PC spec for home studio

[MC Groves]

I'm looking to finally make a start on a home studio (of sorts). At the moment, my main worry is getting a PC of high enough spec to be able to run my software of choice and record at least 8 tracks of audio without crashing or running at a stupidly slow speed. What kind of spec would I be looking at to be able to run this kind of stuff? At the moment, money is tight so I just need something which will run the basics so i can upgrade in a few months. I'm probably going to run Cool Edit 2.0 and Fruityloops 4, if that affects anything.

Cheers

 

[manning1]

8 tracks is easy these days. i can easily do 40 on an amd system.
it would help to know if you want to record one track at a time or
record 8 seperate tracks at once, then another 8 while playing back the first 8, then another 8 etc etc.
cool edit is a very fine program but with limited midi features for midi recording, editing, and notation etc. if you want to run cool get a minimum of 512 ram. i use powertracks from pgmusic.com. 49 bucks for 48 tracks. try the demo sometme. i also use magix audio studio which i like. (80 bucks).
but i dont like the midi as much.
do you have a pc currently ?
an idea of how much you want to spend and the upper track limit you need would help. then i could suggest a pc configuration.
for example a amd sempron is around 400 bucks in my area. this will do 40 tracks with fast hard drives.
peace
ps....search under my namefor lots of tips posted in past year.