Seeking economy/friendly PC studio system

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1Way

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I'm looking for an inexpensive, but not ineffective, PC recording editing rig.

Please don't just suggest something. Try to explain "why" you appreciate whatever you suggested.

PC
- I don't want to spend more than $600.
- I prefer WinXP (and own a copy of it) but would consider an Apple.
- I like a small form factor desktop PC, like Shuttle XPC or Aopen cube, better than relatively more limited, fragile and expensive laptops.
- I think I would prefer a serial hard drive as I believe they are supposed to be faster.
- I have an LCD monitor.

SOFTWARE
I would like to have good functionality, but I have an emphasis on
- system integrity such as not crashing or poor audio quality,
- and user friendliness, it should be relatively simple to do the most common tasks.

PC MIXER/CONTROLLER INTERFACE
I don't know much about which hardware I/O technology is better for my needs, USB 2, FIREWIRE, PCI card, etc. A friend suggested the Alesis 8 track USB mixer, which can be purchased for around $150. I'd like the ability to hook up four or more XLR mics.

This recording system needs to be portable as I plan on taking it with to jams and practice sessions. Please include pricing estimates wherever possible. And again, please don't just nominate some favorite suggestions, I want to understand why some people think certain things are better than others.
Thanks!
 
newegg is your friend!

Go HERE, that is a search section for all of newegg's 'barebones' systems, which include a case, and motherboard. All of the Shuttle and AOpen Cube systems are on there as well. Does you $600 include what you have to pay for an interface, or is that separate? With the 6, you should be able to put together a pretty nice Shuttle or Cube system that would work well. You'll have to buy a processor and a hard drive (or 2), RAM, and maybe a CD/DVD burner/drive. Good luck.
 
1Way said:
PC
- I don't want to spend more than $600.
- I prefer WinXP (and own a copy of it) but would consider an Apple.
- I like a small form factor desktop PC, like Shuttle XPC or Aopen cube, better than relatively more limited, fragile and expensive laptops.
- I think I would prefer a serial hard drive as I believe they are supposed to be faster.
- I have an LCD monitor.
Click to expand...

Do you have much experience with computers? I'd build my own because you can really get the best bang for the buck that way. I just priced out a sweet system on New Egg. You can do a "Google" search on building your own computer; it's really easy with a decent set of instructions. If you go to www.TechSpot.com they have some good tutorials.

Looking at NewEgg.com, here are some basic prices:

Shuttle XPC Socket 754 Barebones (case/power supply/mobo) - $200
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Newcastle 2.0 GHz / 512k L2 Cache - $140
1 GB (2x512) DDR400 Memory - $70
Seagate Barracuda 120 GB SATA HDD - $85
ASUS Geforce MX4000 64MB AGP Video Card - $30
Lite-On CD-RW/DVD-ROM - $25
Keyboard/Mouse (if you need them) - $20

Total would be about $550 before shipping. That'd be a great system right there, plus you get a little Shuttle.

If you don't want to build your own, check out www.NeoComputers.com; they do a great job but you pay more for them to build it.

Long story short, you want 1 GB of memory, no less. SATA is real nice, and I'm not sure you'll find many motherboards that don't support it nowadays. The Athlon 64's are really great for the price and have memory controllers right on the chip, decreasing memory access times, which is nice for working with huge sound files. P4's look like they're coming down in price to compete and might not be as powerful but are quicker for encoding (generally, due to the higher clock cylces).

1Way said:
SOFTWARE
I would like to have good functionality, but I have an emphasis on
- system integrity such as not crashing or poor audio quality,
- and user friendliness, it should be relatively simple to do the most common tasks.
Click to expand...

I just switched from Cubase SX 2 to SONAR 5 Producer, and it's WAY more stable. Sound quality is the same, and it seems to eat up less CPU, even with the VST wrapper for plugins. The Sonitus effects suite is fantastic too; best gate ever. Cubase SE is dirt cheap at $100 but I've got to say I've used Cubase VST, SX, SX 2, and tried SX 3, and they've all been buggy for me.

1Way said:
PC MIXER/CONTROLLER INTERFACE
I don't know much about which hardware I/O technology is better for my needs, USB 2, FIREWIRE, PCI card, etc. A friend suggested the Alesis 8 track USB mixer, which can be purchased for around $150. I'd like the ability to hook up four or more XLR mics.
Click to expand...

Hmm...there's lots of options here. I'm using an EMU card, but that doesn't have a mixer interface. It does have really great converters and decent pre's for the price, plus way more ins and outs than you'd need. I paired up my 1820 ($400) with a Behringer ADA8000 ($230), and it's blowing away anything I've recorded before. Tascam and M-Audio make some nice mixers with firewire interfaces, but they are kind of pricey. I'm looking at hardware controllers myself, because it's a little clunky working around with a mouse.
 
I went to the Dell outlet..Now after you stop laughing.......

P4 3.0
512 ram
800 FSB
80 gig HD
XP Home

$339!!!

After tweaking......some basic, some serious. I think I have a kick ass DAW.

I run Sonar 4 PE, Reason, a variety of other "things"
I use a 2496 as my interface.

It runs great and I can load up the tracks and VST's without a glitch(so Far)
 
estring
Good deal for you!
I checked it out, nothing for me in that price range. Great grab!
 
1Way said:
estring
Good deal for you!
I checked it out, nothing for me in that price range. Great grab!
Click to expand...

You need to keep checking. Especially now since its the end of the year. What happens is alot of these PC's are leases from companies. When the lease is up they return them to Dell for new ones. Dell then sells them in their Outlet along with other returned goodies.

Also try www.tigerdirect.com. They usually have some good deals also.
 
Hehe I too am using the cheapest dell they make and getting decent results. Keep in mind Im not running 8 simultaneous inputs...
 
Hey, when it comes to desktops, if you can score a sweet deal, go for it. Usually, you'll see "invisible" cuts in quality, such as 533 MHz front side buses instead of 800 MHz, 512 kb of L2 cache instead of 1 MB, higher latency memory, PATA instead of SATA drives, etc.

BUT, a cheap desktop can still do some good recording. You might not be able to run tons of plugins and tracks, but you'll still be able to do some recording.

Just make sure to get plenty of system memory and remove all unnecessary programs and hardware.

A clean 2 GHz Celeron with 512MB of memory can outperform a 3.6 GHz P4 with 2 Gigs of memory if it's loaded with viruses, spyware, and unnecessary crap.
 
Where do you go to find out about a rock solid computer/motherboard? I want

- Small form factor, i.e. slim, cube, or notebook PC
- Serial ATA II and Raid (something?) for really fast HD access
- Upgradable CPU and RAM
- Fairly decent everything else

But most of all, I want it to be reliable.

I don't know how they do it, but the following looks really attractive.
http://images.apple.com/r/store/ib/macmini/ib_macmini_dimensions.jpg
It comes with this iLife multimedia software package
http://www.apple.com/ilife/
Which includes "Garage Band"
http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/
You can add "Jam Tracks" which has loops of, and/or simulates, different musical instruments. I think 1 and 3 are alright.
http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/jampacks/
I think that for $600 plus usb controller, I'd be set, including what appears to be a great software package. But of course, I'd greatly prefer a Windows machine, if I can find one that's both good enough, and affordable.
 
SHUTTLE
Actually, my latest lean is towards MICRO ATX. These are MB's with 3 open PCI and an AGP slot. But yes, a Shuttle XPC is also an option, but they tend to be a bit higher priced than their MICRO ATX brethren. I need more economy than I do smaller size...

And that's what is so attractive about the Mac Mini, I get
- incredibly small size (1/3 to 1/6 the size of the rest!)
- latest up to date OS and studio software
- very stable and secure system
- powerful enough to record several tracks at once
- all that at an affordable price

So far, that seems to be the benchmark by which other deals are compared...
 
1Way said:
SHUTTLE
Actually, my latest lean is towards MICRO ATX. These are MB's with 3 open PCI and an AGP slot. But yes, a Shuttle XPC is also an option, but they tend to be a bit higher priced than their MICRO ATX brethren. I need more economy than I do smaller size...

And that's what is so attractive about the Mac Mini, I get
- incredibly small size (1/3 to 1/6 the size of the rest!)
- latest up to date OS and studio software
- very stable and secure system
- powerful enough to record several tracks at once
- all that at an affordable price

So far, that seems to be the benchmark by which other deals are compared...
Click to expand...

I'm seeing quite a few MicroATX mobo's springing up. These are a REALLY good idea, as you get a bit more selection than your standard Shuttle offerings and support from big players in the mobo industry.

Furthermore, I like the idea of not being tied down to such a small case...in the world of audio recording, you need stability more than anything. Heat is your number one enemy with hardware, and a small case will generate and keep lots of heat. I also like the expansion opportunities...that's why I ditched my Shuttle in favor of a huge Antec Sonata case :) Now I'm running four hard drives, have two DVD/CD burners, lots of PCI cards, and tons of extra fans running.

And that's precisely why I don't like the Mac Mini. Sure it looks really cool, but if you pick one up, about the only thing you can do is add WiFi and upgrade the memory. You're stuck with the CD reader/writer that it's got, can't upgrade the video card, can't add any hardware-based sound cards, etc. I'd pick one up in a heartbeat for home use (IF I liked Macs), but for audio...there's a good reason why the standard is the G5.

Anyways, if you build a MicroATX system, you can upgrade the processor without dumping everything else. Likewise with the MoBo. You can easily install new memory, add PCI devices, add more hard drives, swap CD/DVD burners, and keep what is working. I know that my Sonata case will be with me for a long time (especially with all my hard drives).
 
Right,
Besides raw processing power, I suspect that the HD writing process is a bottleneck of the DAW system. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume that if you are recording 1 track, then you have one processing/memory thread and one file being wrote to the HD. Double all that for 2 simultaneous tracks, triple it for 3 and so on. That is why I want

- faster hard drives (high rpm, low seek time, lots of cache ram)
- faster I/O system (serial verses parallel)
- 2 or more HD's setup in raid for speed and backup security

Which raid is best to allow for speed, and what is the way to go for backing up your system? Use a certain type of raid, or do an incremental backup via DVD burner or some software mirroring scheme for example?
 
"Just A Bunch Of Disks" (JBOD)

If you have some disks in a system that you decide not to configure into a RAID array, what do you do with them? Traditionally, they are left to act as independent drive volumes within the system, and that's how many people in fact use two, three or more drives in a PC. In some applications, however, it is desirable to be able to use all these disks as if they were one single volume. The proper term for this is spanning; the pseudo-cutesy term for it, clearly chosen to contrast against "redundant array of inexpensive disks", is Just A Bunch Of Disks or JBOD. How frightfully clever.

JBOD isn't really RAID at all, but I discuss it here since it is sort of a "third cousin" of RAID... JBOD can be thought of as the opposite of partitioning: while partitioning chops single drives up into smaller logical volumes, JBOD combines drives into larger logical volumes. It provides no fault tolerance, nor does it provide any improvements in performance compared to the independent use of its constituent drives. (In fact, it arguably hurts performance, by making it more difficult to use the underlying drives concurrently, or to optimize different drives for different uses.)

When you look at it, JBOD doesn't really have a lot to recommend it. It still requires a controller card or software driver, which means that almost any system that can do JBOD can also do RAID 0, and RAID 0 has significant performance advantages over JBOD. Neither provide fault tolerance, so that's a wash. There are only two possible advantages of JBOD over RAID 0:

Avoiding Drive Waste: If you have a number of odd-sized drives, JBOD will let you combine them into a single unit without loss of any capacity; a 10 GB drive and 30 GB would combine to make a 40 GB JBOD volume but only a 20 GB RAID 0 array. This may be an issue for those expanding an existing system, though with drives so cheap these days it's a relatively small advantage.

Easier Disaster Recovery: If a disk in a RAID 0 volume dies, the data on every disk in the array is essentially destroyed because all the files are striped; if a drive in a JBOD set dies then it may be easier to recover the files on the other drives (but then again, it might not, depending on how the operating system manages the disks.) Considering that you should be doing regular backups regardless, and that even under JBOD recovery can be difficult, this too is a minor advantage.

RAID Level 5

Description: One of the most popular RAID levels, RAID 5 stripes both data and parity information across three or more drives. It is similar to RAID 4 except that it exchanges the dedicated parity drive for a distributed parity algorithm, writing data and parity blocks across all the drives in the array. This removes the "bottleneck" that the dedicated parity drive represents, improving write performance slightly and allowing somewhat better parallelism in a multiple-transaction environment, though the overhead necessary in dealing with the parity continues to bog down writes. Fault tolerance is maintained by ensuring that the parity information for any given block of data is placed on a drive separate from those used to store the data itself. The performance of a RAID 5 array can be "adjusted" by trying different stripe sizes until one is found that is well-matched to the application being used.

Special Considerations: Due to the amount of parity calculating required, software RAID 5 can seriously slow down a system. Performance will depend to some extent upon the stripe size chosen.

Recommended Uses: RAID 5 is seen by many as the ideal combination of good performance, good fault tolerance and high capacity and storage efficiency. It is best suited for transaction processing and is often used for "general purpose" service, as well as for relational database applications, enterprise resource planning and other business systems. For write-intensive applications, RAID 1 or RAID 1+0 are probably better choices (albeit higher in terms of hardware cost), as the performance of RAID 5 will begin to substantially decrease in a write-heavy environment.
Click to expand...

For recording purposes, although RAID 0 looks like a great option (faster writing), in reality it's very risky. If one drive goes down, everything's lost. Raid 1 is a better idea if you wanted to play with RAID, as it just mirrors a first hard drive with a second hard drive, providing a perfect backup with almost no performance loss. If you have 3 or 4 hard drives, you can do RAID 0+1, which is basically writing to two hard drives and mirroring it on another hard drive or two.

In my opinion, most RAID schemes are a bit much for me. I'd rather have separate hard drives and do my own backups. My reasoning is that if I catch a nasty virus, it'll wipe out either RAID 1 file system or O/S. If I do Ghost images of hard drives and store them offline or on a secondary hard drive, I can recover my programs a hell of a lot easier and better.

Furthermore, I've never encountered a hard drive bottleneck issue. Even recording 12+ tracks (and I imagine I could get well into 20 or 30 tracks before I encounter an issue), I haven't had any problems. Again, in my opinion, between SATA 150 or SATA 2, 1 GB or more of system memory, and 7200 RPM hard drives (the standard), you shouldn't have any disk access problems.
 
Sounds great Yareek! I'm glad to hear that high dollar HD subsystems are not required. Thanks much.
 
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While I'm saving up for my next DAW, I'm wondering about the viability of the Mac Mini (G4, a faster one, $600-$700) and it's supplied Garage Band software. Or maybe an IMac w/faster processor. I'm looking for an affordable porable rig. I have only used IBM clones in the past... Optionally, I'm eying some MicroATX motherboards which sport only 3 PCI slots, size 9.6"x9.6". Just as powerful as a standard ATX machine, but smaller. Apples are known to be very stable and good with multimedia apps, but poor on "user upgrades" and "affordable pricing". However this Mini is relatively inexpensive.
 
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I have an old Presario laptop, currently AMD K6 380mhz, that I want too try to run some (same age) studio recording programs on it. Via the laptops ZIF socket, I'm installing an AMD K6 II+ 570 (fastest in class, and lower voltage rating), it'll run at about 670mhz after the CPU upgrade and slight overclocking (YES, it can safely do it, has multiplier and voltage jumpers), it competes well with PII's & PIII's, 256mb RAM, 6 gig internal HD. I'm thinking of adding a USB or firewire external HD. So far I plan on getting a combo USB 2.0/firewire PCMCIA adapter, and a USB mixer/interface.

THE QUESTION
Any suggestions for recommendable (and stable) studio recording programs written for Win98 or maybe ME or Win2K? Definitely something that does "not" require XP.

I have low expectations about performance, I mostly just want to record one track at a time, and then do some basic editing while learning the basics of PC recording.

Here's Guitar Tracks 2 with low system requirements

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
* Windows 95(OSR2)/98
* Minimum: Pentium 200Mhz, 32 MB RAM
* Recommended: Pentium 300 MHz, 64 MB RAM
* 256 Colors or greater required (600 X 800); 24 bit color recommended
* Windows-compatible sound card and CD-ROM required.
* Guitar Tracks will work with any type of electric or acoustic guitar. Acoustic guitar requires microphone or pick-up. Also supports mic input.

CLICK HERE FOR GUITAR TRACKS 2 INFO

Suggestions and comments for this and other such older recording software are most welcome.

Thanks!

Oh, and yes, I am saving my pennies for a newer DAW, but this one comes first. I can fall back on my desktop winXP PC, but I want to get my laptop going first.
 
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