new system, mother board compatability

[mboud]

hello,
i'm getting into the world of pc recording and trying to come up with a system for my DAW. i am starting completely from scratch on this one, so no current hardware or software has to be considered when putting the system together. i am however still debating on which software would be best for my intended usage. my interests lie in making my own electronic style music with emphasis on trance, techno, house, drum&bass, and ambient. i also am interested in world beat and intend to someday try to sync up music with my own animations, and maybe even video. i will be recording mostly, if not entirely, midi, and maybe sampling some friends to include their prhases in my music. although it would be nice to have the option to upgrade to limited audio in the future, i really don't have anywhere to record quality audio. after doing a bit of research, i have come up with the following system:

--dual PIII processors, at least 500 mhz, preferably
faster, FCPGA
--abit or asus motherboard
--at least 512 mb of sdram, non-ECC
--a boot hard drive, interanl, at least 20 gig, 7200
rpm, ata/100, set on connector closest to motherboard,
jumper set to master, other end of ide cable connected
to cdrom, set as slave
--a 2nd hard drive, internal, at least 40 gig, 7200
rpm, ata/100, set on 2nd ide cable closest to
motherboard, set as master with other end of cable
connected to cdrw drive set as slave
--at least a 16x cdrom drive
--at least a 8x4x32 cdrw drive
--a basic 32 mb agp video card
--a NIC
--19 in. monitor .25,1600x1200
--windows 2000 pro

i've heard i shoud stay away from via chipsets on my motherboard, is this true? if so, does anyone know of a good dual pIII motherboard that does't use via chipsets? if this is not the case, has anyone heard anyhting good or bad about the abit vp6 motherboard? i had found a good system using it and almost purchased it until i found out about the via problems.

the rest of my "pieces" look like this:

--a roland pc300 keyboard controller
--alesis mkII monitors with alesis ra100 amp, or alesis M1 powered speakers
--a midisport 2x2 usb interface
--sound card/audio interface
--cubase, logic audio, or sonar software

i am open to suggestions on any piece of hardware or software, especially the software and audio interface. all opinions welcome, and thankyou in advance.

mboud

 

[Emeric]

Forget the dual PIII thing, it's unlikely to benefit you. Too many variables to make it an advantage.

Via chipsets can be problematic with some soundcards. It's getting better, but always questionable. If your set to go now, I'd buy intel chipsets and be done with it.

If I were shopping for a system now, I'd go for something like:

ASUS CUSL2-C mainboard
Intel PIII 1GHz CPU FCPGA
Quantum/Maxtor 10.2GB 7200 RPM operating system(s) drive
3 removable ata/100 drive brackets (one fits in the case, the other 2 are for swaping)
2 X 40GB 7200RPM Quantum/Maxtor
256MB PC-133 SDRAM (micron or hyundai, or ferrari)
Good Case, In-win mid tower, 300W p/s
Video card whatever, Geforce 2 maybe for gaming

Soundcard - up to you. If your doing mainly MIDI I guess you would want one that excels at that (I assume this is MIDI from external boxes and not samples on the soundcard itself). If you want to do audio as well, maybe use 2 soundcards.

 

[mboud]

emeric, thanks for the reply...
so why the removable drives? is it so i can always have more recording space without adding internal drives? and why 3 cases if only 2 extra drives? is one in the machine all the time, and one each for the two drives when not in use?
also, if gojng with only one chip, what are the pros and cons of going with amd?
thanks again, i'm really getting into this stuff, along with getting really frustrated at how much time it's taking to get it right before io but anything.

mboud

 

[Emeric]

When you buy removable drive brackets, you get two things, the part that fits into the tower permanently, and the part that you put your swappable drive in.

I suggest 3 only because it's good to swap drives around if your into recording other people. 1 for the tower, 2 for other drives.

And yes, thats one big advantage of removable drives, you can just pop a new one in if you need more time/space.

 

[RWhite]

While I would not disagree with using removable drives, I would think that a good 16X CDR (Plextor or TDK) paired with a plain old 80 gig data drive would be a cheaper alternative that would also keep your data backed up.