New system – scaling/hardware questions

I’d never assume anything, the only way to know is to try it. In my opinion 90% continuous CPU load is too high for a continuous operation, it will only result in severly shortened system lifespan. I make systems for BBP and even using the modern Dual-core Celerons (E1500 or E3300 for example), get about 35% CPU useage with a single instance. Using even a low end non-celeron dual core (such as an E5300 or E5400) brings this down to around 25%, much more comfortable for my tastes.
1Gb of ram should be adequate (although I always build with 2Gb, as windows get more and more bloated with every update). BBP has quite a low memory footprint of around 140Mb (per instance), considering what it does.

It should be ok, but please explain in more detail what each of the 3 outs are intended to be for.

For the same reasons outlined above, you would need a better spec of machine to run this than you 2×2.8Ghz box, especially the ASIO version as this will place more demands upon the system and be a great deal less forgiving in the event of any kind of underruns. Exact minimum and recommecnded system specs are published on the main website.

I believe the latency can be as low as 17ms (from memory) but lower latency is always to the cost of quality to a certain degree.

Hope this helps,

Yorkie

Rackmount PC cases are not hard to obtain, you’ll typically need a 4U case to accomodate a PCI card vertically (without risers etc..).
With regards to the Processor/Motherboard/Ram/HD etc, that’s really all down to budget and how far you can afford to go.
The Ultimate machine (which I have never and probably never will build) would be a quad core processor in a real decent motherboard, I like MSI or gigabyte boards myself but there are plenty of reviews going for any board, just do your research. You’d use a Solid state hard drive and install a nice slim install of XP Pro SP3. You’d also have plenty of cooling in there to keep all the parts content. Soundcard wise you would use a Marian Trace Alpha, there is NO better card for BBP.

In reality, most of the systems are build to a budget (and leaving as much margin in there for myself as well) and the exact parts I use are often dictated by what’s available at the supplier.

With regards to your Juli@ card (if you havent bought it yet, do STRONGLY consider a Marian Trace Alpha, you will be so glad you did), the AM input, although mono would still be fed into one stereo pair of the card (just in mono) and the FM audio would be going into the second. This is assuming that these are two seperate stations or audio feeds and not simply a simulcast on FM and AM, if it’s a simulcast, then you only need to connect the audio once and both instances can pick up the audio from the same input, BBP can then be switched (digitally) to sum the L/R audio for the AM instance and use the same audio for the FM instance, this time not summing the input thus keeping it stereo.

The outputs of each instance can either be sent to seperate outputs on the soundcard (if available) or can even be set so that the FM instance sends its MPX signal out of (for example) the left channel and the AM instance sends it’s mono output out on the right channel. This configuration would work equally well on a multi-output card or a single output card as we are able to split the L and R of the card and each channel can carry an independant output, this can even be used to process and output two totally different stations on the one single output soundcard.

Yorkie.