Sound card, recording and computer capabilities

[Neopotato]

HI.
I was thinking about getting a good sound card for my computer, but I'm not sure how many imputs I should get and if my computer will handle any major recording at all.

pentium 200
16 MB RAM
3.2Gb HD

If I get 1 input and run 6 tracks through a mixer and into the sound card I will only get one track on the monitor and can only mix the 6 individually once ie. before and during recording and as 1 track after.
Where as if I had 6 inputs I could adjust FX, Volume, EQ on each of the 6 tracks individually ie. after recording the song.
(Is this right????)

ALSO I was told I need more RAM (Like 128MB)
and a second hard drive since the first would ware out.
Could I dodge some of these obsticles, I heard that you could use your VCR as place to store the sound files, But how do you work with them from there?

Do I need more RAM ????
It's only amature work and on a low budget
What do you recomend?

Please expand on my bablings, any advice is apreciated
Thanks
Neopotato

 

[Rick Stevens]

The more RAM you can get, the better. If you work with .WAV files they will hog memory and start to get jumpy if there's not enough available RAM. I recently recorded Parisienne Walkways into a stereo 44.100 file and it takes up 32Mb of hard disk space. If you take a PC with just 32Mb RAM it still needs a certain amount of memory to operate without the .WAV file, therefore it will try to read it in chunks from the hard disk, this can cause the jitters I mentioned earlier. This can also happen if you try to record to RAM instead of directly to the hard disk.

 

[Slackmaster2K]

That computer won't get you too far.

First and foremost you need more memory. While many applications such as n-Track read and write directly to the disk, you still need enough RAM to handle windows and any active applications without using the swapfile. Windows95 takes 16MB right off the top so you're not sitting pretty. I would recommend 64MB as a minimum, though you could probably fly with 32. The big problem is that your system probably wants 72pin SIMMs which are ridiculously expensive anymore.

Then your hard drive is pretty small, and by its size I would say that it's probably not too fast. A UDMA/33 5400 RPM drive would be the minimum and an ATA/66 7200 RPM drive would be the best. Of course the drive will be inhibited by the IDE controller on the MOBO...which is kinda old and might not support the faster technologies. Expect to burn a minimum of 10MB per minute mono @ 44.1khz 16bit recording (CD quality).

Finally, your processor is pretty limited. Don't expect to use a lot of DX effects.

Good news? You can still use that computer to record a few tracks. You might get away with 4 to 6...even more if you added more memory. Now that's assuming you record one track at a time, which you can already do with your system.

I would recommend looking into a new computer before blowing a bunch of money on a real nice soundcard. Of course if you do get a nice soundcard, you can always swap it into a new machine later.

You can get a nice machine for recording without spending much money. I'd say you can get away with spending 600-700 bucks for a new barebones system that will be great for recording and upgradable.

PII 450 processor - $110
64MB PC133 - $70
13GB 7200RPM ATA/66 - $129
Good upgradable (PIII) Mobo - $120
4MB video card - $30
SB PCI 128 soundcard - $20
40X CDROM - $40
Floppy - $30
Keyboard/mouse - $30
17" NEC Monitor - $250
Case/PS - $100

Total: $929

Now, those are just estimates on raw parts. You can save money by building your own machine, but you can probably get one premade for about that price. You can of course go higher or lower in price depending on what you really want in there. AND you can probably salvage some stuff from your existing machine like the modem, video card, monitor, keyboard/mouse, and CDROM which would save you almost 400 bucks off that price. How's a 500 dollar kick ass machine sound?

Choosing a motherboard that is capable of running a PIII ~800b processor (@ 133FSB) will give you a lot of upgrade options in the future. Right now the PII 450 is a good processor at a great price and still runs the latest applications easily...in a year one of the faster PIII processors will be priced similarly. If you stay ~1 year behind the game, you'll always come out ahead without sacrificing performance. My Celeron 500 is just now starting to appear slow with some of the newer stuff...I bought it for like $80...my next purchase will probably be a PIII-450 or better when they drop to ~$120...so I will have spent 200 bucks on processors by staying behind...If I was to buy the latest greatest processor now, it would cost me 800 bucks...then upgrading to the next latest greatest would be another 800 bucks and so on. See how that works? It's not expensive to maintain a great recording machine.

Slackmaster 2000

 

[Neopotato]

Thankyou both very much for replying and setting me straight on this, I suppose I'll have to keep saving for a better system before I blow my money on a sound card.
After reading slackmasters post
I could see myself looking very disapointed after I bought a 4 input sound card and found out i could only record 1 track at a time

Another thing, I live in australia so Everything in computers costs double or more
and is usually not top quality stuff.

anyhow, Thanks