Need help choosing specs.

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ludvista

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How large should the HD and RAM be? Also what sound card do you recommend? I waill be recording using an 8 input MOTU firewire interface and also maybe a MIDI keyboard. I will be using cubase also.
Thanks, mike
 
VSTis/software-samplers usually take up a lot of RAM. I barely got by with 512MB with VSTi's on a few tracks. (EZDrummer alone took up about 300MB of RAM). Depending on your MIDI instruments, I would say at LEAST 1 GB. 2 GB if you can afford it.

Hard drive - Go as big as you can afford to. At least 7200 RPM. I use an 80GB but that's because I'm broke. I would recommend at least 160 just for recordings, but it really depends on how much you record.

It's common for people to have 2 hard drives, 1 just to record onto, and the other for Windows and all other software.

Not familiar with the MOTU, but if that's an interface it should act as your soundcard. AFAIK, you can't have 2 sound devices enabled at a time in Windows (I've tried).
 
Well I'm gonna be recording a medium sized project. Would that change anything? The max I can spend is 200, maybe a little less/more.
 
ludvista said:
Well I'm gonna be recording a medium sized project. Would that change anything? The max I can spend is 200, maybe a little less/more.

For $200 just get what you can.

What's more important to you? Hard drive space or RAM? Stuff on the hard drive can always be backed up on to DVDs or whatever. There's no good substitute for RAM.

What kind of VSTi's will you be using?

"A medium sized project" doesn't say much. :p
 
ludvista said:
Well I'm gonna be recording a medium sized project. Would that change anything? The max I can spend is 200, maybe a little less/more.
For $200,you should be able to get plenty of ram and plenty of hard drive!
 
sorry, I ment 2000. haha, damn typos. I think I may bring it down a little though.
 
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