Suggestions for a new pc I am gonna buy.

P

purplepassion

New member
Hi. It's me again.
I need suggestions from the pros of this techinical stuff... I am getting a comp soon.
Will be pent 3, 128 ram, hopefully 2 20gb hards, and I was gonna get Soundblaster Live MP3.

I intend to record a not-cheesy MIDI, but rather sound-font coated, nice-sounding MIDI's to make into mp3's. Working with diverse instruments, percussions, probably around 15 diff. tracks max per music.

What softwares should I get? I need one really good score-writer type program and a master mixer prog such as Cakewalk pro audio.
(I need to adjust notes, bend them for guitar effect... etc) and be able to playback w/o it screwing up things.

Do I need anything besides the soundcard, and a scorewriter prog and a mixer prog? Please let me know.

Any other equipments I need besides this?
I have a ghetto midi keyboard and the midi cable to the pc. No mic.

Is soundblaster live mp3 a good buy?

please help!
thanks in advance

-eric
 
You can buy an OEM Sound Blaster Live Value for about $45. Just the card in a wrapper with the driver disk, but that's all you need.
 
thanks for ur advice
but what is OEM Sound Blaster Live Value ?
what can it do?
does it have many voices? if so, how many?
does it carry more than MIDI percussions?
and any softwares u suggest?
let me know please.

thanks in advance
 
Buying 2 20 gigs would not be that smart.. Better to buy like a 4 gig to store the programs on and then one bigger one to store the music on like a 30 gig 7200RPm and then for software i would without a doubt tell ya to use Logic Gold or Plat.. its the Holy Grail of pc recording.
 
OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer (if my memory is correct). Basicly it means equipment packaged for purchase direct from the manaufacturer rather than retail packageing. For example computer stores which build their own computers will buy componants such as video and sound cards that may arrive 50 in a box with each card in a anti-static bag with its drivers but with no fancy box, games, or even documentation. They get charged a lot less for each card because of this. Well, many dealers will just sell these cards directly to customers (even though the companies prohibit this) and pass on the savings. All of the specs for the sound card are exactly the same as the retail product because it IS exactly the same as the retail product. Typically product and warrenty support is limited with OEM items, so don't buy any unless you know exactly what you want and how to use it.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by purplepassion:
Is soundblaster live mp3 a good buy?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
honestly, i dont think so. soundblasters are good for gaming and that kind of thing, but theyre not professional. if you want something really good, buy a terratec or a yamaha. yamaha is especially good for synthesizers and midi, so it is what i would buy in your place. to convert a midi to mp3, you dont need any hardware acceleration, you can use a program like "lame" (the very best quality available, but not easy to use.

aaron
aisotton@inwind.it



[This message has been edited by aisotton (edited 06-01-2000).]
 
I beg to differ on the issue of the SB Live. It makes a very good MIDI synth with the EMU engine it has, and then there's the Sound Font capability. Maybe not quite as good as a new Emulator but for $75 bucks...!

See these two ProRec articles:

Striving for New Lows: http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/E8FC6F1272005BC0862568D700634565

Is it Live, or is it Sampleblaster?: http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/b97f38ca2751fda58625680900056bad/e5f90f70241eff6d862566b20024c532?OpenDocument

-AlChuck
 
Well... if you want to use soundfonts..... why do not buy a PCI 512 Soundblaster ? Cheaper and with 60 mega soundfont banks.... and there is a site where you can download 2 giga of good quality SoundFonts....

And talking about 7200 RPM HD's.... wich is the best label ??? I got a 20 giga 5600 RPM Ultra ATA 66 (I use ASUS P3C2000 with a Pentium III 666)... i will gain much velocity on this change of RPM ?

Well... let me post it like a new topic ! :)
 
thanks al chuck, for the advice.
hmm so what do you mean "it has soundfont capabilities"? Are you saying basically with SBlaster, you do not need to buy those cheaps and cards to install - on - board, but rather just get soundfonts off online and stores?

just more info needed on "soundfonts"
Also, then what are these "emulators" you are talking about when u said "maybe soundblaster is not as good as emulator but.. etc"?

please let me know.
thanks

eric
 
EMU refers not to emulator, but rather to a company by that name that makes sound chips/ cards. Most modern sound cards have what is called a hardware wavetable, which is a group of actual sampled sounds on a ROM chip. So when you tell your MIDI card to play a flute, it generates the sound using a stored sample of a flute. A Sound Font means a software file that you can download and use in place of this ROM type arrangement. The good thing is that there is a huge variety of sound fonts available, so that the sound font system is very flexable. The down side is that the font files need to be stored somewhere and then loaded into RAM memory to be used. But with big hard drives and RAM so cheap now this isn't much of a problem.

And I have to agree that the Sound Blaster Live is a fine basic sound card. It has a pretty clean stereo line in for recording and it great for basic computing needs and games (man does not live by recording alone!). I have a Gadget Labs 8/24 sound card that I just purchased, and it seems to co-exist just fine with my old SB card. So I would say buy a SB now, get your feet (ears) wet, then upgrade to a better card once you have a better idea what you want to do, and what is available.
 
eric,

I don't understand your question about sound fonts...

Sound fonts are basically samples, in a certain format. They can be made from any raw audio material in WAV form and packaged as a bank that can be accessed from the SB's synth. So instead of using the standard wavetable built into the card's hardware, you can load other banks into RAM and select sounds from them. It gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility. You can even make banks that have loops that you trigger by hitting notes. There are some wonderful-sounding sets available both commercially and free off the web -- complete GM sets, drum kits, individual instruments, sound effects, loops, you name it.

I hope this helps answer your question somewhat. Try checking out www.soundfonts.com for more.

Oh, and the other question about the Emulator -- that's a hardware sampler made by Emu. There's been many models over the years and it's one of the original and better-known samplers on the market.

-AlChuck

[This message has been edited by AlChuck (edited 06-02-2000).]
 
Thank you rwhite, alchuck and everyone else who helped me out. Now I have a better understanding of what soundfonts are, wavetable, emu, etc.

I will ask more questions later.. thanks a lot! I am learning... the techy part of recording. =)

I will check out soundfont.com, al chuck. thanx.

eric
 
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