Time to upgrade the studio workstation...

[JoLLyRoGer]

Hi guys. I'm looking for some advice on upgrading my current home studio PC. I 'm looking for the best bang for the buck to increase my storage and overall processing power.

My biggest priority for this upgrade is to increase overall system throughput and eliminate digital burps and other odd nuiances when I'm manipulating sevearal audio tracks at once.

The PC runs a stripped down version of Windows XP with absolutely no frills except for media player. Everthing that is not the bare-bones OS has been gutted including IE. This is what I have to work with and I don't want to replace anything I don't need to. Items denoted with '**' are items I plan to recycle.

Current rig:

Athlon 'Classic' 700Mhz
ASUS K7V Mobo
768MB SDRam (PC133)
40GB Maxtor DiamondMax
** ATI Rage 128 (PCI) - X2
** 19" CRT CyberVision C92 - X2
** SB Audigy Platinum w/ Live Drive 2
300Watt PS
** 16x-DVD ROM
** 16X-DVD Burner (DL)
** TASCAM FW1884 FireWire DAW Controller
** ATX Case

Keep in mind that this is a purpuse-built PC for recording live sound its only functions in life are to run Cubase SX or Sonar 5 Pro and to run them well.

This means things like bus speeds, Hard Drive seek times, Gobs of low-latency RAM, overall processing power and anything related to audio manipulation are important. Things like video processing and how well it plays games are not. Recommendations?

Thanks In Advance!
JR..

 

[GrammatonJP]

And new conroe/am2 and even 939 based desktop are good.

 

[gilgamar]

i'm in the same position, also trying to build a home computer for audio editing and occasionally recording. wondering what a good setup would be. bearing in mind latency is a huge factor when recording, and cpu usage can also get quite heavy when tons of effects are being used. disk performance would be a bonus when loading enormous projects with gigs of audio.

 

[pukemon]

With a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) for home recording, a lot of the specs of your machine depends on how many track of audio you plan on using, whether you plan on using software synths and effects, and whether you have the need to simultaneously record multiple tracks at a time.

If you plan on going the software route (VST, DXi, RTAS, or AudioUnit plugins) getting the most powerful system you can will work well. Ie, 2GB of more RAM, and the newest, fastest, processor and hard discs. And then you have to worry about heat and noise. The best "out of the box" pre-configured DAW would probably be the Mac Pro - but your only choice of DAW software is Logic.

If your DAW software can make use of multiple processors, or multiple cores, then the Core2 Duo or Athlon64X2 is the way to go. For audio production and editing, a hard drive like the Western Digital Raptor actually makes some difference. As for RAM, 2GB is a good amount.