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Need help constructing audio-based system...

grn

Junior Member
I'm very new to these boards, but I need help picking out what type of computer I should purchase for recording audio. I'm working on setting up a studio and I need a pretty high-end machine to do this.

I've been looking at a Pentium 4 around 3.0Ghz, with an 80 gig hard drive (preferably with 10,000rpm) and 1 gig of DDR ram. That's about as far as my knowledge goes. I do have 768 DDR Ram from a previous computer that has died. I also have a CD Burner, an excellent sound card, two hard drives (40gb and 30gb), and a floppy drive/monitor/keyboard/mouse and all that good stuff. I don't need an operating system.

I would like to know specifically what kind of RAM I should get, what type of hard drive, and what is the best price? Where should I get it?

I've been looking at buying this: http://www.z-buy.com/product.asp?item=ZB-X6361

I've also been looking at several on Pricewatch.com. I don't know what the best motherboard would be for this or RAM or what. Any help is appreciated.

-Mike
 
Your current 768mb of ram might do just fine. You could get a raptor which is a 10k rpm hd, but I don't think you really need 10k rpm hd anyways. Maybe check out something from seagate.
I would check out newegg, as they have a nice customer service and pretty nice prices.
froogle.google.com is good for price checking too.
 
Get bigger storage with RAID(better for big file transfers), seagate only since you need absolute silence in a recording studio... and you might want to check out watercooling/sound dampening 😉
 
Well if you just do something like running optical cable to the pc, then it should not be in the same place as where the recording is being done. In that case noise isn't an issue. I really doubt you'd be maxing the transfer rate on a single drive, so raid would be a waste. But more info on what you're doing is required.
 
i say get a pentium 4 3.2C 800FSB w/ hyperthreading, 1 gb of pc3200 ram, a 74gb 10,000rpm harddrive, and etc. can you tell me the amount of $ you are willing to spend? from that, i can compile you a more exact and "better for your needs" pc.
 
You don't need much for an audio machine, unless you plan on recoring more than 12 tracks of audio at a time.. even then you still need to get a card for it.

our Midi machine here is a 700mhz Athlon with 512mb of ram, the digital audio workstation is a AMD 2500+ with 512mb of ram and the 5.1 mixing station is a AMD Athlong 1ghz T-Bird with 756mb ram. Each has swappable slaves for moving all the files around at once. You don't need a raid setup unless you are doing to be doing massive amount of recording analog audio in each take. The only thing special you really need is low noise sound cards. Digidesign has some nice sound cards, but Sound Blasters will do in a pinch although you can get some static from all the gear inside your box.
 
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