Computer music workstation

The computer music workstation is a Dell Optiplex 755. It runs Windows Vista Business which is near EOL so halp! The MOTU 828 mkII is connected to it to provide some interesting options for audio I/O. The physical box is located under the Plan 9 workstation and the two share a monitor, but have separate mice and keyboards.

Specs

• Dual core 2.8 gHz Intel core II duo 64 bit CPU (fast)
• 4 GB RAM (no ECC)
• 32 Bit Windows Vista For Business, serious business(slow)
• 160 GB 7200 RPM SATA drive (No DAW Action for us)
• 1024 GB LaCie RAID-0 external storage via Firewire 400. (slow, if you want to DAW with this fine, you might lose your magic to bitrot)
• Fancy Nvidia graphics card (Vancy visuals)
• Firewire 400 PCI card for multichannel audio interface (pro audio)
• USB Wifi networking! (that's the little white thing on the back. it blinks green.)

Audio

There was a Denon home theater reciever on the hackshelves. I appropriated it for the power amps and myriad supported inputs. The main outputs of the MOTU 828 are wired to the STEREO CDR [Analog] source input of the Denon. There are some AudioChoice speakers that were on the floor by the west wing lounge. I made some custom cables and hooked them up to the A speaker output on the Denon.

Software

• Supercollider (digital modular synthesis engine, object oriented DSP language and algorithmic composition environment)
• Sunvox (tracker style sequencer and DSP platform)
• Pure Data (patcher language control environment and realtime DSP engine for modular digital synthesis)
• Sonic Pi ( fun realtime loop composition environment with livecoding language based on Ruby)
• Audacity ( stereo sound recorder )
• LTSpice IV (Analog Circuit simulator)

MIDI

The monitor sits next to the Yamaha PSR-1700 MIDI synthesizer and sequencer. Output works. It's possible to control Sunvox from the keyboard by opening it and clicking the mouse on a generator in Sunvox. It's also possible to send MIDI to the keyboard and play lol karaoke files.