im looking to buy a new PC, mainly used for audio recording, film scoring etc

could someone please give me some guidelines for buying components of the PC? I don't know nearly as much about PC's as i do about music!

How much RAM will i need? how fast a motherboard? how much hard drive space? how powerfull a processor? AMD or intel? what software is best for film scoring on PC?

Any help appreciated!

Hi there pedders,

Whats your budget?

As far as RAM is concerned I would go for at least 1GB of RAM, if you envisage using soft samplers that stream directly from RAM then you may want to consider getting more.

Motherboard choice is critical - but for compatability more than anything. Certain brands consistently produce good motherboards such as ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI.

Hard drive space AND speed is critical for audio applications. You can never have enough space. I'd consider having at least one dedicated audio drive with a size of at least 120GB - more if you can afford it.

AMD and Intel is an old debate. At the present moment in time it is widely accepted that for the money AMD will give better performance than Intel. The new AMD64 chips are looking very good for audio work.
If you have the money then the dream setup at the moment is an AMD Dual Opteron system but now we're talking Apple Mac money!

As far as software goes, it depends on a few things;

Will you be working in stereo or 5.1 etc
Do you prefer to work with notation or piano roll?
Will you be needing to move your work to other studios frequently?
What combination of MIDI and Audio?

At present most people would probably suggest Cubase/Nuendo, Pro Tools or Logic. If you find one that you like the workflow of then this is almost as important as the features the software offers.

Hope this helps,
ben m

That helps a lot man thanks.

I guess my budget is hopefully under a grand. (it would be more but i just crashed the car...)

What you've said about motherboards is super helpfull, I didn't even know some wern't compatable with certain hardware!

Ok, this AMD64 sounds good to me - my friend reccomended them aswell.
What motherboard and RAM are compatable with that?

And are you suggesting partitioning my hard drive to devote one to audio stuff, or buying a seperate detatchable one?

Im afraid i have to say no to getting a mac because 1. I want to play one or two games, and 2. I just crashed the car...

(i have an M-audio audiophile 2496 and cubase VST if it helps)

Hi Pedders,

If you want to go for an AMD64, then there are 2 'flavours' available. Socket 754 and 939.
Socket 939 is slightly newer and may prove to be more upgradeable, but 754 has been round a bit longer and some user reports suggest it is slightly more stable.
Depending on which you go for, this also dictates which motherboard you'll need to get.

At present, the MSI Neo motherboards are getting good reviews for use with AMD64. Also, check out the ASUS and Gigabyte options - a cheap retailer (presuming you're in the UK) are here;
http://www.microdirect.co.uk

Most of these motherboards will support DDR400 RAM, sometimes referred to as PC3200.
There are generic makes of RAM although for a few £ more you can pickup budget sticks from name manufacturers such as Geil, Kingston and Corsair. This is usually worth the extra few quid.

As for the hard drives, if you are serious about music making then i'd strongly recommend having at least 2 drives in your system - 1 for windows/programs etc and 1 for audio files/projects.

I'd also suggest that you partition your 'system' drive into 2, one just for audio work and one for games/internet/office etc.

Hope this helps,
ben m

Hi Pedders,

As per usual Ben hit the nail right on the head.

If you want a system that you know will cut it for heavy audio and give stability too then I can tell you what I use and have found to be very successful. I built this system for my UK studio and it works so well that I have now replicated the system in my Spanish studio. Here is the spec:


ASUS A7N8X
AMD Athlon XP3200 Barton
1 Gb DDR PC3200 RAM
Matrox G450 Millennium duel head graphics card
Maxtor 7200 120 Gb Hard drive for recording
80 Gb 7200 hard drive for OS and back up.
400 W power supply.

Sounds expensive right! Wrong, should cost you less than £450 if you assemble yourself.

I use two TFT monitors but CRT’s are a lot cheaper!

Ok this system is a bit dated now, but it is still pretty good bang for your buck and will leave you some money in the bank for the motor

I run Cubase SX2 on this system and it is awesome! With 16 full tracks flown in from my Mackie SDR 24/96 the CPU meter in SX2 is just visible and the hard disk usage meter does not even show when playing back, and that includes dynamics processors running on 50% of the tracks. Cubase VST5/32 runs well on the system too, but it does tend to generate a click on screen refresh during scrolling (not sure why), on SX2 this does not happen. I use Win 2K but XP may be even more efficient?

Anyway hope this helps, as unless someone tells you what they are having success with it can all be a bit of a minefield, I certainly learnt the hard way.

Good luck,

Jules.