Building a music recording PC..

[Alex]

Well, as in the title, Im building a PC for a housemate, almost entirely for recording music, and games etc aren't much of an issue. This is what I've come up with so far, probably a little subject to change as half of it is offers, but anyway.

Anyone have any comments/reccomend any changes?

[iMc]

Id be very tempted to get a Raptor HDD as well as a general purpose drive. When recording and editing sound you want as low latencies as you can and a quick HDD really helps that.

Everything else looks good though. I dont know much about sound cards at the moment.

1Gb of RAM looks good, 1.5Gig would be awesome if you could cut costs elsewhere.

[r1zeek]

If its for sound recording wouldn't you need need a quiet system?
Also make sure you get SP1a with your copy of windows, otherwise it won't be able to recognise the 200Gb hard drive

[directhex]

sound RECORDING?

you should really be building something zalman-based - a reserator or tnn500

[Bruno]

It depends if you mean sound recording as in from sources such as a mic, or if it's for say recording a mix (I use soundforge for that, normal IDE HD is fine). If it's recording from a mic then you will need a silent PC, well away from the mic - any ambience is recorded and is a pain in the ass. If it's for something like a mix and the input is direct then it doesn't really matter.

If it's going to be for sound editing then a fast HD is nice, but I've never had any problems (that's with SATA and IDE).

What's is your friend going to use if for more specifically?

[Alex]

Basically, instruments direct in through a mixer desk, effects unit, or whatever. Only 1 instrument at a time. Also a bit of mic for vox.

I thought about sound proofing - but with a quiet PSU, and CPU cooler, there isnt much noise to be made. May get a silencer for the GFx, just to cut that out.

He's only amateur really, and just wants it to sound as good as it can for the money. If it is still too noisy when its built then maybe get some soundproofing material, but very queit is as good as silent in this.

[SilentDeath]

A few points:

9600 256mb is complete waste of money. Get the cheaper 128mb version, you will NOT notice any difference atall, infact the 128mb one might possibly have faster mem, making it much better.

Why do you need a dvdrw and a dvd rom. Only need one! use daemon tools to mount from hdd if you dont want to swap disks. or if its music rip it to hdd.

I cant say Ive heard great things iirc about the areo 7, iirc. Look at the thermalright slk800 or better. I have a slk800 and it cools very well on a high overclocked (2.4ghz 2.1v) 1700+ (a lot more heat than a stock 2500+, by a long distance) with a fast fan. It cools very well with a silent fan also.

HDD - I wouldnt bother with a raptor, you do not need it for this - If I can record full quality uncompressed avi 720*568 video with no problems, which takes about 1gb per minute, then I dont think you will have problems with sound, even if editing it.
I would get another small drive for the OS to keep them seperate. Although to reduce noise from hdd you could just partition them. For a small drive look for 5400rpm WITH fluid dynamic bearings to keep niose low. I think the old seagates were (new ones are slow + niosy).
Some maxtors are a bit niosy, some are silent, even in the same model range. Also Ive just had one die on me
I would have to recommend samsung spinpoint based on everyone elses reviews of them, they are quieter and perform better, iirc.

1gb of ram is plenty for what your doing. Theres no reson to buy faster ram as that mobo will be limiting it.

Silencing:
Passive cooling is not a good idea, a silent fan will give a LOT better cooling performance.
hdd - mount a akasa hdd cooler on the bottom blowing on the chip side. This is important as the drive will get hot with no cooling. You should then mount this in a cd drive bay with elastic bands to remove all viabration to the case. You can then, around the elasatic bands fill any areas with packaging foam (like a sponge for washing a car - not polystyrine/bubblewrap) to silence any whiny noise from it.
These fans are noisy at 12v and so you need to run them at 5v or 7v to keep them quiet.

[Alex]

I only chose the 256MB version 9600 as it was cheaper than almost all the 128MB, but I'll probably have a look around. May well go 9500 pro from ReTek for £50 instead anyway.. anyone know if the arctic cooling VGA silencer fits the 9500 series? Or if retek refurb stuff still comes with a warratee etc?

DVD-RW and DVD was a personal preference of his, though may well discuss this with him, as, like you say, its not really necessary at all.

As for HDD, I do seem to remember hearing good things about the SpinpointP series, my well go that way then, if I can find them cheap enough.

Is it worth the money to buy an HDD cooler then? I hadn't really considered it tbh..

I'll have to discuss this a bit more with him, as budget is limiting I think.

Cheers for any help guys, keep it coming if anything else comes to mind!

[unrealrocks]

OK - First off, shove the K7 CPU out the window, there NOT good for this sort of thing, (I hate to say it) but pentiums are better

Cooling - as long as its quietish all you need is a single baffle infront of the PC in your studio room to where your recording for that to matter (music stands and acoustic matting = great cheap sound baffles).

Although I would also recommend mAudio - that card will only allow one input at a time. I would recommend the Delta 44 as that allows 4 ins and 4 outs which obviously can be much more versatile, if he can afford it I would choose the Delta 1010 which allows 10 ins and 10 outs. Don't buy from Kustom, its a rip ... http://www.soundslive.co.uk/moreinfo.asp?ID=114 would be great, and you can take the aux outs on your desk straight onto that. For a rock recording eg you could do everything but the drums in one go - then use all 10 channels for the drums Whereas with only 4 inputs your going to be mixing down for the drums anyways (im taking a guess at what he wants it for, but still).

Just read your previous post ...

Why are you using a mixer if your only inputting one thing at a time? decent cards allow for high gain ajustments so all the desk does is reduce quality and increase complexity.

I would then get a good mastering grade soundcard ... http://www.soundslive.co.uk/moreinfo.asp?ID=3218

[Kezzer]

Why not get a sound recording desk? Jeez :/

[Alex]

OK - First off, shove the K7 CPU out the window, there NOT good for this sort of thing, (I hate to say it) but pentiums are better

Cooling - as long as its quietish all you need is a single baffle infront of the PC in your studio room to where your recording for that to matter (music stands and acoustic matting = great cheap sound baffles).

Although I would also recommend mAudio - that card will only allow one input at a time. I would recommend the Delta 44 as that allows 4 ins and 4 outs which obviously can be much more versatile, if he can afford it I would choose the Delta 1010 which allows 10 ins and 10 outs. Don't buy from Kustom, its a rip ... http://www.soundslive.co.uk/moreinfo.asp?ID=114 would be great, and you can take the aux outs on your desk straight onto that. For a rock recording eg you could do everything but the drums in one go - then use all 10 channels for the drums Whereas with only 4 inputs your going to be mixing down for the drums anyways (im taking a guess at what he wants it for, but still).

Just read your previous post ...

Why are you using a mixer if your only inputting one thing at a time? decent cards allow for high gain ajustments so all the desk does is reduce quality and increase complexity.

I would then get a good mastering grade soundcard ... http://www.soundslive.co.uk/moreinfo.asp?ID=3218

That does look to be a mightily funky soundcard... but how on earth do you connect up your speakers to listen to what you've recorded? It has 2 1/4 outputs. I can't quite figure it out, are they like guitar cable jacks, and one for left and one for right, or bother stereo, like the larger headphone jacks? And how does one connect these to phono inputs on speakers?

Im a little new to this recording gear malarkey, the more I read the more different magazines are telling me to go in different directions!

[-mb-]

I reckon that for top quality music recording you would be better with a Plextor DVD+/-RW drive. The PlexTools can help with burning top quality music - you can control things like the "pit size" on the CD/DVD so that although you may store less, the quality will be higher.

Plextor is what you really need for top quality semi-professional work, NEC are rather mediocre mass-market stuff.

Get this if you can: http://www.plextor.be/products/dvd_r...choice=PX-712A

[Bruno]

That does look to be a mightily funky soundcard... but how on earth do you connect up your speakers to listen to what you've recorded? It has 2 1/4 outputs. I can't quite figure it out, are they like guitar cable jacks, and one for left and one for right, or bother stereo, like the larger headphone jacks? And how does one connect these to phono inputs on speakers?

They are 1/4" jack outputs, they go directly into amplified speakers or a studio amp.

These amplified speakers, for example, take 1/4" jack or XLR plugs:
http://www.decks.co.uk/products/speakers/alesis/m1_a

And this is an amp that has the 1/4" inputs:
http://www.soundentertainmentlightin...udio_large.jpg

[Kumagoro]

I cant really see why you even need to spend that amount of money on a PC just to do sound recording. If the noise from the PC is that much of a prob stick the box outside the room and just have the monitor mouse and keyboard inside and feed the wires through. Unless your recording DVDA then even the cheapest duron PC would do.

Or you could just undervolt and wind the freqs down on a mobile barton.
and have it passive.

[BlackSheep]

... maybe doing sound recording is the excuse for getting it ---- you often need an excuse to spend that amount on a new PC

[Alex]

Its just a decent PC, but with largeish extra budget for soundcard and monitors/speakers.

Currently thinking - get the Radeon 9550 from Ebuyer instead of the 9600, get a 19"CRT instead of the 17" TFT, get the soundcard suggested by unrealrocks, as it does look good, and get a decent set of active monitors for it, and keep everything else the same, maybe a different HSF combo.