What would you do with this amount of $$$

[guitar kid]

I'm not exactly brand new to computer recording, but I still am not sure what to get for my WHOLE system. I have $2210 and I wanna know what you all would do with a budget like that (I need the comp, mixer, and soundcard. I've got everything else) What would you do?

 

[Gidge]

I see you have 2210 dollars, but are u poised for greatness?

 

[Slackmaster2K]

Ahh the Ken D. Webber jokes will never stop

Expect to spend $1500 on your computer w/monitor and nice soundcard (NOT including software). Whether you NEED an outboard mixer will depend on your soundcard selection and personal preference.

You might spend more, you might spend less, but $1500 is a good figure for a decent DAW. That will leave you with $700 left over for your mixer if you want one.

I won't even begin to tell you what you need as far as a mixer, but I some guidelines for the computer would be:

Intel Processor. At LEAST a Celeron 400. A PII 350 or better or PIII is preferred. The Athlon chip by AMD is pretty good, but the support for its chipset(s) is not as good (yet).

128MB PC133 SDRAM. Don't get any less than 128MB and don't spend more than $130 on it. (e.g. you don't need ECC & registered memory for a DAW)

Look for a 7200RPM ATA/66 hard drive with a 2MB cache. IBM and Quantum make good drives that work well right out of the box. Avoid Maxtor and Western Digital.

Your motherboard selection is important. Get something upgradeable & without ANY integrated components.

A 17" monitor makes life much easier.

Windows NT Workstation 4.0 or Windows 2000. Don't suffer with Windows9X...it's just not worth it.

That's basically all that's really *important* in a basic system. You will have to determine your needs when selecting a soundcard and mixer.

Slackmaster 2000

 

[Gary Hendershot]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Slackmaster2K:
...A 17" monitor makes life much easier...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

A generic Korean 19-inch monitor is an even better buy as of late -- not much more than a 17-inch and worth every penny when it comes to visual real estate!! A generic 21-inch monitor, though, is considerably more. The price goes up exponentially once you leave 19-inch territory.

For those not quite on a severe budget, the Viewsonic 17-inch (PS-775) and 19-inch (PS-790) spacesaver monitors both have incredibly small cases. I'm not much of a Viewsonic fan (I prefer the visual quality of Mitsubishi Diamondtron tubes), but Viewsonic has done an excellent job on reducing bulk with this monitor line.