Possible new system, suggestions?

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lenMCHC

New member
Case?? Antec?
AMD 2500+ Barton
MotherBoard???
2 hard drives... seagate? western dig?
Ram.. 512 stick. Kingston
Burner (no need for suggestions)
Floppy(same)
Video Card (something cheap, but will do the job)
Delta 1010LT i already have this, and love it.
Event TR-5 monitors (already have)
Mackie 1402 VLZ(already have)
SM 57, 58, some AT mics including a D112, some oktava mics and some beringer overhead mics...(already have these too)

I've been making some low level, low budget demos for friends, and I just want to make my system run a little more smooth.

any suggestions would help.

Cool Edit Pro 2.0
Cubase?

Win98SE or XPpro?

I want to be able to mix at least 20 tracks at once.
 
Potentially a flame war (I hope not)

I'm not sure if the system you described is one you're hoping to build or not... but a couple of thoughts.

First, while I love AMD chips and use them regularly to build gaming rigs for folks... the support is not entirely there in the pc audio world. You are kind of railroaded into using a p4, and to run smoothly I'd recommend at least a 2.4, although I have personally mixed succesfully in nuendo with 24 tracks and plug=ins on a 1.6p4. But, Nuendo is pricey software, and well designed. Cheaper programs may not be so friendly. It also depends on how much work your soundcard is really doing, and whether you want to drop money on a dedicated fx processing card like the UAD.

That is the end of my processor soapbox.

Next.

in the next few months, the wonderful world of computers should be changing with the release of the pci-express spec, which is going to essentially put AGP sockets to bed, and offers a format scalable to 8gb througput on motherboards. Its not a definte enough release date to keep you from moving forward, but its worth keeping in the back of your mind when deciding how much to spend right now.

If you can, make your HD setup SATA... hell, make everything that you can SATA... its fast, efficient, and has RAID functionality that makes SCSI practically useless.

As for brand, I'm not a huge seagate fan... their RMA support sucks IMHO, westerndig though are pretty reliable.

Asus asus asus... no way around it, it's just the best MB manufacturer out there... built for overclocking, and willing to take all kinds of abuse... If you are heart set on an AMD... check out one of the Nforce motherboards... as you will inherit a decent on board soundcard, which can be useful for playback testing on consumer speakers, and also has a dolby digital encoder built in, for sending multichannel sound out through spdif (the only folks that can do this presently btw)

finally... when ordering... check all your prices through www.pricewatch.com they essentially catalogue all online sellers, and show you the lowest possible prices on everything.

Anyhow, if you run into any humps setting stuff up, feel free to email or pm me. My studio partner and I have built a lot of DAW's and high end systems, advice is always free :)

All that said, I've said some very black and white things here, and don't mean all of it as hard and fast rules. Get as many opinions as you can.

Good luck building your machine.

Rich

radiumreactor.com
 
Hey Rich,

Thanks! Hmm.. i already have a P4 asus board, that i'm running a 2gig celeron w/400mhz FSB.. maybe i should just up grade the chip, and maybe get win XP?

I only live accross the river from you.. if i hit a snag, i'll definately naw your ear off.

Take care.
Len
 
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