building a good (and inexpensive) computer system and then combine it with ? sound ca

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joeglover

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So many options; so little money. What does one really need in order to enjoy the benefits of home recording? Do you start with an AMD athlon or the P4? which one is fastest and more reliable. Then, what recommendations are there for building a system? That includes motherboard. cdr's, and hard drives. Finally, what is the best (affordable) sound card? Everyone I've talked to says motu, but for 900 dollars there have to be other options.
 
Do you start with an AMD athlon or the P4?
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My friend, who graduated with a degree in Computer Science and got a total of two Bs his entire life (the rest As) says that the Athlon is superior to the P4. Take what you will from that.
Finally, what is the best (affordable) sound card? Everyone I've talked to says motu, but for 900 dollars there have to be other options.
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I've used Maudio exclusively, and everyone I've heard from seems to love them. They have the Delta 1010 lt edition, which has 8 analog ins and outs for around $400. It doesn't come with a breakout box, but I don't know how important that really is anyway. I haven't used that particular card, but I've used the Delta 44, which is basically a 4 in 4 out version of the same card, and it sounds great to me. If you do a little digging around, you'll find that most everyone that's used their stuff loves it. I've heard good things about the Aardvark direct pro 24/96. I think you can get a version of it without mic preamps for $400. It has 4 ins and outs, I think, plus some built in DSP (reverb and compression, I think).
 
The "what CPU is best?" argument really doesn't carry a lot of weight when you're dealing with home recording. The fact is that unless your project is VERY complex, you're going to have trouble even maxing out a PIII/Celeron/Duron, and recording can definitely be done on a PII as well (Most of my recordings were done on a PPGA Celeron @ 525 MHz - I only recently broke down and built a new machine). The fact is that unless you're a DVD ripper, a 3D artist, a video editor, or you simply must have 5,032,894 frames per second in Quake 3, there just isn't a lot out there that will take full advantage of a flagship CPU.

The bad thing about recording with a P4 or Athlon is that if you're recording in close quarters, you're going to introduce a lot of hiss into your recordings, because both CPUs require a lot of cooling.

In my opinion, the "Tualatin"-cored PIIIs or Celerons make terrific recording CPUs. A 1.26 GHz PIII-Tualatin has roughly the same horsepower as a 1.8GHz P4, while drawing less power and requiring far less cooling.

However, if you can properly seperate your computer from your recording area, and can afford an Athlon or P4, you might appreciate the extra muscle.

Your mileage may vary.
 
The fact is that unless your project is VERY complex, you're going to have trouble even maxing out a PIII/Celeron/Duron, and recording can definitely be done on a PII as well
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I agree with this, up to a point. It really depends on what you're doing. I just got a new box that has an athlon 1600 XP processor with 256 megs of RAM, and it can't do 24 tracks if I use an EQ and a compressor on every track and my waves renaissance reverb on the aux send. I don't anticipate ever really needing to do that, but I also don't consider that situation "very complex." I guess what constitutes "complex" is very subjective though.
 
If you need quiet ...

Try a Dell Optiplex GX150. They use a Tulatin processor, ducting, and low speed fans and this thing is very very very quiet. I bought a PIII 1 Ghz with 256M Ram and a 40 G hard drive for about $800 shipped (without monitor) from the refurb shop at Dell.

Before that I bought "quiet" parts from various vendors and built an AMD 1.4 Ghz box that is way too noisy.

Fran
 
CPU: Athlon XP 1800 or 1900 (prices on those are dropping through the floor right now.. around $110 and $140 respectively as of this writing.) P.S. Athlons are superior to P4's :p

Mobo: Soyo Dragon Plus (most stable board I've ever worked with... and one of the fastest there is for Athlons right now) Loaded with features. For a cheaper solution, try the Gigabyte GA-7VTXH. The Soyo can be had for $130 or so, the Gigabyte for $100.

HDD: Maxtor 40GB (or whatever size) 7200 RPM Diamond Max Plus D740X. Make sure you get the D740X model. There is also a Diamond Max 40 and Diamond Max 60 (the 40 and 60 have nothing to do with the size) and they're not as good. (although still pretty decent) The 40GB can be had for $80.

If you're trying to stay low on the sound card, I would definitely try the Delta 44 (around $200). Or go up to the Delta 1010LT.

For CDR's I'd use Plextor (or Yamaha) but those both tend to be pretty pricey (though not as much these days). But for lower cost options, I've found the LiteOns to be very reliable.

I would never buy a computer preassembled. Especially from one of the big three. (Compaq, Dell, HP) I built my machine from the ground up for $950 and it smokes most anything you can get in the store these days. And that was back in Dec. Prices are even lower now. For example.. a friend of mine needed some parts to do similar things to what I'm doing, so I picked him up a SoyoDragon, Maxtor D740X 40GB, Athlon XP 1900, Windows XP Home, and a nice Heatsink all for $490. The great thing about customizing your own setup is that you can choose where to save money. Let's say you don't think you need that much space right away. Well, get the 20GB instead and save you some cash. Or you think the Athlon XP 1600 will be powerful enough (and it is)... choose that instead and save money that way... etc. etc.

WATYF
 
building a system

Thank you all for your responses. I ended up getting a tyan tiger 2460 dual processor board with an athlon 1800. ddr memory is a must so I got 512 to start and a 32 meg video card. I got the 40x plextor (in black) for $184 including shipping. I will start picking sound cards today. thanks again
 
Eurythmic said:
The fact is that unless your project is VERY complex, you're going to have trouble even maxing out a PIII/Celeron/Duron
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This really depends on what plugins you use. A really nice reverb (like Timeworks) can chew up lots of CPU cycles in no time. With my 1.4 Ghz Athlon, I can only run a few of these plugins before I start having dropouts. If you are using something less CPU-hungry, then CPU power is less important.
 
Heh, I could chew through a 2Ghz processor without even trying. I wish it was that simple.

Slackmaster 2000
 
You shouldn't worry so much about chips and start thinking about a fast hard drive, 7200 rpm or SCSI (10000 rpm). Your p4 or Athlon won't do much good if you can only have 4 simultaneous tracks running at at time due to slow data tranfer on your hd.
 
A single 7200RPM drive is *more* than enough to do 32 24bit/96khz tracks. The hard drive hasn't been the bottleneck since the 7200RPM drives came out, and even many 5400RPM drives were adequate.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I'd be really careful about going with a 10,000RPM SCSI drive, though. The absolute best 7200RPM IDE drives often outperform them.

Or of course you could get a couple middle-of-the-road 7200RPM drives in an IDE RAID configuration. Fast and cheap.

But I haven't maxed out my single audio drive yet, and if Echo Reporter is to be believed, I won't be maxing it out anytime soon. :)
 
Echo reporter kind of sucks. Do a search for dskbench ... it's a small hard drive benchmarking application designed with multitracking in mind.

I agree with you though. Sustained transfer rates for even 10,000RPM SCSI drives aren't much more than 7200RPM IDE...in fact, they are often slower. This has been one of those topics that's drove people nuts since even the days when 5400RPM drives were just coming out. IDE outperforming or keeping up with SCSI in most desktop/workstation environments, and this would include a DAW. There is no benefit to the SCSI interface when you're working with a few large files being accessed by a single application.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Oh yeah, I don't take Echo Reporter as gospel or anything. I just use it as a quick n' dirty way of making sure everything's working as it should.

I mean, right now I've got some crap on my audio drive that I haven't felt like cleaning off, I've got a couple of memory-resident programs in the system tray, seven instances of Internet Explorer and one of Netscape open, and it's STILL telling me I can play back over 100 simultaneous tracks or record 242 simultaneous tracks at 16/44.1. There's just no way on Earth I'll ever come close to testing that limit. :) Even more complex projects, I'll still be bouncing tracks just to keep the mixing console from getting too cluttered. IDE rocks. :)
 
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