New PC for audio recording

[Sharma]

Ok, so basically the next PC I plan on buying is one I intend to use for recording songs and stuff im starting to write lately and it's hit me recently that I dont actually play games on my PC any more so graphical capabilities is taking a backseat to what I want to do on my PC now.

Here's what i'm trying to get though, basically a graphically sound PC (So I can do some small scale video editing), and top notch sound capabilities with a large hard disk space and dual monitors at a relatively affordable price.

Now i'm not the most knowledgable on sound equipment, i've found that so far my onboard sound has done but from my recent recording experiences, this isnt the case since my bass just sounds like "BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR" when I try and record it.

Any reccomendations on a system spec and where abouts to shop around?

 

[Malcolm]

what's your budget?

i've heard nice things about this soundcard

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/3103

but it's about £855!

if your budget is more modest, a mate has the Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro

http://lifestyle.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=3580&page=2

which is just under £200

 

[Kryten]

I'd concur on the X-Fi choice for the more "budget high end" sound hardware - a good friend of mine also uses one of these for all of his keyboard work.

Are you looking to build something yourself? The Intel Core 2 Duo systems are currently the best bang-per-buck cpu's on the market - you can pick up 2gig of ram, a half decent motherboard and a c2d e6300 for under 300 quid, which you may all be able to slap into your existing system should you choose the upgrade path.
You can still find plenty of graphical punch in the current card lineup like the nvidia 7900's or ATI's x1950 cards for not a lot of money too. Think the going rate for those is just over 100 atm.

Dont skimp on the power supply for obvious reasons, spend at least 50 on a decent make if you need one.

I will warn you - if you intend to go Vista straight away - Creative would appear to have little to no interest in supporting it properly - current drivers are an utter shambles, even on the new cards, so may well be worth holding back for a little while till they fix it.

 

[Sharma]

Well im considering all this when my birthday comes up in may, I was sort of planning on getting a new PC entirely and yes building it myself. I'm going to allocating most of the budget towards RAM, Hard Disk space and Sound hardware.

So basically I don't mind running on a budget CPU as long as it does the job (And im an AMD boy ).

Haven't been keeping up to date on hardware as of late though since i've had my head buried in music stuff lately.

 

[Chilly]

You need a decent CPU for audio editing. Ram isnt that important, as long as you have at least 1500MB youl be fine.

As an example:

I use cool edit (now adobe audition) for my wav editing stuff, its fantastic - but it needs a big fat cpu to crunch through all the FFTs and stuff you'l be doing 50 times a day.


possibly also consider setting up a striped pair or HDDs for your music storage, assuming youl be doing your work in high bandwidth PCM youl be loading and saving 100MB files all the time and it does take a little while.

 

[Malcolm]

You need a decent CPU for audio editing. Ram isnt that important, as long as you have at least 1500MB youl be fine.

As an example:

I use cool edit (now adobe audition) for my wav editing stuff, its fantastic - but it needs a big fat cpu to crunch through all the FFTs and stuff you'l be doing 50 times a day.

possibly also consider setting up a striped pair or HDDs for your music storage, assuming youl be doing your work in high bandwidth PCM youl be loading and saving 100MB files all the time and it does take a little while.

aye fast cpu is important - especially if you're planning to use software RAID 0 as it can sometimes outperform hardware RAID 0 and work out cheaper. Though of course with RAID 0 it means you that depend on the reliability of two hard drives and if one of them goes, you'll lose your data.

mate has Cool Edit Pro 2.1 - a very good app.

 

[Sharma]

Yeah i'm gonna be using either Steinberg Cubase or Cakewalk Sonar, Steinberg seems to have a more friendly interface if anything.

That X-fi looks very VERY sexy I must say, i'll look into fitting that into the budget!

 

[Malcolm]

hmm this looks quite nice too

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/7550

 

[Tom]

More important than the recorder is what microphones you will use, and their placement.

Or is it electronic music?

 

[Kryten]

Despite being an AMD fanboy, (Like I am myself) they are on the back foot at the moment - the core 2 duo's (and probably whatever is around when your birthday comes) are well ahead at the moment - especially in pure application processing power.

 

[Chilly]

Yeah i'm gonna be using either Steinberg Cubase or Cakewalk Sonar, Steinberg seems to have a more friendly interface if anything.

That X-fi looks very VERY sexy I must say, i'll look into fitting that into the budget!

Lol....did you just say Cubase has a nice user interface? Hah. That program, while insanely good, has the UI of a dogs arse. But having said that its one of the best of a bad bunch. Very high functionality UI's are notoriously hard to do well.

 

[Sharma]

More important than the recorder is what microphones you will use, and their placement.

Or is it electronic music?

Well for my acoustic and my bass I have a direct line input into my computer, i'd only need a mic if I was actually going to sing (If ever).

Drums will be taking care of with a groove generator thingymabob.

Not planning on doing live recording things just yet, I want to basically get myself started on the whole composition malarky basically! With expanding as I get deeper into it.

I need bang for buck atm as I can't really go splashing out but that X-fi looks fantastic!

 

[Skyler]

All the producers I know wouldn't go near Creative for anything that matters.

Yamaha are much better in that area and not all their cards are expensive either.

 

[Chilly]

At the end of the day, the creative card will have a low latency driver and will have decent quality DACs - that's all that matters really. And as Sharma says, hes after B4B atm not uber quality.