Specs for recording PC

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Goldilox

Goldilox

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I apologise if this is a rookie question but a friend of mine a blues forum directed me here as somewhere that could more usefully help with this....

The PC I cobbled together from old parts that I had been using for recording has just died...but it was never really stable enough anyhow.

I've got an alesis io2 interface/soundcard and I'm running (the OEM version of) cubase but I just wanted some advice on what kind of spec machine I'd need to use as a dedicated studio PC?
 
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i think the first thing people are gona wana know is what you record, and how many effects and synths you are likely to use


if you're heaping on a lot of cpu intensive effects and what not, you're gonna need hefty enough gear,

but if you're recording yourself or someone else with an acoustic and a voice,,,,you're going to be able to get away with pretty cheap/low spec gear...


fill us in :)
 
Steenamaroo said:
i think the first thing people are gona wana know is what you record, and how many effects and synths you are likely to use


if you're heaping on a lot of cpu intensive effects and what not, you're gonna need hefty enough gear,

but if you're recording yourself or someone else with an acoustic and a voice,,,,you're going to be able to get away with pretty cheap/low spec gear...


fill us in :)
Click to expand...

Well I'm hoping to have enough oomph to demo a small band - vocals, 2 x guitars and drums but not necessarily recording simultaneously. I'd like enough head room track wise to overdub guitar solos on seperate tracks, multi track vocals etc when the mood takes me. I do use the VST effects for EQ/reverb/delay type stuff but I wouldn't be looking at heavily computer generated music. Synths, midi & virtual guitar amp stuff is a bit outside our remit. Most of the stuff we've done in the past has run to six or seven tracks.
 
just to give you an idea

i started off with a 2.4ghz p4 laptop, with 512 ram, using cool edit pro, then sony vegas

then a 3.0ghz htt with 1gb ram using sony vegas

for what you're describing, something in that area would be cheap as chips, and do the job..


then i had a core2duo @2.4 with 4gb ddr667 using sony vegas, then protools

that would more than do for you, and leave headroom for bigger sessions..


i'm currently on a core2quad@3.4ghz+8gb ram, but then,, i need to be :P
 
Main question also would be, what's your budget?
 
Thanks for your responses so far.

Budget wise I was hoping to get something for around £400, but I have gig money coming in so if I need to spend more it'd just be a question of holding out a bit longer to save up.
 
based on what's been written so far I spec'd up at the Dell site and it gave me this. Any thoughts?
 
Where you looking to reuse your old case or just get a whole new system?
 
buckkillr8 - I'm not particularly feeling inclined to build my own this time round since so much effort was expended on the last one for minimal success. Plus building PCs isn't really my forte so I'm usually relying on the goodwill of friends to sort out teething problems on these things...
 
That's cool. I'm not sure what the market's like over on your side for PC's but that's a fairly old CPU that's listed on that dell. Although I'm not aware of what your current CPU is/was. To me that setup just seems too high price wise. If you're wanting to buy one prebuilt I'd look at something other then Dell also.
 
Dell Vostro from their business line actually works out fairly nicely as a budget audio PC.
You can backstep to XP and ask them to put in a FW card. The machine doesn't come weight down with junk and for the price is not bad at all

It will be a little noisy since it's by no means designed for quiet computing but there are ways around that
 
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