Recording PC Recipe Help

[Felken]

Thinking of building a new PC for my office/studio. I currently have a Dell Dimension 4700 P4, XP with an Emu 1212m. It is about 6 years old.

Have been on Sonar Producer 3, own Wavelab and have just downloaded Reaper. Thinking of moving to Reaper. Would like to have access to all the VST plugins from Sonar.

I want a machine and interface that will be solid and easy to use. Will use it for some internet and light office work also.

Budget is around 1200.

Is it possible to use the existing tower, power supply, cd/dvd and put in new mother board, hard drive and video and sound card?

Looking for specific compatible motherboard, ram, sound card or other interface, hard drive ideas

thanks

 

[dastrick]

Is it possible to use the existing tower, power supply, cd/dvd and put in new mother board, hard drive and video and sound card?


thanks

Yes providing that your powersupply will supply enough wattage for the new components.

I built mine about 3 years ago. I used a Gigabyte motherboard, which I highly recommend. Check out www.studio-central.com forums. There's a topic on PC with a thread about building PC's for audio.

 

[Absoluthidy]

with a budget like that you can do a lot. Forget about using your tower/harddrive/mobo.

This is a really well priced rig that will go above and beyond what you need.

http://www.pcaudiolabs.com/rokbox_le.asp

then you need an audio interface... I recommend M-Audio's Firewire 410.

http://cgi.ebay.com/M-Audio-Firewir...ultDomain_0&hash=item27b47f3e2c#ht_500wt_1154

and then you're ready to go. If you really want to use your old tower... take your pc into a store like Fry's Electronics and have them match you up with a decent mobo/cpu/ram or do what the above poster mentioned. it might save you some money it might not.

I would also recommend buying a preamp to make your recording quality a little better.

Presonus' BlueTube - http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/BlueTubeDP/
or
M-Audio's DMP3 - http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/DMP3/

are both great choices.

but that's more of a "If you want to..." type of thing.