A Spec for Music please

englishpremier · 19 Apr 2006 at 09:44

i have been asked by yet another friend to spec him a computer for music. I have a good idea what to include but its always worth getting other opinions. He has been stuck with the same machine since around 2000.

The computer will be used for Internet browsing and Music recording/playback only.

He wants at least 500GB+ storage, and a quality sound card for music. He also wants 19" TFT.

I was thinking something along the lines of a Dual core P4 3.0ghz, 2GB ram, M-Audio card.

The budget is £900 max

sinister_stu · 19 Apr 2006 at 10:31

I'd suggest that he buys an external USB/FireWire soundcard if he's serious about recording music. Dual core would definitely be an advantage as the ASIO drivers run as a background service.

englishpremier · 19 Apr 2006 at 11:39

sinister_stu said:
I'd suggest that he buys an external USB/FireWire soundcard if he's serious about recording music. Dual core would definitely be an advantage as the ASIO drivers run as a background service.

why is USB/fireware better? is there less noise interferance or something?#

Are there any you suggest?

sinister_stu · 19 Apr 2006 at 11:54

englishpremier said:
why is USB/fireware better? is there less noise interferance or something?#

Are there any you suggest?

Exactly... what with all the stuff going on inside a PC, the environment isn't particularly conducive to interference free recordings.

There are a plethora of options available, so without knowing what is required it would be impossible for me to make a suggestion. Does he need pre-amps? How many inputs are required (for multiple track recording)? Phantom power? etc, etc...

englishpremier · 19 Apr 2006 at 12:07

he is basically just going to be recording from his decks through his mixer and amp into the computer, but in you never know in future he might want to do a little bit more than that. If you could just point me in the direction of the sort of things i should be looking at/for then i'll do a bit of research.

cheers.

hybrid · 19 Apr 2006 at 12:28

ah so hes a DJ.

tbh, i dont think hes going to notice a great lot of difference which sound card he chooses. Vinyl isnt exactly a source of high quality. Basically it would be down to the software he uses.

Yes a Dual-Core processor would be nice for saving the mixes etc. But i wouldnt go overboard on the spec if its not going to be used for games.

Whats his budget btw?

sinister_stu · 19 Apr 2006 at 12:38

hybrid said:
ah so hes a DJ.

tbh, i dont think hes going to notice a great lot of difference which sound card he chooses. Vinyl isnt exactly a source of high quality. Basically it would be down to the software he uses.

Yes a Dual-Core processor would be nice for saving the mixes etc. But i wouldnt go overboard on the spec if its not going to be used for games.

Whats his budget btw?

I'd have to agree. I wouldn't waste money on an audio interface if he's just going to be recording that. Onboard sound will probably do the job, as long as latency isn't an issue... I don't have problems using onboard sound for recording stuff at the moment, but I have had problems in the past with delays being introduced at the start of my recording. So it might be worth investing in a relatively cheap pro audio style soundcard.

englishpremier · 19 Apr 2006 at 13:44

the budget is £900 including a 19" TFT.

I hear what you guys are saying, but he has told me he wants a dedicated sound card. M-audio is the prefered make, though he wouldn't care if he got a creative (X-FI music?). The budget for sound is around £80-150 if need be.

sinister_stu · 19 Apr 2006 at 14:15

I don't really know much about the cheaper stuff so can't really help. M-Audio make some good stuff from what I've been told, I'd definitely go for that over a creative one.

hybrid · 19 Apr 2006 at 14:37

Yup, i've got 9 M-Audio cards at work in our music productin machines... work a dream.

Cant remember the model number though. But i think they were the cheapest ones they make.

It has some nice inputs on the card too.

Amoeba · 19 Apr 2006 at 19:39

Dude.. you are thinking of buying a rig with a dual core 3GHz cpu and 2GB of memory.. for just recording some mixes?!"! I record my mixes with my old 650MHz Dell laptop with 300MB memory, no problems at all..

basmic · 19 Apr 2006 at 19:52

Amoeba said:
Dude.. you are thinking of buying a rig with a dual core 3GHz cpu and 2GB of memory.. for just recording some mixes?!"! I record my mixes with my old 650MHz Dell laptop with 300MB memory, no problems at all..

Agreed!

Don't buy a soundcard with all the works. But get him one which is a decent make, and not some cheap and nasty rubbish.

Hard-drive space I can understand, especially when shunting WAV files about. Considered a RAID setup, to make shunting those WAV files quicker?

If he's into sound processing, I would get 1gb of RAM, or more.

CPU - get the slowest and cheapest P4 you can find. Hell a Celeron would do.

englishpremier · 19 Apr 2006 at 19:55

cheers for the infomation...

just out of interest, if playing around with music, what could you be doing that would need a performance computer?

Amoeba · 19 Apr 2006 at 20:10

Applying audio effects etc.. Sony Sound Forge is a good example of a piece of software which can easily use 100% CPU when playing with music

If you are just recording and chopping up mixes i would seriously not consider anything too powerful. Memory is nice if you are playing around with the recorded files etc but as I said previously I manage to record / edit mixes perfectely easily on Sound Forge on my old laptop

Having said that, my main rig (1GB mem / 2.4GHz A64) does get a little excited sometimes when I ask it to do some filtering etc on them

Energize · 19 Apr 2006 at 20:26

2GB of Ram and dual core for music playback and internet browsing, you must be joking.

basmic · 19 Apr 2006 at 20:55

englishpremier said:
cheers for the infomation...

just out of interest, if playing around with music, what could you be doing that would need a performance computer?

Moving files around, processing (ie: de-cracking and de-hissing).

My CPU suggestion was assuming you were just recording and playing WAV files. Certainly get a P4 if you're doing processing.

Energize said:
2GB of Ram and dual core for music playback and internet browsing, you must be joking.

It'd soon into a joke when they load up a 30 minute WAV track into SoundForge, and try processing it. :eek:

starscream · 19 Apr 2006 at 22:24

This is an absolutely cracking card for this sort of thing

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile2496-main.html

Unfortunatly, OcUK seem to have stopped stocking it, but you should be able to pick it up for around £55 quid. I have one and its much better than onboard sound cards for recording due the the inputs, MIDI (which he will find useful if he gets more into recording music) and better latency.

Energize · 19 Apr 2006 at 22:43

basmic said:
It'd soon into a joke when they load up a 30 minute WAV track into SoundForge, and try processing it.

Yes but they wouldnt be doing that.

sinister_stu · 20 Apr 2006 at 08:58

He might be playing with Reason 3 if he's into that sort of thing, which used to get to 100% load on an xp2200 with 1 Gb of RAM.

luminous · 20 Apr 2006 at 12:35

I can run about 4/5 vsti`s with 25 stereo audio channels with fx and reason and thats on an athlon xp 2600 and 1 gig ram.I`ll just bounce down the vstis to free up memory.
If he`s recording his mixes and applying effects etc i`m surprised he`s not writing tunes himself,its so easy having reason as your workhorse.
That spec looks like overkill for just recording audio & applying fx but if you think theres any chance he might get into production then i`m sure he will be more than happy with your spec,and with a pcie board he might even get into games.Everything would be faster,encoding,applying fx etc and thats always preferable to an old machine or a celeron.The audiophile is the one i`d go for,theres loads of options for breakout boxes etc should he want to go that route.