Is my current computer good enough?

G

Godsguitarist

New member
Hello everyone!! I am getting a Tascam 4-track recorder for CHRISTmas and I am planning on mixing down to my comp after a possible sound card upgrade to a SB Live if I don't get good enough quality for me to live with. I was wondering if my comp would be ok with having a 2 gig hard drive, 133 AMD k-6 with a turbo chip to boosting to around 220, and 32 megs of ram for just mixing down onto probably a Zip drive and then transported to a CD burner. I also have the option of building a comp for audio because I am just about to get my comp business (upgrades, general repair, etc.) with a few of my friends as soon as we get our license from the county commerce. The good part about that, I have discount access to supplies, but that's not the point. The major set back from building my own comp is that I don't have much money at all right now because I have no job (I'm not a bum, I'm just 15 and don't have a car to have access to a job, besides the one we're starting. well, I still bum stuff, but not that bad :)). I will be mixing down mostly Christian music, anything from Christian metal, to Christian Praise and Worship, all mostly by my band. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks to homerecording.com for making this BBS possible, as well!! This BBS has been so helpful to me, and I haven't even been able to record yet!! hehe
 
A 133 MHz K-6 with 32 MB RAM is possibly good enough to record a stereo mix off your 4-track so you can make a WAV or MP3 but not much else. The SB Live specs cite a 133 MHz machine with 32 MB as the minimum system it can run in.
 
Well, man, it sounds like you and I are doing things fairly similarly. I have a Tascam 8-track, and I too send the mix to my computer so that I get a wave file. I think SBLive comes with software with LED meters, so you can record the song while making sure that you're not clipping, and you will get a wave file when you're done.
The problem I ran into at this stage, though, is that once you get the songs onto the computer, they are all at different volume levels, because each song is different dynamically. What I did was to pick up a sound editor, so I could see the whole song graphically, and compress and EQ each song so that they were at similar volumes. This is called normalizing, and it is an essential step before you burn to CD. I use SoundForge from Sonic Foundry, but a whole lot of people use CoolEdit (I think from Syntrillium). Either would work great. I'm not sure about system requirements of the individual softwares, but you could check out their websites. They both have demo versions you can download, too!
Hope this was helpful.
 
Thanks guys for your replies. I may talk my parents into letting me buy this comp and then upgrading the hound out of it if I can, or at least get what I can without replacing the motherboard. Again, I really appreciate your replies and this has helped me. I do have one question, however, would Sound Forge XP be ok for normalizing because my wallet is not all up to the full version at around $330? Thanks for everything and everyone have an awesome CHRISTmas!!!

[Edited by Godsguitarist on 12-15-2000 at 08:53]
 
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