Music Suite Build

Abes33 · 25 Dec 2009 at 23:34

Hey chaps hope you're all having a grand Christmas.

A friend is looking in to getting a computer to use for his music production. He needs the ability to hook it up with his instruments/mics in conjunction with programs such as Adobe Audition and Ableton. I can build it for him but am out of touch with the optimal spec for this situation.

Buget is £400, is it possible to create a system that can handle this kind of work with ease with so little money?

Right, back to watching Final Destination 3 on T.V., terrible film but the death scenes are really horrific so far!

twist3d0n3 · 26 Dec 2009 at 01:06

well, easy way to get apps like ableton to run well is to have a decent amount of ram; 4Gb+ is ideal, ram speed/processor speed/amount of cores aren't a huge issue, but a dual core chip will do the job. as for motherboard, well, whatever is within budget will be fine; you won't need to overclock (infact o/c'ing would be detrimental as you want the box as quiet as possible). aside from that, a decent external soundcard is where most of the money should be spent

hope that helps

PermaBanned · 26 Dec 2009 at 01:25

You need an OS/Monitor or peripherals?

MikeHunt79 · 26 Dec 2009 at 01:31

what soundcard will you be using? also, how many inputs will he need?

The E-mu 0404 usb is probably the best card under £200 for this sort of thing...

Abes33 · 26 Dec 2009 at 02:22

Thanks for the responses, much appreciated.

I initially thought the £400 was for the core system, just found out he needs the whole lot damnit. Budget's obviously gonna have to raise a bit. As suggested I'll make Sound Card/RAM/Processor priorities, everything else just good enough to stop major bottlenecking.

@MikeHunt79: Thanks for the card suggestion, he's happy with just the one input if so. Lazy question but, in a situation where he only had one input, are there external solutions for multiple inputs in the future? More importantly would these have en effect on quality of input at all?

PermaBanned · 26 Dec 2009 at 03:33

£400 for a music production system including monitor and OS? At a stretch and using Ubuntu Studio you'd struggle to get the components good enough...