Do You Dedicate Your Whole Computer to Music Recording?

S

Shoulderpain

New member
Do most of you dedicate one computer exclusively to music and then keep your other computing and online stuff on a second PC? Or do you just add all of the music software and drivers as an additional function of the PC you use for everything else?

Thanks. :)
 
that depends on how serious your music making is. but if its just a hobby there shouldent be a problem to use the pc for more than recording.
but im planning to get a second pc just for music making, it takes alot of capacity when you run music programs. specially when u play more then 20 sounds at once in a mix

but it does't have to be an expencive one the most importante is that you have a good sound card for the computer
 
I use one computer for everything. Of course I don't do much with my system other than surf the web and record. I do some word processing and a tiny bit of photo editing though.

My machine handles it all beautifully. It helps to only install what you really need and avoid all useless junkware. Keep your computer lean and mean.
 
It's 1998 thinking.

You USED to have to tweak a computer to death to get proper performance for music/video/multimedia.

....but that was with sub-1Ghz processors. You don't really have to do that anymore.

(but too many people want to tweak EVERYTHING to death. I'm not going to waste my time to get a 0.0001% performance increase; got better things to do with my life...)
 
you can get some performance gains if you disable what you're not using in the BIOS "setup". Like in F2 Setup, when you boot up.

My 1.5Ghz Pentium 4 (512 RAM, XP Pro SP2) is NOT attached to the net, no printers connected.
Disable NIC, Disable onboard sound, Disable Parallel port.

Watch out for programs that load at Startup, especially WinAmp or Open Office, which can steal resources (RAM & CPU) and just about any Microsoft product, from Office, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer ... all use major RAM, and does not always release.

Windows Explorer alternative with small footprint is Q-DIR, which even has 4 windows at once, and uses little RAM & CPU
 
I have a Mac (running Pro Tools) for serious recording and a HP (Audacity as a scratch pad) in my studio, neither is connected to the internet. E Machine for gamming and web surfing. At the moment I'm on a Toshiba laptop. After a couple of crashes and loosing materal I was working on I decided I needed to seperate my working machines from my play with machines.
 
I have one computer dedicated solely to recording.....it is not connected to the internet, nor do I introduce any software that I have not purchased through realiable sources (I choose to take no chances with introducing a virus).

I have a second computer for all my personal computing (speadsheets, email, surfing, etc.)

I also recently bought a used laptop for lyric writing. For years I wrote with pen/pencil and paper - which resulted in blacked out words, and hundreds of sheets of paper crumpled and thrown about:D Whith the lap top, if I don't like a line, I can simply delete (which seems to happen often!!!!!)
 
a second approach..

I my self have a different approach.. I use my computer for both.. but i have 2 physical harddrives both with an installation of xp.. Disk C contains xp, ie, word etc..
Disk D contains xp + ONLY Word, my old cubase 3 my plugins and my mackie onyx mixer drivers.. Nothing else!!

My computer: Intel Quad Core 2.87, 2 Gb ddr3 ram, 2 x 500 Gb harddrives, mackie onyx 1640, 24" TFT screen.
 
Toshiba Satellite:
Windows XP Home Edition SP 3
2 gigs ram
Intel Centrino M 1.5 ghz processor
40 gig internal drive (stores programs, plugins, mp3's, pictures, general computer stuff)
320 gig 7200 RPM external firewire drive (use for backup of internal drive and I record directly to this drive)

This computer will be 5 years old soon and has been hanging in there like a champ. I've never had a playback issue with 20+ tracks at once. (I would like to build a dedicated recording desktop, but I keep spending my money elsewhere in the studio)

maybe I could convince my wife to let me take over her new macbook... best not to temp fate.
 
My studio computer is just that - a studio computer. It has never and will never be anything else until it's retired.
 
BabyBottle said:
I my self have a different approach.. I use my computer for both.. but i have 2 physical harddrives both with an installation of xp.. Disk C contains xp, ie, word etc..
Disk D contains xp + ONLY Word, my old cubase 3 my plugins and my mackie onyx mixer drivers.. Nothing else!!
Click to expand...

Same here. I just boot whatever drive I want to use depending on what I want to do.
 
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