DeepMind. All of this can be controlled by the PC. Behringer has done a decent job of cloning the MiniMoog Model D and cost reducing it using SMD parts. I got this one used for less than the cost of some eurorack modules. I buy my modules as a "board and panel" only kit and build them myself with my own parts. Module choice comes down to something that interests me that can be built with mostly parts that I already have and are on sale at Synthcube. As seen, some of my "modules" are complete synths.
The big blue synth is a "virtual analog" synth of my own design. It uses a Teensy module for the brain and the Teensy drag and drop audio library for most of the code generation. "Blue" and its smaller companion ("Micro", not seen in this picture) are polyphonic synths with the usual set of controls found on an analog synthesizer.
The Teensy modules are small 24 bit CPU modules that run up to 600 MHz in clock speed and are supported by an "audio library" that does the heavy lifting for music making applications.
https://www.pjrc.com/store/
https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_Audio.html
The old quote, "It's so easy even your drummer can do it." is now, "It's so easy even a blonde can code it."
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I do quite a bit software development.
Visual Studio is multi threaded but watching cpu usage it is mostly in short bursts. Worst usage was 50% of cpu.
I use Microchip MPLAB X too and that is multi threaded.
My main use is PCB design and the software I use is single threaded.
Nigel - The Linux kernel takes 20 minutes to compile on my 8-core machine. LibreOffice takes 45 minutes. The CPU utilization is 100% for nearly all of that time.
The same machine can compile all of the software that I have written as a hobby in 30 seconds. The CPU utilization is 100% for most of that time.
The most compute-intensive program that I have written is my 3D renderer. The renderings on my website took an hour to a day at 100% CPU utilization. The renderer produces state-of-the-art image quality.
The moral is that computing problems come in all sizes, and there is no upper bound on the amount of computing needed to solve interesting problems.
Ed
The same machine can compile all of the software that I have written as a hobby in 30 seconds. The CPU utilization is 100% for most of that time.
The most compute-intensive program that I have written is my 3D renderer. The renderings on my website took an hour to a day at 100% CPU utilization. The renderer produces state-of-the-art image quality.
The moral is that computing problems come in all sizes, and there is no upper bound on the amount of computing needed to solve interesting problems.
Ed
I have had a 4K video render take over 24 hours to complete on my Ryzen 9 machine, but it had a Ryzen 7 at the time. This was to assemble several thousand still frame images taken with a Lumix FZ-1000 camera, at one second intervals into a 3 minute "peaceful sunset over the gulf of Mexico" time lapse video.
That, and a sale on the Ryzen 9 CPU chip at Amazon prompted the upgrade and the Ryzen 7 is in the machine that I'm typing this on.
There is a cost VS performance curve for nearly everything in life, and I usually stay at the point just below the knee in the curve which is often two to three generations back in the CPU chip wars.
That, and a sale on the Ryzen 9 CPU chip at Amazon prompted the upgrade and the Ryzen 7 is in the machine that I'm typing this on.
There is a cost VS performance curve for nearly everything in life, and I usually stay at the point just below the knee in the curve which is often two to three generations back in the CPU chip wars.
All these extra cores are great but I found the cooler I had for my 12600k doesnt work with full power on the 14600k.
The cpu temps shoot up and cpu is then throttled.
Will wait and see if next gen deals with power better and maybe upgrade to that later.
You sure it isnt the interface goo between the CPU lid and that cooler? When you say shoot up, sounds like high resistance between for some reason. Not like the water's going to boil -
Many reviewers complain about high temps on the 13th and 14th gen Intel chips, especially the i7s and i9's. You will probably need a top tier cooler if you lean on them hard. Remember that too much thermal goo can be a bad thing. So is old stuff that has started to harden.
My latest Intel CPU is a core I7-8700 so I have no experience with the newer Intel stuff. Everything I built going back to the 8088 chip in "turbo XT" motherboards in the 80's has been Intel powered until the price / performance gap got too wide, and I switched to AMD.
The Ryzen 9 that I put into the music computer was a drop in, literally. I opened up the PC, took off the glowing LED cooler that came with the original Ryzen 7 chip, swapped the CPU chip, reinstalled the cooler and powered up. Everything worked as it did before, but faster with no software reinstallation. The music PC runs Windows 10 and will stay that way for now. It just works and the CPU swap occurred about a year ago.
I bought another identical ASROCK X570 Phantom Gaming 4 motherboard, put the old Ryzen 7 3800X that came from the music PC into it using a cooler from my junk box along with 32 GB of memory, a GTX 1050 video card, and the SSD and hard drives that were robbed from a Core i7-7700 machine that had a schizophrenic motherboard. I then used the W7 keys from an old dead Core i3-3225 PC to install W11 home on it and that is the PC that I am typing this on. It has worked great for a year. The previous I7-7700 machine only worked when it wanted to, and it was getting more uncooperative every day.
My latest Intel CPU is a core I7-8700 so I have no experience with the newer Intel stuff. Everything I built going back to the 8088 chip in "turbo XT" motherboards in the 80's has been Intel powered until the price / performance gap got too wide, and I switched to AMD.
The Ryzen 9 that I put into the music computer was a drop in, literally. I opened up the PC, took off the glowing LED cooler that came with the original Ryzen 7 chip, swapped the CPU chip, reinstalled the cooler and powered up. Everything worked as it did before, but faster with no software reinstallation. The music PC runs Windows 10 and will stay that way for now. It just works and the CPU swap occurred about a year ago.
I bought another identical ASROCK X570 Phantom Gaming 4 motherboard, put the old Ryzen 7 3800X that came from the music PC into it using a cooler from my junk box along with 32 GB of memory, a GTX 1050 video card, and the SSD and hard drives that were robbed from a Core i7-7700 machine that had a schizophrenic motherboard. I then used the W7 keys from an old dead Core i3-3225 PC to install W11 home on it and that is the PC that I am typing this on. It has worked great for a year. The previous I7-7700 machine only worked when it wanted to, and it was getting more uncooperative every day.