Computer tek support burnout

Leisceoir · January 2023

Does anyone else suffer from this? Like you have one Saturday to record something at home and you spend the whole day trying to get the right driver for the audio interface or reinstall the operating system or something. After five hours of doing the type of work I do at work and I'm trying to escape from, all my problem solving energy is depleted and I just sit in front of the telly instead. I might not go near the recording setup again for weeks or months I'm so sick of it.

Jalapeno · January 2023

Yep ! Umpteen times .....

prowla · January 2023

It’s an ongoing thing keeping up with updates; also password overload.

Leisceoir · January 2023

Glad it's not just me then!

steamabacus · January 2023

Leisceoir said:

Like you have one Saturday to record something at home and you spend the whole day trying to get the right driver for the audio interface or reinstall the operating system or something.

This is why I have no compulsion to try and upgrade my Windows XP studio computer running Cubase SX and various other obsolete bits of software. No connection to the internet Turn it on and it's ready to go. I have all the software on discs, no passwords or logging in, no faffing about.

It might not have any fancy bells and whistles but it just works!

The computer went down a while back and I just had a friend replace all the caps in the power supply and it was good as new.

maharg101 · January 2023

I've found that Mac is king of "it just works" for audio recording.
Linux is a pain to get working (and some things never work) but tends to remain in a working state once you've got it set up right.
Windows is a never-ending pit of misery and woe that I refuse to ever countenance again, unless as @steamabacus ;has mentioned, it is not connected to the internet.

Danny1969 · January 2023

maharg101 said:

I've found that Mac is king of "it just works" for audio recording.
Linux is a pain to get working (and some things never work) but tends to remain in a working state once you've got it set up right.
Windows is a never-ending pit of misery and woe that I refuse to ever countenance again, unless as @steamabacus ;has mentioned, it is not connected to the internet.

I agree and don't actually set up anyone with Windows machines anymore ... just too much hassle. Core audio and OSX just works reliably with no driver issues and no hassle.

If you have room for one get an old iMac and use that as a DAW. For less than £200 you can get a perfectly capable iMac and an audio interface that will run 40 odd tracks reliably all with plugins.

rze99 · January 2023

Everybody who knows, uses Macs for recording.

Leisceoir · January 2023

@steamabacus I might be your home recording twin. I've had an XP machine for years, no internet connection, it worked great, I open up task manager and there's maybe 6 background processes and I know exactly what each of them are doing. When I render a track nothing interferes in the background to screw it up.

BUT, it's noisy when I'm recording and it was starting to become a problem. So I got a decent laptop with a SSD. Got it cheap with no OS. I'm not an incredibly techie person who prides themselves on building everything from scratch, but I don't believe in forking out six or eight hundred quid when you can get something decent for two hundred. Installing an OS would be no problem I thought.

BUT it's a 64bit machine, I don't want windows 10 because of all the bloat (no human could ever fathom what all the background processes on that thing are doing). No problem – windows 7 isn't too bloaty and it'll be OK because I'm not connecting it to the internet.

BUT, turns out the laptop only has USB3 ports, W7 doesn't have this driver built in SO I have to try and find the driver and embed this in the W7 image. After several attempts at this over several weekends I was in a heap in the corner.

Maybe Apple is the way to go. I did try one several years back with Logic Pro but I really didn't like at as a DAW. I use Ableton Live on the PC, I suppose I could try the Apple version, but then it'd mean buying more software. I am interested in Linux, but I can't really gauge how tech-savvy you'd have to be to get it to work. I don't want to jump down an even deeper tek support hole!

digitalscream · January 2023

maharg101 said:
Linux is a pain to get working (and some things never work) but tends to remain in a working state once you've got it set up right.

It's actually surprising how much works these days - Addictive Drums and EZDrummer work perfectly, which is pretty great. Some stuff needs extra effort (eg Helix Native), but the only plugins I've found that will never work are the ones requiring iLoks.

The only issue I've really had in the last 10 years or so is when distributions recently switched to Pipewire, but it all seems to just work now with all the latest updates.

prowla · January 2023

maharg101 said:

I've found that Mac is king of "it just works" for audio recording.
Linux is a pain to get working (and some things never work) but tends to remain in a working state once you've got it set up right.
Windows is a never-ending pit of misery and woe that I refuse to ever countenance again, unless as @steamabacus ;has mentioned, it is not connected to the internet.

I find my Mac a right pain to use; stupid obscure key combinations to do simple tasks, mouse actions which half work (eg. Double-click on window border to expand it, but then not reverting if double-click again), Command-C instead of Ctrl-C, intrusive updates, and more.

The latest update has taken to popping up a notification for some things which can’t be acknowledged permanently.

BillDL · January 2023

I have exactly the same problem. The old XP desktop PC I used to use for recording was really stripped down with all the bloatware removed and as many background processes and services disabled as was possible for it to still function. It wasn't the fastest processor by any stretch of the imagination and, being 32-bit could only handle 4GB of RAM, but in its "slimmed down" state It worked well enough for what I needed to do at the time even with a spinny hard drive. That PC has been in the back of a cupboard for quite a number of years unused and I have since bought a more up to date USB interface that needs Windows 7 at least and certainly a faster computer with a lot more RAM.

My Win7 64-bit laptop is underpowered and wouldn't handle recording, but my Win10 laptop (with capable processor, a fair bit of RAM and an SSD drive) that is fully capable of handling recording has so much background shit going on and I am not nearly as familiar with Win10 as I was/am with WinXP and 7 to start delving into it really deeply to unbloat it.

I'm stuck with a dilemma. I had considered changing to Linux completely for all of my domestic computing stuff, but I began to discover that getting some hardware and software to work for recording can be hit and miss. I would be curious to try and find a iMac (as @Danny1969 has mentioned), but I've never used a Mac at home or at work and I wouldn't know where to start with minimum age, spec, hardware, etc.

To tell the truth I no longer want to be footering around with computers to get them to work and I sometimes wish i still had my old Tascam 244 Portastudio with cassette tapes.

maharg101 · January 2023

digitalscream said:

maharg101 said:
Linux is a pain to get working (and some things never work) but tends to remain in a working state once you've got it set up right.

It's actually surprising how much works these days

Yeah. Depends what you want to use. I still have to remote onto a Mac for Ox Box app. I got it half working under wine, and started to reverse engineer the protocol (mDNS discovery and websockets) and implement a Linux version before I threw my hands up and said "sod it".

digitalscream · January 2023

BillDL said:

I'm stuck with a dilemma. I had considered changing to Linux completely for all of my domestic computing stuff, but I began to discover that getting some hardware and software to work for recording can be hit and miss. I would be curious to try and find a iMac (as @Danny1969 has mentioned), but I've never used a Mac at home or at work and I wouldn't know where to start with minimum age, spec, hardware, etc.

First, make a list of the software you want to use. If, for example, you're cool with Reaper then you're golden on Linux. Plugins can sometimes be awkward, but most things work. Plugins...are gonna be interesting. As I said before, most work, but iLok's definitely a no-no.

Then it's hardware. Just about all class-compliant USB interfaces work pretty much out of the box, but the software that comes with them won't - so any onboard DSP or routing just isn't on the cards. I use a Komplete Audio 6, which is about as simple as it gets, and works without any setup. I think a lot of the Audient interfaces are also pretty good for Linux support, as are Behringer and Presonus.

You'll likely need to use the JACK audio subsystem, which can be a minor pain to configure, and you should also install the realtime kernel. Once you've got that sorted, you'll need a VST bridge that allows you to use Windows VSTs on Linux - I use LinVST. You'll obviously need WINE installed too, but pretty much any recent version will do.

That's basically it. The thing about it being hit-and-miss is...it's not that something will work one day and won't the next. If you select your hardware and software according to what you know will work (and, of course, what you can live without) then you'll end up with a rock-solid system that just does everything you want it to, pretty much forever.

BillDL · January 2023

Thank you @digitalscream ; I wish I had the time and patience to do as you have spoken about, but between work and domestic commitments I just don't have the time. I used to dread reaching retirement age, but these days I wish the next 5 years would move quickly so I can retire and have the time to do this kind of thing. Problem is that by then my arthritic knuckles will be worse

Danny1969 · January 2023

@BillDL ;

I have 3 iMacs which all get used for recording. The oldest one is a 2007 core 2 duo with 3Gb ram, youngest is a 2011 i5 with 8Gb ram
None of them are worth more than £150 to buy these days ...

There's a few different menu's and short cuts to get used to on OSX but not much is really different. I'm fine with PC's and had a company that turned over half a million a year building them at one point but the Mac is a better option these days. A lot of PC hardware is fine but Windows is a terrible OS and I can't bear to use it anymore. Every time I get a customers machine in running windows and I have to sort out the OS it feels like wading through treacle.

BillDL · January 2023

Thanks @Danny1969 ;

Leisceoir · January 2023

BillDL said:

I have exactly the same problem. The old XP desktop PC I used to use for recording was really stripped down with all the bloatware removed and as many background processes and services disabled as was possible for it to still function. It wasn't the fastest processor by any stretch of the imagination and, being 32-bit could only handle 4GB of RAM, but in its "slimmed down" state It worked well enough for what I needed to do at the time even with a spinny hard drive. That PC has been in the back of a cupboard for quite a number of years unused and I have since bought a more up to date USB interface that needs Windows 7 at least and certainly a faster computer with a lot more RAM.

My Win7 64-bit laptop is underpowered and wouldn't handle recording, but my Win10 laptop (with capable processor, a fair bit of RAM and an SSD drive) that is fully capable of handling recording has so much background shit going on and I am not nearly as familiar with Win10 as I was/am with WinXP and 7 to start delving into it really deeply to unbloat it.

I'm stuck with a dilemma. I had considered changing to Linux completely for all of my domestic computing stuff, but I began to discover that getting some hardware and software to work for recording can be hit and miss. I would be curious to try and find a iMac (as @Danny1969 has mentioned), but I've never used a Mac at home or at work and I wouldn't know where to start with minimum age, spec, hardware, etc.

To tell the truth I no longer want to be footering around with computers to get them to work and I sometimes wish i still had my old Tascam 244 Portastudio with cassette tapes.

It's so annoying isn't it - PCs leapt ahead in the amount of resource there was but then they made an OS that just eats up all that resource with pointless background processes, so your old XP machine has effectively more available than your new one. Seems like such a waste.

@digitalscream Do you know of any good guide for a newbie for getting into Linux? I was thinking of trying it on my old laptop that I just use for internet surfing and jukebox. If I was able to set that up easily enough I might give a stab at making a Linux recording setup.

digitalscream · January 2023

Leisceoir said:

@digitalscream Do you know of any good guide for a newbie for getting into Linux? I was thinking of trying it on my old laptop that I just use for internet surfing and jukebox. If I was able to set that up easily enough I might give a stab at making a Linux recording setup.

Honestly? It's probably easier to just jump straight in and see how you get on. Modern installers on the popular distributions are ridiculously helpful and easy to get through. Just head over to Ubuntu or Linux Mint (the latter probably being easier to get around for Windows users), download the USB image, burn it to a USB stick and boot from it. You can even use it straight from the USB stick without installing anything; it'll be slower, but it'll give you an idea of what your experience will be like.

While things like Ubuntu Studio do exist, they're not really necessary if you want to get into recording. You can pretty much mix and match software from any of the Ubuntu versions (including Mint, since it's based on Ubuntu) as you go. To begin with, it's more about getting comfortable with what you see on the screen.

Leisceoir · January 2023

Cool, thanks for the info!

maharg101 · January 2023

@digitalscream recent kernels have sufficient scheduling improvement to negate the need for a hard realtime kernel for most users. As per https://jackaudio.org/faq/linux_rt_config.html and the FAQ linked from that page.

BillDL · January 2023

Mint Linux was one of the ones that I liked along with Ubuntu when I used to be interested in messing around with "Live DVD" distros and then installing the ones I liked. It was quite user friendly for a Windows user and seemed to be quite stable, but that was on a Pentium 4 2GHz PC with 1GB of RAM during the Windows XP era.

Habanero · January 2023

If you want to try a new Linux distro these days it's relatively easy to use a virtual machine on VMware Player or Virtualbox before committing.

monquixote · January 2023

I think this is a more general principle for music making.

The more time you have to spend messing around the more your inspiration slips away. You need to set yourself up for instant creativity.
When I had an amp and guitars in cases in the cupboard and had to unpack to play I would often get everything out only to find my mojo had completely gone and I'd just pack it away again.

I do mostly electronic music now and in that world the popularity of grooveboxes like Elektron, Akai and Polyend can only really be explained by the fact that they switch on instantly and get you into a workflow that always has you producing music in minutes. Compared to a DAW they are toys, but even big name producers use them as sketchpads when starting tracks.

In guitar terms something like a drum machine, loop pedal and Zoom recorder (or replace the whole lot with an MC-404) would be how I'd approach songwriting if I was doing it guitar based these days.

Leisceoir · January 2023

Very true @monquixote -the fewer barriers you have between you and getting in the creative zone the better. I suppose if you can have it so even if you have a spare 15 minutes you'd be able to record something that would be ideal. I've tried writing short stories a while back and I think that's a huge advantage of it as a creative outlet, you can pick up a pen and a piece of paper anywhere.

PolarityMan · January 2023

Very rarely and the last time was for a hardware fault back in 2019. Tbh I don't know what you guys do to your computers!

roberty · January 2023

In five years I can't say I've had a single recording issue on macOS that couldn't be solved by a reboot. My environments are used for multiple purposes so it is understandable that a clean boot helps sometimes. It's not perfect but I haven't had to think about drivers for a long time. It's not a word that occurs in my life

Creed_Clicks · February 2023

You don't necessarily have to go Apple though. I am using a regular SSD Windows 10 (I think) laptop with no issues, never really had any problems. Just turn it on, and away I go.
Or, you could try and use an external multi effects with an amp and cab sim, so you'd take the load off the computer with that straight away, and it would also be handy for rehearsing or gigs etc.
I was using Softube on the laptop and that was choppy. I am using one from Klevgrand (guitar amp, effects VST) now which is good, no issues at all. Got it on sale.

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