Need advice on building a pc

Cheez

Its mostly for making music
thats why i posted here(yua can move it somewhere if ya like)

Anyone done somethin like this before,know where i can get any advise?

What would be the best home studio?
Soundcard,software n stuff?

m0rt

You'll find loads of great advice over at the Cakewalk forums - particularly in the Gear forum for making music on a PC.

http://www.cakewalk.com/Forum/

I have everything running smoothly with the following setup:

Intel P4 3ghz processor
MSI NEO2 FISR Motherboard
1gb Kingston DDR 3200 Ram
Maxtor 120gb 7200 Hard Drive with 8MB Cache
M-Audio Delta 66 Sound Card
Cakewalk Sonar 3 Producer
Various softsynths and plugin effects

Sonar is a truly amazing program.

Let me know if you need any more help.

bus77

A good pair of monitor speakers would be on my list,
they dont have to cost the earth either, you can pick up a decent pair around the 150euro mark

some people swear by those creative jobs, personaly I dont trust speakers that weigh less than a kilo:D

m0rt

A good pair of monitor speakers would be on my list

Couldn't agree more!

I got my pair of Behringer Truths from Digital Village and am very happy with them for the price.

My dream monitors would be the Mackie 824s but they cost about a grand sterling. I think the Behringers worked out at just over €400 including shipping (heavy ba$tards due to the build in amps).

They are crisp, loud as you want and you hear everything. I've gotten used to them now but i remember when I first plugged them in and listened to some old CDs - I was hearing things in the music I didn't even know were there

Red Alert

Rogers DB101's are good for nearfield monitoring (go into BT2 in grafton street if you want to hear them - they use them for PA), i've also found the Wharfedale Valdus series to be excellent for those on a budget. I'd stay away from any 'computer' speakers.

EDIT: How could i forget? the JBL Control 1 and Control 5 are not to be sneezed at. the control 1's are quite inexpensive considering the superb quality from them. The control 5's are a bit more pricey but if you've got the cash then they're worth it.

Another sound card for your list might be one of the Yamaha DSP Factory cards.

Executive Steve

the best production forum on the net is over on www.dogsonacid.com its a drum and bass site but the dogs are scarily well informed about hardware software and machine specs.... there is nothing that you need to know that you wont find with a search on the production forum there [the production forum is "the grid" by the way] drum and bass is the hardest music to engineer beacuse of the all the frequency ranges in it and a surprising number of really big names [in drum and bass hip hop breaks and downtempo as well as the odd minimal techno head] post and answer [and ask!] questions there.

Cheez

Thanks people,any recommendations on where to buy stuff from?
Cases etc
And good advise on how to build?
This is my first time at havin a go
Thanks again

_CreeD_

Athlons are quite a bit better for the type of number crunching digital audio involves, you may want to consider it as an option against a P4. The only downside is the heat output and the level of noise you may generate keeping it cool (there are are silent/quiet cooling options out there though).
Get plenty of HDD space, with a dedicated drive for audio if possible. Raid0 is a great addition to a DAW.
Ditto for ram if you plan to do anything more than mix loops. I'd go for 1Gb minimum.
Wireless Kbds/mice are also a good idea too since you're likely to have a lot of cables from your audio side anyway and it's handy to be able to thrown them out of the way when you want to get to work on your Midi Kbd.

Otherwise I'd agree with all the above. Sonar's superb, the delta's sound great and have low latency etc.

Red Alert

Even a dual-processor machine might do the job depending on how well your sound-application load balances, the MB's can be a bit pricey but they tend to have RAID0/1 on them as well so it's not a bad bargain.

I'd really recommend having a dedicated RAID volume for your music. Shove in an ordinary drive C: on your primary master, maybe a DVD-RW on your secondary master and install a separate RAID PCI card. It'll mean that your RAID array should perform just a wee bit better.