Need advice on equipment :)

[newxperiment]

Hello everyone,

I an putting together a new pc and need advice on what type of equipment I would need to make this new machine viable for audio production.

I do not plan on recording any live instruments at this point...I'll mainly just be playing around with programs such as Reason to get a feel for making dance music...I was looking at the E-Mu 1616m and the M-Audio Axiom 49...anything else I would need? I'm not particularly worried about purchasing monitors at this point in time.

[kope]

Monitors are on the top No 1 position on the list. It is like you will enter some galleria with first class pictorials wearing dark sunglasses. Reason is OK but i will recommend FL Studio for that kind of music. E-Mu 1616m is to powerful for what you need now and from the other side is not enough for tomorrow. Software offered in this bundle is great but with FL Studio you will get much more in Dance music. Search for the sound card with les in and outs.

[itsplayed]

As Kope has pointed out....monitors are the most critical componant in that music production suite.....if you can't properly hear what's going on, than what's the point?
The 1616M is overkill for your needs currently, but it is a good interface that will yield 14 inputs at once. If you see a need for more than that in the future, than it wouldn't be the best call.
My advice would be to get a card like the 1212M and begin with the software that's included along with a set of studio monitors.

Do you plan on recording any live tracks....ie.vocals?

[newxperiment]

thank you all for your responses, you're really helping me out, I have extensive knowledge of a lot of PC hardware, but I'm new to the audio recording equipment aspect :D

So what I am getting out of the conversation is that I don't need to spend as much money as I thought to get what I need and monitors should be moved up on my priority list. Due to the nature of the music I want to work with (techno, trance, progressive, etc) I imagine a subwoofer would really help, however I can't afford one atm but want the capability of adding one to my setup later. I was looking at the Studiophile BX8a model for now...any other suggestions would be great. Anything around the $400.00 and under price range would be preferable.

So, with the Axiom 49, the 1212M PCI card, and a pair of monitors, I should be ready to go, correct? Thank you all for your help :)

PS, no I do not plan on recording any vocals atm...I have a few vocal refill packs for Reason that I'll mess around with.

[poorsod]

Reason is OK but i will recommend FL Studio for that kind of music.
Don't listen to him. Fruity Loops' synths are messy, ugly and uninspiring. All FL Studio tracks sound the same. Of course if you have the money I would go one up on Reason and say Reaktor with a host will get you (much) further sound-design-wise.

The EMU 1212M and Axiom 49 are very good choices, though as kope says you will definitely need some monitors. The idea of monitors is to be able to give the most accurate (if not the most musically pleasing) representation of the music as possible, that way you have a good idea of how it's going to sound on consumer sound systems.
PC speakers colour the sound too much to be considered a viable recording/mixing option.

Finally, if you are producing music on your computer bear in mind that you need a fast CPU and a lot of memory (the latter especially if you are working with samples). Wherever possible you will be running Reason devices or VSTs in real-time, and if you overload your CPU you will get clicks, pops and dropouts.

[newxperiment]

Don't listen to him. Fruity Loops' synths are messy, ugly and uninspiring. All FL Studio tracks sound the same. Of course if you have the money I would go one up on Reason and say Reaktor with a host will get you (much) further sound-design-wise.

The EMU 1212M and Axiom 49 are very good choices, though as kope says you will definitely need some monitors. The idea of monitors is to be able to give the most accurate (if not the most musically pleasing) representation of the music as possible, that way you have a good idea of how it's going to sound on consumer sound systems.
PC speakers colour the sound too much to be considered a viable recording/mixing option.

Finally, if you are producing music on your computer bear in mind that you need a fast CPU and a lot of memory (the latter especially if you are working with samples). Wherever possible you will be running Reason devices or VSTs in real-time, and if you overload your CPU you will get clicks, pops and dropouts.

The rig I'm workin on putting together includes the Striker Extreme Mobo w/ Q6600 OC'd to 3.5GHz, 2 Gigs of Corsair Dominator RAM, and a pair of 750 gig deskstar 7k1000s in a striped matrix raid that should outperform WDs 10K RPM Raptors...this is gonna be fun :D

I'll probably wait on intel's new 45nm Penryn core release which should drop the price of the current motherboards/kentsfield+conroe processors...then I can put that $$ towards my interface and monitors :)

[itsplayed]

Why the Striker Extreme MoBo and why only 2GB's of ram?
I'm not saying that you shouldn't go with the Striker board, but research it first for compatiblilty with the EMU card first.
This is a good site to see if others are using the 1212M with the NForce chipset.....
www.productionforums.com (http://www.productionforums.com)
Also why the raid setup?
If this system will be mostly for DAW use......use three drives instead(OS,samples,audio)....a fourth drive for backup is also a good call. 7200rpm drives are more than adequate for the job and will save you some cash.
If your looking to make this system into a gaming machine as well, then I would go with an additional hard drive and seperate the two....basically set it up with two C: drives....one for DAW use and the other for gaming.
You should also get ram that has the lower latency.....so choosing DR3 with a higher latency than DDR2 with lower latency is a mistake and more costly.
You'll see better DAW performance with the lower latency DDR2 ram.

[newxperiment]

Why the Striker Extreme MoBo and why only 2GB's of ram?
Also why the raid setup?
If this system will be mostly for DAW use......use three drives instead(OS,samples,audio)....a fourth drive for backup is also a good call. 7200rpm drives are more than adequate for the job and will save you some cash.

I plan on using this machine for more than just audio processing and decided to future-proof a little bit and opted for the DDR2 ASUS Formula Maximus...I may go for the corsair twin2x4096, but the reviews on the Dominator Ram are pretty reassuring.

Striped raid performance>solo drive. I have other drives laying around that I'll use for storage/samples/backup.

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imst/sb/img/matrixraid.gif

Even though it suggests putting the OS in the protected portion of the RAID I'm going to throw it into the performance partition because I like fast boot times :p.

[itsplayed]

You will not see better performance by running everything from a raid setup......a seperate disc each for the OS/samples/audio will yield better performance.

[sabianq]

itsplayed is right,
2 hard drives minimum, 3 preferred, no need to RAID unless you need the speed for hard core HD video editing. SATA is now cheap and BIG and fast.
max out your computers memory,

I like fast boot times
why do you turn off your computer in the first place, i just turn mine off every once in a while to either clear the page file or reset the system, the fast boot times thing is a silly reason to want to use RAID.

Raid users are people who have extremely valuable and very large DATA sets that need to have redundancy or people who do professional video editing, as one can be very robust and not susceptible to failure and the other can be super fast with a propensity to errors and failure.


the MOBO and CPU really is of no consequence anymore as the top of the line computers from 10 years ago worked great for audio editing.
(current low end CPU's are plenty fast for this)
although, if you plan on surfing the Internet while your computer is processing the audio, i would either keep an old computer around for dedicated web surfing or get yourself a dual or quad core computer.


mo, if you are familiar with adobe products like Photoshop, then you will find that adobe audition is very easy to work with, and extremely powerful too.

[newxperiment]

itsplayed is right,
2 hard drives minimum, 3 preferred, no need to RAID unless you need the speed for hard core HD video editing. SATA is now cheap and BIG and fast.
max out your computers memory,


why do you turn off your computer in the first place, i just turn mine off every once in a while to either clear the page file or reset the system, the fast boot times thing is a silly reason to want to use RAID.

Raid users are people who have extremely valuable and very large DATA sets that need to have redundancy or people who do professional video editing, as one can be very robust and not susceptible to failure and the other can be super fast with a propensity to errors and failure.


the MOBO and CPU really is of no consequence anymore as the top of the line computers from 10 years ago worked great for audio editing.
(current low end CPU's are plenty fast for this)
although, if you plan on surfing the Internet while your computer is processing the audio, i would either keep an old computer around for dedicated web surfing or get yourself a dual or quad core computer.


mo, if you are familiar with adobe products like Photoshop, then you will find that adobe audition is very easy to work with, and extremely powerful too.

I generally don't shut down my pc, but it happens...im an enthusiast, I install/delete/restart all the time. I've used RAID for years, and I realize that the best performance option in this case is using multiple hard drives, but since I already have 2 74 gig raptors in another pc, I plan on using them for OS and APPs, via a striped raid. The other 2 hard drives will be the 750gig wd caviar se16s.

As far as the multitasking goes...I'm goin the Q6600 route so I should be ok. I'll also check out adobe audition, thank you for the advise!

[itsplayed]

Sheds a different light on the subject.....if you have the drives to do this....why not? Just remember to have that case well ventilated.