Building an Audio PC

D

DanMattia

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 22, 2005
Messages
354
Hi everyone,

I've done a search in this forum for both "Music" and "audio" and didn't find anything relevent, so pardon me if I missed something.

I'm putting together a hypothetical build for a DJ friend of mine who'll be mixing songs and doing a bunch of audio things on his computer. I've built gaming and workstation rigs, but never an audio rig, so I need a bit of help.

I know he'll need a pretty decent processor and a lot of RAM, as well as HDD space, but I don't know which sound card would be good, which processor would be decent to get, etc.

Here's the specifics:
$1000 budget
Intel or AMD, doesn't matter which
SATA motherboard (the newest type of SATA...II or III?)
Quiet PSU, fans, etc.

Any help? I'll be here to answer questions if I've been too vague.
 
B. W. said:
What I came up with.

You can change the video card and ram. Just threw those two in there.

Does he need speakers / keyboard / mouse?
Click to expand...

Thanks for your help.

The video card will probably be dropped down to a 6600, and Windows XP Pro would do fine; he doesn't need 64-bit. The RAM's fine as well, and he does need keyboard/mouse; unsure about speakers.

Is the 3200+ good enough? I have a 3200+ in my gaming rig, and it's sufficient for me, but is it alright for making mixes/audio etc.? I was thinking more dual-core, or maybe even Intel.

Thanks for your help! It's much appreciated.
 
DanMattia said:
Thanks for your help.

The video card will probably be dropped down to a 6600, and Windows XP Pro would do fine; he doesn't need 64-bit. The RAM's fine as well, and he does need keyboard/mouse; unsure about speakers.

Is the 3200+ good enough? I have a 3200+ in my gaming rig, and it's sufficient for me, but is it alright for making mixes/audio etc.? I was thinking more dual-core, or maybe even Intel.

Thanks for your help! It's much appreciated.
Click to expand...
I picked the x64 edition because it's actually cheaper (for some reason :confused: ).

He might be able to benifit from a dual core processor if he's going to be doing a lot of multitasking.

EDIT: Just noticed that there's no DVD drive! :eek: Might want to reconsider the configuration after all. :(
 
MrGuvernment said:
dual core - NO reason not to go Dual Core.
Click to expand...
Unless your on a budget. ;)

Now $1000 should be able to get you a nice dual core rig, but you might just have to cut a few components.
 
no reason not to choose a Pentium D 805 chip , they are good for this!

heres a quick system build

ASUS P5LD2-VM Motherboard
Intel 805 2.66 Dual Core Pentium D
2GB DDR2 Memory
whatever hd , video , you want
Sound Blaster XFI Card
 
CrAzYsPyDeR said:
no reason not to choose a Pentium D 805 chip , they are good for this!

heres a quick system build

ASUS P5LD2-VM Motherboard
Intel 805 2.66 Dual Core Pentium D
2GB DDR2 Memory
whatever hd , video , you want
Sound Blaster XFI Card
Click to expand...

Going on this recommendation, I just made a wishlist together on Newegg for the cost of $900 or so dollars. Same motherboard, processor, and soundcard, 2gb of Corsair ValueSelect RAM, eVGA 6600, Seagate Barracude 300gb SATA-II, DVD-ROM, XP Home SP2, Antec TruePowerII PSU, Coolermaster Centurion.
 
It seems to me that the E-MU 0404 is much better for audio production than the x-fi, and it's about $20 cheaper. I started a thread about good soundcards for music and that one was recommended highly.
 
Slartibartfast said:
It seems to me that the E-MU 0404 is much better for audio production than the x-fi, and it's about $20 cheaper. I started a thread about good soundcards for music and that one was recommended highly.
Click to expand...

That looks a tad too "involved", for lack of a better word. This DJ isn't very computer/tech-savvy, and the X-FI looks fine for what he'll be doing without the need for all the adapters and whatnot. And $20 isn't a very big problem in the grand scheme of things, so price isn't the issue.
 
If you're seriously trying to listen to high fidelity audio, than I would highly recommend not going with the Creative X-Fi.

If this is seriously supposed to be an audio only rig, you should try to spend as much money as you possibly can on the sound card alone.

If you're still insitant on creative you can look into EMU (Creative owns them).
http://www.emu.com/products/welcome.asp?category=505

Other options include M-Audio, Lynx, and RME. There are tons of other professional audio devices as well.

Edit: Well he wants to do DJ work, or if he wants to mess with midi interfaces etc, you could also look into things like the Presonus Firepod (or the less expensive Firebox). M-Audio has tons of stuff for professional audio creation.
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list&ID=pciinterfaces

DanMattia said:
That looks a tad too "involved", for lack of a better word. This DJ isn't very computer/tech-savvy, and the X-FI looks fine for what he'll be doing without the need for all the adapters and whatnot. And $20 isn't a very big problem in the grand scheme of things, so price isn't the issue.
Click to expand...

Well if he's TRULY interested in getting serious about using a computer to do DJ work, than he had better start learning. Not spending the time to learn how to use professional tools to do professional work is just silly. If you're willing to spend the money, than you should also be willing to spend the time.

EMU, M-Audio etc, will probably give him much better options with inputs and outputs of different sources. The rest of the system won't matter nearly as much as this one component of the system.
You could probably just have it run a 3000+ and 1gb of RAM, 6600gt, and virtually any stable motherboard, so long as it has a good soundcard.
 
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