Making use of old computers?

[Angstrom]

Hey,
I have an older PC here that's been ignored since I built my current desktop around 3 years ago. It's not really good enough to be my main machine but it's also not junk, in fact the hardware is decent enough that if I put a copy of Win 10 on here with a new SSD it could serve some kind of purpose... but what?

What I'd like is a networked DAW resource of some kind, but I can't think of a good application. Back when I needed to do lots of video rendering we'd have a bunch of old machines as network renderers. It was great. But with DAWs I'm not aware of a good solution here. Steinberg used to have System Link and FX teleport, and I've no idea if they still exist. I'm sure there must be some practical method of parallel processing here, but I can't think of a good one.

The way that our software gets licensed now I cant imagine it being fun to activate something like Komplete, or Reaktor on a second box.

Does anyone here have a working strategy to incorporate redundant processing power?
Even if it's just having a big fat FX simulation running and the connection is made via Audio cables.

[Mr-Bit]

I have an rack mount pc running XP and 2 Creamware(now Sonic Core) Pulsar 2 DSP cards I remote in and use adat for audio I/O.
I just can't let go of the mighty Modular 4.
The cards must be 15 years old and still rock the nice thing about the scope systems that you don't need a sequencer to run it.
Super flexible virtual modular synth in a rack runs on XP at 96khz 8 channel dual adat smux.
Sample accurate digital cv style parameter modulation from sequencer is possible but I have not tried this new development.

Hoping the faithful rack will serve anther decade.....

[granted]

Make your current computer a "music only" computer, take it off the net.
Make your old computer your "not music" computer, use it for everything else.

Just a suggestion.

[Angstrom]

That's an interesting setup with the creamware cards. Although obviously I din't fancy buying into that platform right at the moment. An to @granted... I cant take my main computer offline because it's also my work machine. And I'm a web-developer.

Back on topic....
I was thinking about StudioMux. I own that for using with iOS, and for anyone unfamiliar it provides a VST/AU which is placed on any Ableton track and allows the streaming of audio and midi over USB connection or wireless lan. The normal intention is to incorporate an iOS instrument or effect into a desktop DAW.
It reports latency etc. So it's pretty damn good.

I'm thinking I could run a lightweight VST host on the old machine, and use StudioMux as a digital pipe to send MIDI and audio back and forth. That might work.

[dr_loop]

I'm thinking I could run a lightweight VST host on the old machine

...or use the Live-demo!
You don't really need to *save* anything on the old machine.
Needs a little bit of shuffling back & forth, but then you can use the DAW/VST-Host you know and which is the most powerfull!

And according to Ableton, thats perfectly ok

[crystalmsc]

I'm not sure if the Nord Modular editor would run perfectly on Windows 10 (compatibility mode) or not. But I remember a while ago, people are hunting for older synth/sampler and using an old PC for the editor. Some of the most popular are the AN1x, AN200 and DX200. Just make sure that the editor is running well on your system. May be you don't have to upgrade the OS for a while. Sometime I'm still thinking about that Korg Oasys card.

Also it can be used for a dedicated audio editor or as a download/upload machine for games and other stuff. If you like old games, turn it into a vintage arcade machine with the Atari Vintage Vault for some crunchy nostalgic 8bit music.

[redglass]

Check Vienna Ensemble Pro for working with a Master and a slave PC.

[jestermgee]

There are a plethora of uses for an old PC. I upgrade and repair machines of my own and others constantly and some ideas you can consider for an old PC:

- Turn it into an automated backup and file server
You literally just need a copy of XP/7/10 and a few hard drives. Place on that all the backups of everything you have and setup some software (or PM me for a nifty batch script) that can poll your computer and copy backups to the "server". Put your media files on there too and serve to your other devices... Put VNC on there and have remote access to your home. Put a DTV card in there and record TV direct to the server and watch later...

- Media Centre
Put something like Kodi on there and get a cheap remote or xbox controller and you have a complete media solution

- General Purpose Computer
As was mentioned, separate your production and general life work. Install all the software under "test" or evaluation on your 2nd machine

- Jukebox
Depending on your enthusiasm you can add a touch monitor and use some software to create a cool touch screen jukebox

- Mame or Pinball cabinet
This is something I am designing right now. Use it to drive a mame arcade cabinet or a virtual pinball machine. Fun to build.

Trying to network machines for performance loading has a lot of potential issues and I don't think you would really get far without a decent set of machines, would probably be more of a headache than useful.

[kitekrazy]

Check Vienna Ensemble Pro for working with a Master and a slave PC.

This.

[mekanism1200]

I have an old computer as well that I was using for an HTPC setup but I just use an Xbox360 for streaming which uses much less power. My thought was to use it as a vst/sound design machine only and just send the wav files over to my main machine. This would help separate the workflows and hopefully make it so I dont go "squirrel" during writing and just focus on arrangement. It also helps to work in audio only, much less problems.

[twisted-space]

FX Teleport...

http://www.fx-max.com/fxt/index.html