Computer for music production

Originally Posted by ken

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You don't need top-of-the-line CPU power (especially if, as you said, you're only editing and not recording on your system). For years, I ran a 550 Mhz PIII and didn't have any trouble recording 4 tracks at a time at 24-bit, 44.1 kHz. Unless you're planning to deal w/16+ tracks and plenty of plug-ins on each channel, I'd save money and get a used P4 or Athlon. 1 GB of ram is plenty.

I'll have to disagree and say that P4 is the worst ************* ever. but aside from that, going with a plain old athlon seems silly nowadays as they can't even decode simple HD films and probably won't run Vista at a full capability.

Originally Posted by Lamo

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I'll have to disagree and say that P4 is the worst ************* ever. but aside from that, going with a plain old athlon seems silly nowadays as they can't even decode simple HD films and probably won't run Vista at a full capability.
You shouldn't be running Vista if you're recording audio.

Originally Posted by ken

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You shouldn't be running Vista if you're recording audio.

why?

Right now I use two good condenser mics to record into an M Audio mini disk. The quality in a dead room is very high. I need the computer to manipulate this information, and again, I don't think I'll ever do any recording to the machine. I use a MIDI keyboard for scoring, sometimes pretty complex at that. When you're running Reason, Cubase/Protools and something like Sibelius or Finale all at the same time, you definately need a lot of power.

Originally Posted by Violinist

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Right now I use two good condenser mics to record into an M Audio mini disk. The quality in a dead room is very high. I need the computer to manipulate this information, and again, I don't think I'll ever do any recording to the machine. I use a MIDI keyboard for scoring, sometimes pretty complex at that. When you're running Reason, Cubase/Protools and something like Sibelius or Finale all at the same time, you definately need a lot of power.
Protools and Cubase are two completely different beasts. Protools uses proprietary hardware, and much of it acts as a seperate processor for audio (like the Digidesign HD3), and, yes, Digidesign hardware negates what I said earlier about your CPU being the determining factor when mixing digitally. But, well, that assumes you're willing to spend 13k on a studio (cheaper Digidesign uses Protools LE, which isn't that great from what I've heard).

What year is the minidisc recorder from? If it's only capturing 16 bits, you might benefit from a new 24-bit, 96kHz interface (the improvement is very noticable from 16 to 24 bits), along with new converters (older ADC's don't have anything on even the modest converters of today). Whatever floats your boat, though.

Originally Posted by Lamo

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why?
From what I've heard, it's much more labor intensive on the system than XP.

Originally Posted by ken

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Protools and Cubase are two completely different beasts. Protools uses proprietary hardware, and much of it acts as a seperate processor for audio (like the Digidesign HD3), and, yes, Digidesign hardware negates what I said earlier about your CPU being the determining factor when mixing digitally. But, well, that assumes you're willing to spend 13k on a studio (cheaper Digidesign uses Protools LE, which isn't that great from what I've heard).

What year is the minidisc recorder from? If it's only capturing 16 bits, you might benefit from a new 24-bit, 96kHz interface (the improvement is very noticable from 16 to 24 bits), along with new converters (older ADC's don't have anything on even the modest converters of today). Whatever floats your boat, though.

Who...are...you?

And yes, you're correct: the very, very minimal perks to using Vista are negated by the fact it's a system hog.

I think that, beside the ridiculous pricing scheme, advising against a Mac set-up is ridiculous. Boot Camp nullifies the need for a Windows PC and Logic is worth it, in my mind.

Originally Posted by ken

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From what I've heard, it's much more labor intensive on the system than XP.

wait, you're advising against going with a dual core setup and you have problems with Vista because it uses too much resources?

Originally Posted by jonglover

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Who...are...you?

And yes, you're correct: the very, very minimal perks to using Vista are negated by the fact it's a system hog.


yes, it uses more memory but don't overblow it. A few sticks of ram doesn't cost a leg and an arm. For me, Vista is much more convenient to use for everyday purposes.

If you do get a mac, make sure it has all the latest updates...I can crash any unpatched mac with a bluetooth enabled phone.

Originally Posted by Lamo

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yes, it uses more memory but don't overblow it. A few sticks of ram doesn't cost a leg and an arm. For me, Vista is much more convenient to use for everyday purposes.

It's not just resources. As with any product, especially such a large, complex piece of software, I never buy in early. Wait until SP1 or so. Also, my company was one of the security companies hired to do the year long code audit of Vista. I can assure you, we won't be deploying it enterprise-wide for years, if not longer.

From my own personal use of Vista, it's just not very stable relative to the other OS's I use. That alone is enough reason to avoid it.

Who...are...you?

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Ken has in the past posted some (really great) links to songs he has written or collaborated on. He had one called "Ode to a Commie" or something. Sounded kind of like Belle & Sebastian.. I love it.

Originally Posted by Brian SD

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Ken has in the past posted some (really great) links to songs he has written or collaborated on. He had one called "Ode to a Commie" or something. Sounded kind of like Belle & Sebastian.. I love it.
Complete and utter derail...

Ken, can you put that song up again? I'd like to download it.

A.

Originally Posted by briancl

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It's not just resources. As with any product, especially such a large, complex piece of software, I never buy in early. Wait until SP1 or so. Also, my company was one of the security companies hired to do the year long code audit of Vista. I can assure you, we won't be deploying it enterprise-wide for years, if not longer.

From my own personal use of Vista, it's just not very stable relative to the other OS's I use. That alone is enough reason to avoid it.

I dunno, I've been running it for two weeks so far without a reboot. I do the regular MS Office thing (Office 2007 is a huge improvement btw), a bit of coding in VS.net 2005 (not a lot since most is done at work) and quite a bit of gaming recently. I haven't had any problems except getting damned VPN to work, but then I had tons of problems under XP too. I think a large part of it is the dsl modem which has an integrated router that won't let me change the MTU settings. I have older hardware but lots of ram.

Setting everything up was a bit of a pain with the UAC and all that, but now that everything is installed it's no bother. I think the cries of vista being a system hog are really just applicable for people with really old machines. And stability is really non-issue for most people. Do you really think they'd RTM a product that was blue-screening on people with any regularity after all the clamor about vista being better in every way? They have a lot riding on this release. The fact is, any critical bugs that happened to slip-through will be fixed VERY quickly so I don't see what the big deal is about waiting till SP1 for home use. In a corporate environment where any system downage can cost you thousands, if not millions per hour, I'd agree. But even if the worst happened at home, it would likely only mean a quick reboot.

Hi, so someone suggested if I'm going to use the new windows, that I get 4 gigs of ram. I looked on New Egg and it seems like Patriot offers the best price, but when I clicked on it, it offered all these AMD products so I'm guessing it's not compatible?

So if anyone can point me to really good ram (4gigs) on New Egg, I'd appreciate it.

Also, I will run Sibelius, Pro Tools, Reason 3.0 (with considerable plugins at times) and possible other programs, so I really don't want any kinks. Will 4 gigabytes of ram guarantee no stupid waiting time?

And is 10k rpm still a bad idea for a hard drive?

PS. Is this good?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820146691