If You Can Answer This, Then You Are The Audio Gur, FW 101 eating up seamingly CPU Options

[red_books]

i have a dual 1.8 g5 tower with 3 gigs of ram running mac os 10.3.9. im currently recording/producing an album and a soundtrack for an indie film. i recently bought an edirol fa-101 so i'd have a high quality recording interface. everything was working pretty well for a little while. now, whenever my edirol is on it eats at my reason cpu meter. i watch the meter as im in reasons soun preferences. when i click back on my internal audio (default) as the main out put my reason cpu usage bar drops to nothing, like it always used to. right when i click my edirol back on as the main out, it jumps more then 5 bars and clocks out on songs that used to be a breeze. reasons stops and tells me i have too slow of a computer, my eye twitches and i lose more hair. also, all the files i was working on with revision cause i needed something with a video track that has rewire (dont really like logic, love ableton live) while working on soundtracks no longer play properly. everything now plays in a highter pitch, but when i close both programs and open the original reason file its all ok and plays how it should. im really trying to figure out whether its my os (which i just recently re-installed), my computer (mayber theres something bad goin on under the hood), etc. i really have no clue. all i know is that ive invested over 7 grand in a computer, sound system, etc that is just plain not working. anyone? anything?

[lepetitmartien]

If you really want to eat up you hard drive even more…

But for most use (that is: not commercial production, of things like voice or some acoustic instruments, symphonic orchestra) it's not that important. if you do want, try 88.2 (not 48 or 96 save if you're working for broadcast in mind especially). And see if you can hear a difference when back to 44,1. It's only by comparing you'll know if it's worth the hassle.

Now, 24 bits is really much more interesting, you lower the noise floor.

On most things electronic/noisy, it's not usually of interest to work better than 24/44.1, save on some parts you want to really be having the best transients in the world. And I'd do that only after having looked closely if my set up give something noticeably better after the part has been reduced back to 24/44.1 then 16/44.1

Also, note that asking for higher rates will eat a bit more CPU too, it can be critical in some cases (better to have the reverb than the higher rates sometimes

So in short: most people do not bother for higher than 24/44.1 and for pros it's depending on the job.