Time to upgrade my DAW!
I haven't recorded anything for a year or two. I have been using my Boss looper pedal to
capture ideas, but it's time to make good on some of the material. I play guitar and sing
a little. Like many here, I am a solo operator - so never needed more that two inputs
for recording. Standard rock - blues music, guitars, bass and canned drum.
I am coming off of a old Dell P4 and Sonar 8.5 with a M-Audio audiophile 192 card.
I am moving to Sonar X2.
I don't need a mobile DAW, so unless someone makes a good case for a laptop, I will only be considering a desktop.
I have Yamaha MP3 monitors.
I have 2 LCD monitors, VGA and DVI which I intend to re-use. However, if a single larger monitor is now the preferred setup, then I might consider that in the future.
I only record occasionally, maybe every month, but when I do, I want everything up and running with the minimum ammount of fuss. I would like to improve on the quality of my recordings.
I think that biggest issue I seem to have had has been latency. I don't remember what my current setup achieves, but I felt that there was enough of a delay that affected my timimg/sync (guitar), which made the process less satisfying.
A typical session would be: basic drum click track-->scratch guitar track-->Bass guitar--> rhythm guitars--> lead guitars.
Basic FX's: compression, eq, reverb, delay.
Track count is typically 5-10.
Interfaces:
USB seems to be the most commonly supported interface - giving my needs it would appear to be a reasonable choice.
Any recommendations here - I am thinking Focusrite.
PC:
I will be buying a Dell or HP or equivalent.
I prefer intel chipsets. Any reason why I might need more than a quad core i5?
RAM - I will get 8-12GB
HD - 1TB @7200rpm
Video card? just a basic card or on board video will do just fine for a DAW?
I don't want to spend more that $800 on the PC and interface at this time.
thanks for any input.
I haven't recorded anything for a year or two. I have been using my Boss looper pedal to
capture ideas, but it's time to make good on some of the material. I play guitar and sing
a little. Like many here, I am a solo operator - so never needed more that two inputs
for recording. Standard rock - blues music, guitars, bass and canned drum.
I am coming off of a old Dell P4 and Sonar 8.5 with a M-Audio audiophile 192 card.
I am moving to Sonar X2.
I don't need a mobile DAW, so unless someone makes a good case for a laptop, I will only be considering a desktop.
I have Yamaha MP3 monitors.
I have 2 LCD monitors, VGA and DVI which I intend to re-use. However, if a single larger monitor is now the preferred setup, then I might consider that in the future.
I only record occasionally, maybe every month, but when I do, I want everything up and running with the minimum ammount of fuss. I would like to improve on the quality of my recordings.
I think that biggest issue I seem to have had has been latency. I don't remember what my current setup achieves, but I felt that there was enough of a delay that affected my timimg/sync (guitar), which made the process less satisfying.
A typical session would be: basic drum click track-->scratch guitar track-->Bass guitar--> rhythm guitars--> lead guitars.
Basic FX's: compression, eq, reverb, delay.
Track count is typically 5-10.
Interfaces:
USB seems to be the most commonly supported interface - giving my needs it would appear to be a reasonable choice.
Any recommendations here - I am thinking Focusrite.
PC:
I will be buying a Dell or HP or equivalent.
I prefer intel chipsets. Any reason why I might need more than a quad core i5?
RAM - I will get 8-12GB
HD - 1TB @7200rpm
Video card? just a basic card or on board video will do just fine for a DAW?
I don't want to spend more that $800 on the PC and interface at this time.
thanks for any input.