I need to act Quickly!!

[SUITE16]

HI eveyone.
I'v been lurking here for a while and learned afair amount.
Thanks. I appreciate this board.

My boss has offered a VERY generous amount for my 3 year old HP "Pavillion" and with that money (plus some...) I can make a good recording PC. He wants to do it NOW so I have to be swift in my research and decisions...

Here's the type of recording I will be doing for the most part:

Me doing everything.
It's 2 guitar, bass, drums (sampled, midi controlled..), usually 5 vocal tracks--Main vox (doubled), Harmony vox (doubled), third part harmony(ocassional).
The music is (heavy)guitar dominated power pop.
So you can see sublety is not really a concern and number of "ins" on the sound card could be 2 and it would be enough.

I plan on using a BOSS BR8 (my current recording system) as my pre amp. This may not even work--??

Now my knowledge of computers is fairly limited but I have a friend who will help me build it if I buy the parts separately and he is very knowledgable.
(I plan to buy my parts @ ncix.com)

So far by looking here I have chosen the following:

Athlon 1800XP
Asus A7N8X Deluxe

That's about it...

I have looked for a general-"If you want to build a PC for recording get this" type article but have failed. (Someone will probably link me to an article on this very site now. I looked, honestly.)

Can anyone give me opinions on a mid-priced soundcard with midi.
Can I live with 256 RAM?

Any tips ("Raid" motherboard--my friend recommended this) on making this system upgradible enough to try and keep up on my fututre needs and developing technology?

Thanks for you help and patience.

Rob.

 

[Beezoboy]

How much money do you have to work with? If you don't mind me asking? That will totally decide what you can get.

Beez

 

[SUITE16]

I will be spending approx. $900.00 to $950.00--here's the brutal part--Canadian!! ouch.

Thanks for the reply...
r.

 

[christiaan]

Can anyone give me opinions on a mid-priced soundcard with midi.
Can I live with 256 RAM?

Any tips ("Raid" motherboard--my friend recommended this) on making this system upgradible enough to try and keep up on my fututre needs and developing technology?

A good soundcard with midi I/O is the M-audio audiophile or do you want soundfonts as well?
You can live with 256 RAM but more = better (of course..)
Raid? You won't really need that. Just get a big 7200rpm hard drive.

Questions like these have been asked a zillion times here. I guess you just need to look a bit harder There may not be one general thread that tells it all but a lot has already been said about this. Lurk on dude!
(But not trying to discourage you to ask questions)

 

[Jeff_D]

so...whats that work out to about in US dollars- sorry dont spend alot (ok any) time in canada. RAID is nice but not crucial- but even so you can put a RAID controller on any board- so that can be upgraded later...best tip ive got is to avoid alot of on board crap on your mother board- no built in sound AC97, no network connection- put that stuff in seperatly or not at all if you dont need it- just uses up the boards resources

-jeff

 

[christiaan]

best tip ive got is to avoid alot of on board crap on your mother board- no built in sound AC97, no network connection- put that stuff in seperatly or not at all if you dont need it- just uses up the boards resources

Not agreeing here with you. If you need to connect it to a network, I don't see why you should avoid onboard LAN. Whether it is onboard or not, it will eat resources.
My next motherboard will definately have LAN onboard. Way more cost effective.