Building a music recording PC..

[iranu]

I personally would drop the ram down to something generic and go with a less expensive (and not so good looking) cooler if not overclocking along with a 9600 pro 128.

You could maybe go for a cwt/Meridian psu from scan.co.uk for @ £35 and save a bit more!

and (yes there is a catch) spend the savings on upgrading speakers!!

Gale are owned by Mr Richer himself. As for Richer Sounds I would advise to do some shopping around as their RSP (recommended selling price) and "heavy discount" can be slightly overhyped imho, although with the right staff you can usually get a discount on an amp/speaker combo. Don't forget decent speaker cable! (try to get it thrown in for free )

Superfi deals page has some nice Tannoy monitors £99.99 for example

http://www.superfi.co.uk/index.cfm/p...m/type/special

Here is a better OT forum for HiFi

http://www.avforums.com/

Good luck

[unrealrocks]

That sounds like a good setup Ab, I personally really like Wharfedale speakers - however there not really monitor speakers but hey.

Hussbob - Can I ask which programs you we're refering to that run in 98/NT and not XP, I'm aware some only run on Macs however Cubase and ProTools both run smooth in XP, and you can't exacly get more pro than ProTools (Robbie Williams, Metallica and Steve Vai have used it for album post production - need I name more, lol).

That is not actually the way latency works - its actually the latency between hearing the click track or other tracks and it recording your playing rather than the two playings.

I know the Delta doesn't take Balanced inputs although some cards do - this is much better to balance in a DI rather than in the card as guitars and other pickup based instruments will get there coils loaded which means you get funny hums, clicks and general quality loss if you dont seperate the grounds out.

Also a word about not having a virus scanner installed what about when your bassist brings this great program he's burned to disk from home and installs it. Or when you decide to do some post production at another location etc. Its allways worth having a VS isntalled, I dunno - I can't help but think a dual boot would be a bit OTT.

Sorry if I'm having a go at you a bit - been a long day, lol.

[Alex]

I don't really know much about the wharfedale speakers, but they have balanced inputs to match the soundcard, bi-amplified, and they sounded quite nice when I had a listen to them instore, so they should be good enough.

[unrealrocks]

I don't really know much about the wharfedale speakers, but they have balanced inputs to match the soundcard, bi-amplified, and they sounded quite nice when I had a listen to them instore, so they should be good enough.

Yeah - there nice speakers, I'm going to buy the 8.4s for my main stereo fronts sometime quite soon (either that or wait for there new range out in Spt/Oct).

[hussbob]

That sounds like a good setup Ab, I personally really like Wharfedale speakers - however there not really monitor speakers but hey.

Hussbob - Can I ask which programs you we're refering to that run in 98/NT and not XP, I'm aware some only run on Macs however Cubase and ProTools both run smooth in XP, and you can't exacly get more pro than ProTools (Robbie Williams, Metallica and Steve Vai have used it for album post production - need I name more, lol).

That is not actually the way latency works - its actually the latency between hearing the click track or other tracks and it recording your playing rather than the two playings.

I know the Delta doesn't take Balanced inputs although some cards do - this is much better to balance in a DI rather than in the card as guitars and other pickup based instruments will get there coils loaded which means you get funny hums, clicks and general quality loss if you dont seperate the grounds out.

Also a word about not having a virus scanner installed what about when your bassist brings this great program he's burned to disk from home and installs it. Or when you decide to do some post production at another location etc. Its allways worth having a VS isntalled, I dunno - I can't help but think a dual boot would be a bit OTT.

Sorry if I'm having a go at you a bit - been a long day, lol.

Someone may already have an older copy of the software or maybe try picking up a an ex studio sound card second hand in future. Basically just a warning to check all compatibility before spending. It is also advise for others thinking of upgrading parts or building as well. The website posted with the link to the soundcard he'd been looking at didn't state XP so you have to investigate that and check out everything. Better to be safe.

Although this is an answer to one persons question I belive a forum question should be answered in a way to make the information useful to not only the asker but also other people in a similar situation and that is what I have tried to do.

Latency is basically a delay between input and output. The latency I describe is a lot more of a problem if you are trying to monitor what is being recorded from the PC outputs. If playing a click track and you were to monitor what you are playing from the output of the PC if you where suffing bad latency you would play a cord in time with the click track but would hear the cord at with a slight delay. This is then enough to mess your entire recording due to going out of time. If you don't listen to the output of what you are playing and just listen to the output of the already recorded tracks or the click track then you should be fine if you keep in time. But if you have low latency then you don't have this problem so you can listen to the output without the delay.

The Delta spec sheets say that it can take an unbalanced signal via the break out box. If it hadn't have been for that then I'd say a DI box is definatly needed.

It may seem over the top but it does make sense to dual boot. If your bassist is stupid enough to bring something over without checking it then he shouldn't be in the band and if you are quick enough to risk the stability of your system by installing an untested program then you ain't really taking recording that seriously. Just advise and also the way alot of home studios are set up.

You could always install an antivirus and just disable it from running in the system tray when not needed but I was talking about recording in a dual boot environment where you can download, virus check and test on the everyday non important install and after making sure everything is fine you can then use it in your recording environment. This way you don't risk losing out on recording time because your system is down.

I also said not to put on an antivirus if you can be sure you wont get infected.