Perhaps that is the case depending on location. Every new generation of processor has components that work well with it, and that's where big box stores have the PC experts like Fry's can build a $700 price range gaming PC that will work well with recording and DAWs. For $50. I didn't know much about how to build a PC, went there with some specs I wanted, and walked out the store with a custom built PC that was totally different from what I had in mind. Nevertheless, this custom 2012 PC lasts me longer than any computer I've ever had. And, it should be good for another 5 years.
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Ideal beginner's recording computer
- Thread starter Bard2dbone
- Start date
Perhaps that is the case depending on location. Every new generation of processor has components that work well with it, and that's where big box stores have the PC experts like Fry's can build a $700 price range gaming PC that will work well with recording and DAWs. For $50. I didn't know much about how to build a PC, went there with some specs I wanted, and walked out the store with a custom built PC that was totally different from what I had in mind. Nevertheless, this custom 2012 PC lasts me longer than any computer I've ever had. And, it should be good for another 5 years.
Current plan is :
MOTU 8a
Audient ASP880
Radial JDI
Rode NT1 (I'm told it's the best cheap LDC mic around, even though I have no personal experience with one yet.)
SM57's aplenty
The computer this will all feed into remains hypothetical at this point.
MOTU 8a
Audient ASP880
Radial JDI
Rode NT1 (I'm told it's the best cheap LDC mic around, even though I have no personal experience with one yet.)
SM57's aplenty
The computer this will all feed into remains hypothetical at this point.
The Motu interface looks complicated with its internal DSP etc. and you pay for more than you need.
I would have a look at the Audient id14 (it has an Adat interface so you can use all the inputs of the Audient ASP880). It's half the price of the Motu. Or as an alternative the Universal Audio interfaces like the Twin Duo MKII. This has an internal DSP, too, but the plugins of Universal Audio seem to be among the best on the market and you can use them only with their interfaces.
Or have a look at the RME interfaces like the Babyface Pro that are known for about the most stable drivers in the industry. The Babyface has Adat too so you could use it with the Audient ASP880.
My Dell (I highly recommend Dell because they use Intel based standard hardware, no funky drivers needed) is a Studio XPS 8500 which is several years old with an Intel i7 and 16 gigs of ram. It runs FL Studio daw with plenty of tracks and plugins while recording with Pod Farm 2, with modeling on for signal monitoring purposes while recording.
However, I only record the dry signal for guitar and bass. Then I add the pod farm 2 plugin to the actual guitar and bass tracks so i can tweak the tone of each as i please after the fact. I can choose any combination of amp and cabinet that I have in Pod Farm 2. I've had up to 5 or so instances of the Pod Farm 2 plugin running at the same time, along with a drum sequencer plugin, and other vst instruments and the pc has never come close to reaching max CPU.
I also play Doom 2016 on this computer, I web browse, but I don't do anything like computer programming, so the pc isn't overloaded with programming libraries and development framework that could cause conflicts. I also don't run any antivirus, but I have a background in computer science, so I'm much more aware of the dangers of click bait and ransomware than most.
This year i actually pulled the pc apart and transplanted it into a rackmount case, and bought a rackmount ups to power my PC and sound system. I have 3 drives in that PC. My SSD is my boot drive where my OS, programs, and plugins are. I have a recording drive, and then I have a backup drive which i use Microsoft Sync Toy to backup on once a week. Every now and then if i make changes to a project and accidentally save it but i dont like it, I can rename the project, then go to the backup drive and pull back the original project and have both to work off of. None of this involves external drives, the ssd plugs directly into the motherboards msata, and the 2 spin drives are all internal hooked up via SATA.
How many instruments do you record at once? Is it just you, or a live band? That will determine your needs for an interface. For me, its just me and the Line 6 Studio UX2 works perfect.
However, I only record the dry signal for guitar and bass. Then I add the pod farm 2 plugin to the actual guitar and bass tracks so i can tweak the tone of each as i please after the fact. I can choose any combination of amp and cabinet that I have in Pod Farm 2. I've had up to 5 or so instances of the Pod Farm 2 plugin running at the same time, along with a drum sequencer plugin, and other vst instruments and the pc has never come close to reaching max CPU.
I also play Doom 2016 on this computer, I web browse, but I don't do anything like computer programming, so the pc isn't overloaded with programming libraries and development framework that could cause conflicts. I also don't run any antivirus, but I have a background in computer science, so I'm much more aware of the dangers of click bait and ransomware than most.
This year i actually pulled the pc apart and transplanted it into a rackmount case, and bought a rackmount ups to power my PC and sound system. I have 3 drives in that PC. My SSD is my boot drive where my OS, programs, and plugins are. I have a recording drive, and then I have a backup drive which i use Microsoft Sync Toy to backup on once a week. Every now and then if i make changes to a project and accidentally save it but i dont like it, I can rename the project, then go to the backup drive and pull back the original project and have both to work off of. None of this involves external drives, the ssd plugs directly into the motherboards msata, and the 2 spin drives are all internal hooked up via SATA.
How many instruments do you record at once? Is it just you, or a live band? That will determine your needs for an interface. For me, its just me and the Line 6 Studio UX2 works perfect.
Keep in mind that a typical gaming PC is going to be pretty noisy with all the fans going. Unless you have it in a closet or another room it will annoy you while recording. Macs are pretty quiet, as are many PC laptops, but don't count on any desktop PC to be silent unless it was specifically built that way.
Also, while it used to be true that doing any kind of audio or video work required a crazy high-end machine, that hasn't been the case for quite a while. If you're working with 4k video or gaming at 4k you might still need that, but for recording a reasonable number of audio tracks from an external interface, any decent mac or PC should be fine. I guess if you're running a ton of plugins its nice to have a good CPU, but it depends on the plugins.
Also, while it used to be true that doing any kind of audio or video work required a crazy high-end machine, that hasn't been the case for quite a while. If you're working with 4k video or gaming at 4k you might still need that, but for recording a reasonable number of audio tracks from an external interface, any decent mac or PC should be fine. I guess if you're running a ton of plugins its nice to have a good CPU, but it depends on the plugins.
Those might help but you still get air noise and hard drive noise. I built a "silent" PC once with several huge 120m fans that spin slowly and they were pretty quiet, but then I could hear the whine of the 7200rpm hard drives which was actually worse. Also any prebuilt PC you buy like from Dell is still going to have normal fans.
If you can hear the "airflow" or hard drives while recording then you must be recording an ant fart because even an accoustic guitar mic'd up won't pick up the fan noise. fwiw my pc is in an 8 space rack that sits on the floor, and it's 4 rack spaces from the bottom. I also sit in a chair when I record, I don't sit on the floor next to the pc.
I guess you've never recorded quiet vocals, spoken dialogue, or faint acoustic instruments like ukuleles on a LDC with the preamp gain cranked. That will pick up any kind of fan noise or buzzing in a room. My main point to the OP was just to be aware of the potential for computer noise. A slightly noisy PC might not be an issue if the room is already noisy, and its no problem at all if you're just recording loud guitars amps through an SM57 all day.
There are worse offenders than a maglev pc fan, like climate control, unless they are going to be sweating in there. There are plenty of options on the market for silent hard drives as well, and if thats still not quiet enough, he can record to SSD and when the project is done, offload it to HDD to make room for the next project.
If you can isolate mics for vocals and instruments, treat the room, etc...., you can isolate PC/laptops in a home environment just as well. Controlling and monitoring may be an issue if it's out of reach or sight. But this is no different than way back when with analog and tape recording. It's why control and iso rooms were utilized. Nowadays I would be more concerned about drop outs and pop/clicks than fan noise. Drop outs and clicks have nothing to do with sound isolation. And laptops generally only have CPU fans, anyway.
To the OP, I can't really add to what has already been suggested. My recommendation is to just not go over board. Most off the shelf mid-range PCs and laptops can handle as much multitracking, editing, and mixing as most home recording entails. Storage, CPU and harddrive speeds are simply no longer an issue for most projects. And cloud storage makes back up and archival both cheap and easy. Dropbox is free and a no-brainer for sharing files.
Custom builds are a great option, but you may need to some homework if you're unfamiliar with this. The point being is that it's not necessary. An off the shelf, I5 or I7 with as much RAM as you can afford is fine. Say, $600-1100, is what I consider midrange. Unless you are doing video, or your DAW is ridiculously bloated graphic-wise, you don't need a separate/high perf video card. You do, however, need a good interface and/or pres. Better to mix with good monitors, but good headphones do ok on a budget or when room treatment isn't an option.
EDIT: With respect to OP's concerns, I just wanna say that I think we have reached the point in digital recording where the limits and architecture of the PC is no longer the main factor in making or breaking a project.
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The 'Record to SSD and then export to HD' idea actually IS my current plan.
And I've got a reasonably decent set of monitors already. But I will probably do a lot of recording on headphones, so I can do it while other people sleep. The only parts that need to be audible before they get to the monitors are the vocals, guitar parts, and drum parts...in that increasing order. Bass and keys would be mostly DI/straight into the board. I guess the scratch drum parts will be mostly inaudible too, since they'll probably be computer created part. The final parts will happen on my daughter's old set. But since I'm a craptacular drummer, I'll get somebody else to actually play it.
As much RAM as you can fit in the machine.
CPU power is less important until you start running a ton of plugins on complex mixes.
A solid-state hard drive to run your DAW and operating system on, a separate solid state drive for storing your audio files on, and a third drive (and a fourth and a fifth and a...) for backups. The first two are best as internal drives, backup drive should be external.
USB ports. Lots of them. Even though Apple gave all us Mac junkies the finger with their new Macbook Pro with no USB 2 or USB 3 ports, the majority of audio gear is still USB. Thunderbolt is slowly becoming more common, and every Mac has them.
Two monitors; one for your mix window, one for the edit window. It just makes things so much easier. That said, I do most of my audio work on a 2012 MacBook Pro 13" screen.
CPU power is less important until you start running a ton of plugins on complex mixes.
A solid-state hard drive to run your DAW and operating system on, a separate solid state drive for storing your audio files on, and a third drive (and a fourth and a fifth and a...) for backups. The first two are best as internal drives, backup drive should be external.
USB ports. Lots of them. Even though Apple gave all us Mac junkies the finger with their new Macbook Pro with no USB 2 or USB 3 ports, the majority of audio gear is still USB. Thunderbolt is slowly becoming more common, and every Mac has them.
Two monitors; one for your mix window, one for the edit window. It just makes things so much easier. That said, I do most of my audio work on a 2012 MacBook Pro 13" screen.
DO NOT EVER EVER EVER rely only on cloud-based storage for your files!
Hard drives are dirt cheap now. Sure, have backups in the cloud, but always have the hard copy. Dropbox is fine, but it is not free for enough storage to share much in the way of audio files; I prefer Google Drive for that.
Easy and inexpensive stand lone multi-track units are simple and reliable. Grab some headphones or run powered monitors. Plug instruments directly in, select onboard effects, record, mix, master and burn a CD all on this type of small portable unit. Viola! Easy..
I'm running a RAID 10 system (4x500GB for 1TB) in my recording computer. Then I back it up to an external ESATA device which is then uploaded to my remote cloud backup running RAID5 (at my parents house). The ESATA step is needed because my recording computer has no internet connection to reduce the risk of viruses. This means I don't have to run av software in the background. In fact, the only things running are my DAW, VSTs and windows system.
If you're handy with a soldering iron consider buying a cheap, used MXL as a donor body and replace the capsule and electronics. For a bit over $350, you can have a world class mic. Mic Mods
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Scarlett 18i20 and an OctoPre to have up to sixteen simultaneous inputs
Tech21 GED-2112 for bass and a Laney Ironheart for guitar
The same Rode NT1 and bunches of SM57s
