Holy cripes. There has been SO much talk in this forum alone! You'll just have to browse.
I'll answer a few right now:
1) No it is not ok to buy an HP or Compaq or the like. For one, you're paying too much. For two, they use proprietary hardware which can make it difficult to find drivers making it difficult to reinstall windows making it difficult to get rid of all the bullshit they load on there (the recovery disk reloads all the crap too BTW). For three, their cases/motherboards/etc are not standard meaning that upgrades are difficult, AND you might have trouble sticking your big Gina in there (no pun intended).
2) Hard drives. IMHO, no western digital. Quantum are good...IBM are good. 7200RPM is the standard...a 2MB cache also helps. As of right this instant there is little to no difference between ATA/66 and UDMA/33 so you can stick your ATA/66 drive on your current controller no problem (e.g., don't run out and buy and ATA/66 controller).
3) I am working on (or have been working on) software that will allow you to control ANY application with ANY midi switch device. Should be cool if I ever get back to it. Currently, you can buy nice fancy boxes from jlcooper.com but they will set you back.
4) It is not recommended that you use the OS install to record and run other applications. As you may know, windows is very susceptible to being *whooped* by software installations. I've seen windows screach to half speed on NUMEROUS occasions. This includes internet applications and the like. It is recommended that you either JUST run NT4, or run 98lite or 95 and use it for recording ONLY, or dual boot between NT and 95/98 (or whatever you want). You can use your current computer for recording and everything else, but over time I guarantee you'll see your performance slip away.
5) Intel chips are usually preferred because, well, they're just better than the competition. The only exception would be AMD's relatively new Athlon processor which is worlds above their K6 series. One of the major downsides of using a Cyrix or AMD K6-2 processor is the lack of good floating point support. To put it lightly, DX effects/processors are heavy on floating point calculations (floats are basically decimal numbers... 1.3318 as opposed to just integers...whole numbers...1) and your AMD or Cyrix processor will handle less effects simultaneously. The Intel Celeron processor beats the AMD K6-2 in most gaming and recording applications and for the most part matches the price.
If you're looking for a computer for recording only (a DAW or Digital Audio Workstation), then your best bet is to build one yourself or have someone build one for you. You do not want ANY bells or whistles. Just the basics...a decent processor, ample memory, a big fast hard drive (or two), a nice soundcard, a basic video card, maybe a CDRW, and a nice monitor. Optionally, a network card can be handy for transfering files between your DAW and regular workstation.
But, we can't all afford this. I personally boot between 98 and NT4...using a very bare NT for recording of course. Works really well and is *almost* like having two machines except that it's a bigger pain in the ass (adding/removing hardware, etc)
Browse these forums. I know I'm not supposed to say this, but you might check out some of the articles at
www.prorec.com , there's a good one about building your own DAW (kinda basic but to the point). Then make sure you get your ass back to this BBS. We don't need no deserters
Slackmaster 2000
