Picking the right PC for music making

http://tcsmacs.com/ have second hand powerbooks. However all of their 12" powerbooks are £599. Unfortunately for you Macs hold their value really really well.

It's really the picking and choosing I'm having a hard time with cos I'm really not very clued up on what is good or not.

As for a PC, I recon an Athlon 64 is the way to go. The latest motherboards feature PCI-E and standard PCI, firewire (useful for external audio/midi interfaces), usb 2.0 (midi interfaces), integrated consumer sound cards which can be turned off when you put a pro level card in. I wouldn't worry about a quiet PC, the bets way to get a quiet PC is to stick it in a cupboard or another room and get long cables.

http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/hardware/desktops_and_workstations/productView.htm?quicklinx=3M2H

http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/hardware/desktops_and_workstations/productView.htm?quicklinx=3l8n

http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/hardware/desktops_and_workstations/productView.htm?quicklinx=3L4H&mc=5

The mac mini is good and of course comes with garage band which is far from a slouch in the music making world. On the downside, you need a minimum of 512Mb RAM for it to work well. It could be a good start although you will be more quickly limited by the hardware than with a big box PC. Don't worry about the lack of slots there are plenty of great firewire soundcards.

The Audiophile 24/96 is generally agreed to be the best card for the "Home User" (I love the term "Home user" - what it really means is anyone who isn't planning on recording a 29-piece band all at the same time). Whatever card you get look for ASIO if you're planning on using MIDI a lot. If you're going to be programming rather than playing in then a fast processor isn't that high a priority. Only seek mega-fast proccessing if you're going to be playing in MIDI or if you're an utter plug-in whore. If you're tracking then plentiful and quick hard-drive space is your main want.

As is the general rule with PC's getting the bits seperately from somewhere like Dabs.com and building it yourself is far cheaper and not as difficult as people make out.

Once you've got your PC there's a few little performance tweaks that make it more suited to audio - but with the power they have these days they're becoming less and less neccesary and more cake icing than anything else. The main one is prioritising Background Operations.

CPU - This is the bit that matters the least for general audio recording, stick with the non-budget ones here though, P4 not Celeron and Athlon XP/64 not Duron/Semperon.

RAM - Lots of this this will make your life easy and it just so happens that PC3200 RAM is cheap as fuck at the moment 512MB minimum 1GB if you can.

HDD - Modern SATA HDDs can cope with squillions of tracks. You may want 2 1 small quick one for the OS and one big one for the audio tracks it's a nice way to keep things organised this depends how sample or recording based you are. The bigger you buy the more stuff you can easily access to the smaller you get the less you can work on and the less messing about versions you can have. This said modern 200-400GB HDDs laugh at the tiny size of audio data.

OPTICAL - Get a DVD writer they are like 30 quid and give you a cheap backup solution for your precious, irreplacable data files. Also you can bring it up all the time infront of your non DVD Writer owning friends.

Video - Are you a gamer, no? Then any card will do, unless you are planning on a dual screen or large TFT setup. If you are a gamer then things change.

Monitor - CRTs are big bulky and cheap, they also make electric guitars noisy if they are nearby. TFTs are small, slim more expensive and dont affect electric guitars.

Souncard i'd go Firewire and M-Audio

Pick one that suits

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/?manufacturer_id=0&order_by=price-a&page=shop%2Fbrowse&category_id=aa5045ac8dbda1110af5783d9c9b8f89If

Anymore specific questions?

They've been out for 7 years in Japan.

Another question.... which one is the best one for recording tunes at home??? I don't really need one that's rocket science but one that lets me play around with tracks intuitively would be excellent. do any of them come with a drum machine?

Ken

Thanks again :-)

http://audacity.sourceforge.com

I'm trying to boil down exactly what I need to get now. I'm going to get all the essential bits I need and get a friend to help me assemble them.

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From what I've gathered I need:

- Processor: Athlon 64 (not P4 or Celeron or Duron or anything else)

- PCI-E & PCI (sorry to be thick but what is this?)

- Firewire (and what is this exactly?)

- USB 2.0 midi interface

- sound card which can be turned off (so I can replace it with a better card - an Audiophile 24/96 in the future)

- minimum 512Kb ram (or less and then I can buy extra seperately)

- A processor of some sort (not sure about this)

- A decent HDD with a good RPM and pref 80Gb memory or more if possible. A SATA drive is good for what I want. I may need two HDDs, a smaller one for the operating system and a larger one for music files and stuff.

- DVD writer (I can add this later but I will need one)

- Video - not too important as I am not doing any gaming or anything. Just music applications.

- Monitor - Don't care, although in the interest of space I wouldn't mind a TFT but of course this can be got secondhand from somewhere.

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Can someone help me get my notes a bit clearer here and pref add anything else I need like casing etc. I know a lot of this may sound really obvious to a lot of you but I'm new to this, having only ever used PCs, not fixed or built them.

Cheers!

But then I play real drums, electric and acoustic guitar, and bass--call me rockist but I don't speak MIDI or use computery music stuff; I don't loop or sample. Accordingly I mic everything; the things I record are sounds in air. What kind of signals are you trying to play with?

But seriously, my previous projects have been techno/IDM affairs but I'm planning to also do some stuff with live instrumentation.

all modern pc motherboards have several pci slots on them that sound cards, network cards, modem cards, etc etc plug into.

pci-e is the new pci... pci express... it's much better. however, most cards are still pci right now. and the ones that are pci-e and would require a pci-e slot are graphics cards, not exactly a necessity in your music making machine. in the near future, we'll start seeing way more pci-e stuff and all the slots on motherboards will be pci-e. (there are probably a few that exist already. i haven't stuck my head in there in a while.)

- Firewire (and what is this exactly?)

very similar to usb... it's another way to connect devices via a fancy cable to your computer. you want this. a lot of cameras and audio equipment is firewire not usb. it's as vital as having usb 2.0 cables.

- sound card which can be turned off (so I can replace it with a better card - an Audiophile 24/96 in the future)

when you have more than one sound device the OS (i'm assuming windows xp) lets you choose which device to use for recording and which to use for playback, etc etc. in other words all sound cards should meet these reqs.

i have a tascam us-122 as well. pretty decent.
m.

P4 is fine, Athlon XP or 64 are more bang for the buck, P4s are better at video/audio processing but it doesn't matter a jot with what you'll be doing, people do loads with audio on old 1Ghz CPUs.

- PCI-E & PCI (sorry to be thick but what is this?)

PCI is the interface for add on cards, PCI-E is the new interface for cards it has more bandwidth given that recording audio barely stretches the PCI bus and PCI-E is mainly for gaming video cards and high speed disk interfaces it doesn't really matter at the moment for you but most new motherboards that support Athlon 64s will come with it and PCI.

- Firewire (and what is this exactly?)

Firewire is a interface similiar to USB it's very robust in its data transfer and this makes it a better interface for audio, better than-

- USB 2.0 midi interface

this is going to get confusing

1 - Most recording soundcards have MIDI thse are the standard small or large MIDI plugs, a Firewire soundcard will have these as will a USB soundcard (same device different interface) PCI soundcards have these also, sometimes on the unit it's self, sometimes on a breakout box.

2 - There are USB Midi keyboards, these are input devices which plug into your PC and become a MIDI input device, you can't say plug them into a hardware synth.

3 - There are simple MIDIUSB convertors that provide a standard MIDI plug.

- sound card which can be turned off (so I can replace it with a better card - an Audiophile 24/96 in the future)

If you buy a firewire soundcard it will be as good as the Audiophile, installing it will be easy and you can transfer to a laptop/other PC if you need to also you'll be keeping it away from the noisy interior of the PC and all your jacks will be easily accessible, they just seem like a neat solution and Firewire is better for audio than USB.

- minimum 512Kb ram (or less and then I can buy extra seperately)

No minimum of 512MB (Megabytes)now then 1GB later trust me on this one. remember there is a limited number of slots you dont want to end up with them full of small DIMMS.

- A processor of some sort (not sure about this)

This is covered by your 1st statement

- A decent HDD with a good RPM and pref 80Gb memory or more if possible. A SATA drive is good for what I want. I may need two HDDs, a smaller one for the operating system and a larger one for music files and stuff.

Pretty much, 80GB is considered quite small now though and you should priortise HDD space over processor speed. The more HDD space you have the more projects you can have available to work on instantly, the more samples you can have immediate access to. HDD space will give you option to mess around and try wierd things without having to worry about deleting stuff.

- DVD writer (I can add this later but I will need one)

As a creative computer user your data is your life blood if you lose it it will suck alot. a DVD writer is a cheap way to back things up to give you peace of mind and to archive old projects in an editable form so you can come back to it at a later date. A DVD writer can also burn audio cds so you can send your stuff to people.

- Video - not too important as I am not doing any gaming or anything. Just music applications.

Yes, unless you want to do something funky with large/multiple monitors which can be nice for music editing.

- Monitor - Don't care, although in the interest of space I wouldn't mind a TFT but of course this can be got secondhand from somewhere.

Dont underestimate the monitor, you will be staring at it alot and a large one will allow you to see more of the track you are working on and a good one will save your eyes/headaches, it's nicer to use a PC with a nice monitor as well which may encourage you to work when you don't feel like it.

It may also help if you give some details of how you envisage making the music and which software you like as this will help us with specifications and software recomendations.

Noise. I'd strongly advise going for a 'quiet' computer, if you can. There's a few manufacturers making cases specifically aimed at minimising background noise that aren't too pricey (featuring ducting, big fans that spin slowly as opposed to small fast ones that whine, and sometimes even noise absorbant padding). I guess this really only applies if you decide to build your own, as I don't think it's really a mainstream option over the counter yet. You can get a good one for about £50, and it's something that won't ever get outdated like the rest of the machine.

My current PC i use for recording is awful, I can't stand being in the same room as it for long periods of time with it's awful high pitched fan whine and clicking hard drives - really interferes with making noise and just generally iritates.

I did recently pick up a 19" monitor for the thing at home though for £50 new. The big chunky monitors seem to be dirt cheap at the moment, and the extra room definitely helps with cutting stuff up and making the thing easier to use. Depends if you can spare the space I guess.

Yeah, going from 512mb to 1gig of RAM is possibly the best way to make the computer actually run faster in audio / midi stuff - BUT last thing I knew AMD Athlon 64 things had to have matched sticks of RAM (ie: 512mb is actually 2 sticks of 256mb). Make sure that the computer you get is capable of taking another 2 sticks physically (they only have a limited number of slots) in the future if thats what you plan to do. I think RAM is pretty cheap now anyway - might only be another £30 for the 512mb to 1 gig move.

Uh, most of this is from me building my own one like 3 years ago, so is probably kind of outdated.

Not true.

You need it if you want to run "Dual Channel" but not otherwise.

That said a quiet PC is nice and and fanless videocard and a zalman cpu cooler will go a long way to helping reduce noise. You will tend to find that QUALITY OEM machines (Dell etc) are quiter than a machine you build yourself but this is usually due to custome noise reduction technology used inside.

What bits do you already have?