Starting from scratch. Need advice

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cab25

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I'd like to purchase a computer and software for home recording (i'm a newbie) What specs would you reccomend.
H/D Ram Sound board software etc... Thanks for any advice
 
Get a 500MHz+ processor (celeron or pentium..), a big hard drive (20+ GB), a bunch of RAM (128+), a real sound card not one of those sound blasters (but one like event or m-audio, someting 24-bit with enough inupts for you) and monitors to hear your mix with. as far as software goes, n-track isnt bad and its cheap or cool edit pro that costs more..
 
A couple specs to look for in a hard drive: 7200rpm, UDMA/66. Make sure the motherboard you get supports UDMA/66, too (most do these days). If you want to spring for UDMA/100, it couldn't hurt.

As for the CPU, I would go for a PIII over a Celeron unless you plan on messing with overclocking. A Celeron is meant to run at a 66MHz bus speed (I think they're about to release some higher-clocked Celerons that run at 100MHz though), a setting on the motherboard that affects the speed at which many other things communicate. A PIII runs on a 100-133MHz bus, so a PIII-500 is going to theoretically give you better performace than a Celeron 500. It's more complicated than that and dependant on what you're doing, but I'm trying to keep this simple. Since you can get a PIII-800 for under $200 now, I go with that (see http://www.pricewatch.com ).
 
Hey, I'm setting up a new system and am thinking of going with the guys at http://www.wavedigital.com. I'm probably going to buy the Cakewalk Ludicrious System with the MOTU 2408 and CakeWalk 9. What the hell. I happen to have a little bit of cash to burn and I'm sick of messing around with cards and drivers and getting my midi to work right...
I don't think it will solve all of my problems, but I think it will get me past quite a few I'm been having. Good luck.
If you are thinking of doing some serious stuff, go SCSI. It's expensive, but the IO doesn't use up the main CPU resources, so you get a lot more power to do other stuff like effects.
 
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

55mhz computers work great! and process so well! Thats why I bought a Akai DPS16!

-sondriven
 
I use a Gadgetlabs Wave 8/24, n-Track software, a 700 Mhz CPU, 128 RAM, and 7200 RPM hard drive. It works great. The best advice, though, is to read everything you can about it here in the forum. You'll find a system that suits your needs. Good luck.

Squashboy
 
The heck with computers! I'm so sick of trying to come up with the right gear and trying to figure out how to upgrade my brand new computer that a good 4 track analog machine looks real good right now.
 
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