Turtlerock Forum

hey guys i need a bit of advice..
im looking to upgrade my computer system to do some home recordings and im using pro tools. what computer specs do you recommend eg. ram , HD etc.. PC or MAC? im wondering whether to buy a package or to buy the components and build it up myself.. also do you guys know of any computer stores that i could buy the components from to record high quality audio??

any help would be apreciated..

cheers

i am biased towards wintel boxes, purely for the potential bang-for-buck.
but the biggest problem with building my own PC's has been getting them quiet enough for reasonable studio use.

when i can afford a liquid cooled G5, that's where you'll find me.

are you using 001 or 002 or TDM?
if TDM or 001, you obviously need PCI slots.
if 002 then you could use a small form factor unit like the shuttle SPC's, as long as it has firewire. but that would limit the number of internal HDD's to two. to give you an idea, i have four HDD's - two IDE (system and samples) + two SATA (recording) as well as a removable drive bay for archive drives (iDE again).

1gigabyte of memory is really a starting point now - get the fastest ram you can afford.

whatever chip you use, you'd probably want to go an aftermarket cooler like zantech or coolermaster - the stock coolers are noisy.

apart from that, read the protools compatability pages - www.digidesign.com [support] [compatability]

hmmm.

chris.

Here's a tip for you... whatever type of computer you get, have a PCI Firewire card included. But there's Firewire on the motherboard - what am I on about? Simple... hot-plugging a Firewire connection may blow the port and if that port is on your motherboard, it will an expensive repair. If you blow the plug-in card, it's a lot quicker & cheaper to plug in another card.
Oh, no-one hot plugs Firewire? They get away with it? Oh, right.

Imac G5,

Quiet, virus free, huge performance bang for buck, and 1 gig ram chips are cheap as chips now.

Get it with applecare, that way you are covered if hot swapping did happen to blow your motherboard.

PS - I am professionally biased though...

As for componentry, Protools no longer required you to use the Digi interface, you can use selected M-Audio boxes also.

Nevermind, the 002 can actually sound pretty decent with a good clock source, remember to use real preamps, and the best monitors you can't afford.

If you are contemplating using an M-Audio box, check carefully as to the recording/monitoring abilities. Some of the older units could record or monitor but not both at once, which was fairly limiting for some applications. This may have been addressed since M-Audio was bought by Avid.

Buy a pc thats all I can say with a top notch power supply,250 gig hd,2 ghz AMD athlon or opteron processor and 1-2 gig ram,windows xp.Use heatsinks instead of fans wherever and whenever possible,I tested my system last summer for 14 hours a day with no problems,in 35 degree weather.I only used a heatsink on my northbridge,as the northbrige fans are usually the loudest and most annoying but I will be testing some new pc's with heatsinks on the main processor (they should work fine if the sides are off the computer for airflow).They could die but if you back up all your files after each session then it does'nt really matter these days just buy another pc they are so cheap (they are unlikely to die if you buy reasonable quality components ie:a reasonable quality processor may cost $250 a top quality may only be $50 more)..Also a removable drive caddie is extremely handy.

all i can say is
APPLE MAC
and if you have loads of spare cash
just ditch computers all together
get yourself some analogue tape
a neve desk and some heavy outboard gear

For PC love, have a chat to Rob Hindley from Music Computer Systems in Camperdown, Sydney. He's been building rock solid custom made PC's for years, and as the name suggests, he builds computer systems for music and music only.

Check out http://www.musiccomputersystems.com/home.htm