step one

[psymin]

so ive been playing music for most of my life and now I want to start recording it. I figure computer based recording is best so im going to go with a computer based DAW for my first set up. the only problem is I need help deciding what computer to buy.

ive narrowed it down to two.

computer 1: a Dell XPS 9000,
processor = Intel® Core™ i7-920 processor(8MB L3 Cache, 2.66GHz)
memory = 6GB Tri-Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 6 DIMMs
OS hard drive = 500GB
storage hard drive = 500GB

computer 2: Dell Studio
processor = Intel® Core™ 2 Quad processor Q9400 (6MB L2, 2.66GHz, 1333FSB)
memory = 8GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4DIMMs
OS hard drive = 500GB
storage hard drive = 500GB

wich should I go with? the price of computer 1 is $100 more than computer 2 and its mainly because it has a newer processor, you think its worth it?

now one more question

Im pretty sure both of these have enough speed and power to record but after I have one of them im gunna need a way to get the sound in and out. Ive heard an audio interface is what I need for that purpose but ive also heard your computer's sound card can act as an audio interface. which is the better route?

thanks, for any help

 

[gecko zzed]

Either computer is more than enough to deal very capably with audio recording work.

You will need an audio interface if you want to achieve reasonable quality recordings. You can use the onboard soundcard, but results are likely to be highly disappointing because they are not designed for audio recording applications.