BrainModular

I tried to find information about the system requirements. I only found some information about system requirements here on this German wiki page: http://www.sensomusic.com/wiki/doku.php ... l:lesson00

Is this information still valid for Hollyhock II?

I ask because I got an older Acer Veriton PC from our IT department for free, and now I wonder if I should spend time to setup a Windows for making music with Usine or if it is wasted time to try it with this small machine. I believe it has around 3 GHz, and RAM is limited to 4 GB. So, according to this wiki information it should be sufficient for Usine.

There are no minimum requirements specified because there is a wide range of usage for Usine.
It can in fact run on much slower systems, however it depends on what you are trying to achieve.

The only thing I ever had issues with performance in the past was a graphics performance issue using older directx. This caused my responsiveness of my sequencers and physics objects to be weary(many moving objects)...As far as I understand, Hollyhock likes using Directx11 because of the way it can redraw all objects in realtime. I would recommend, however even with directx10 with bugfixes and performance fixes over time things were running much better.

So my personal opinion, just try it out and push a little of the limits, check the graphics performance if that is what you are doing, and make sure you check some of your settings to see if they can be adjusted to make working with it comfortable.

Remember you can network Usine, so even if you find some fall-backs of using an older computer....you might be able to network and find an alternate use for it. Like a secondary MIDI processor or controller of your primary setup.


hope this helps some, I always looked for minimum requirements too

-s

From personal experience, I'm getting plenty of use out of Hollyhock 2 on my 1.8GHz (i5), 4GB laptop. I use the standard 128 sample bloc size, and likewise 128 sample buffer size for my soundcard (6 channels of audio in/out, hooked up via USB), which feels plenty "responsive" for MIDI and mic/guitar/bass in real-time.

A soundcard that has good ASIO driver support is highly recommended (a free 'virtual driver' called 'ASIO4All' may work with the built-in audio, but getting it to work with low latency and low CPU load can be tricky with many MoBo sound chips in my experience). There are several simple stereo in/out + MIDI soundcards that runs off USB power available at very reasonable prices these days, if the built-in sound is not up to the job.

A less powerful machine will, of course, limit the number of tracks/instruments/effects available - but that is true of any music app'. One of the joys of a modular environment like Hollyhock is that it is very 'scalable' - so even if you cannot run huge orchestral arrangements etc., you will have no problem using it as a 'sketchpad' with a selection of instruments chosen for their low CPU load.

Thanks for your opinion, Sephult.

Btw. it is this machine here (incl. Windows 7): http://www.cnet.com/products/acer-verit ... -gb/specs/

The soundcard will be my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2.

So far my computer in the living room works well with Usine (as long as I do not use Avira anti virus). But I also use it as my TV set, as my graphics design workstation, and for many more applications. The goal is to keep my music hardware (synths, controllers, etc.) in a separate room without spending too much money for more hardware (such as a new PC). So, I will try it soon with this small PC. Besides the time for downloading Windows and installing it there is nothing to lose.

If someone advised me to choose a PC with more resources, I'd just install a linux on it and use it for something else.

Using Usine in a network sounds interesting, but for the first I want to focus more on learning more about how to make music before I risk to spend too much time with network problems. In the last two years or so, I learned a lot about programming synths, using plugins, solving midi problems and whatever, but still cannot use a classic keyboard (which was my initial goal when I started thinking about making music) )

Still, it would be interesting (for the future), to find out if I could reactivate some old laptops from the basement to run some CPU hungry synth or filter plugin separate from the PC that does the sequencing and controlling.

Thank you again. Best regards, Martin