building a computer for music production. need tips please :)

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tennant90

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Hey, the title is pretty self explanatory.
I'm wanting to build a computer for music production. I can get my DAW software off of a friend and I have a digital piano that is compatible with midi and I already have 2 monitors stored away so I'm pretty much there.
I know I will need a good processor and atleast 4 gig ram, but in this day in age ram is cheap so even if I can get 8 gig at least I know ill be sorted.
Mostly, I would like to know what processor is the best, mother bourds, sound card and case?
 
Why not buy a full version of the DAW of your choice?

http://www.djtechtools.com/2013/05/22/home-studio-production-sound-cards-under-1000/

Building a PC isn't really the cost. Its the external sound card that's going to cost you, depending on what you want to do. And you have to decide whether to invest in VSTs or software like Kontakt, external gear like synths or rack gear for mastering, etc. or a mix of both.

I'd be tempted in this day and age to build myself a portable studio with a laptop, etc., produce in a set of cans and then rent a pro studio for a day for a track.

Some producers swear by having a decent sub monitor.

It really is a slow descent into gear whoring and spending big money. The trick is to spend money only on gear that you will use. Or use what you have really and get good with that.
 
When I went to college I used macs. Now in an ideal world I would have the money and just buy a MacBook and use logic pro, but I don't.
So basically I play piano and I want to just use it to make a decent track. I won't be getting any hardware just yet as I will only use what ever is in the daw.

Talk to md more about these external sound cards? Do you still need an internal one, what's the difference?
 
Well if you read into the link a lot of what external soundcards offer is connectivity. If you need to hook up monitors to it via RCA, need standard MIDI (as opposed to USB MIDI), need a phantom mic input for vocals, need 1/4 inputs for mics or instruments, you can get yourself into some recording situations where these may be required, maybe all at once for a live situation.

The difference at the hobbyist level or pro-consumer really between say PCI-E (an internal soundcard) and USB 2.0 is very minimal, meaning that with USB 2.0 you gain a lot of connectivity options, a headphone preamp, etc. If you are looking more towards an internal soundcard for music production those cards are really geared more towards people who do it professionally in a pro studio with a mixing console. They're designed to be stacked to suit the studios needs. A soundblaster Live! card or whatever is out there for gaming/home theatre isn't what you want. Maybe it is...I don't really know. But what a lot of these $500 dollar external boxes offer is incredible low latency in your DAW. So if you are expert knob twiddling in Ableton you aren't going to hear a delay between the change in say modulation or a filter, or effect being used. If you are using several VSTs or a bunch of different effects or sequences these boxes are engineered to eat that stuff up without breaking a sweat.
And they have great analog to digital conversion as well. You get what you pay for. Plus for whatever reason you need to be mobile an external card works well.

But then again why not buy a synth or a workstation? The Roland GW-8 has drums, synths etc. and sequencing built in so you can basically write a track on a keyboard. If you look at the overall cost of a DAW + VSTs, an external audio box, buying a workstation isn't too far out there.

But then again I saw an interview with Chromeo and they had this old MIDI box running cakewalk on Windows 95 or something.
 
Thanks for info. It is however too much for me at the minute. I'm not looking to really go profesional with it.
I'm starting college full time in September and will be getting a loan. Although most of the money is going on rent ill have a bit spare so was thinking spending 300 pounds max on a computer.

Anything like synths will wait but my main focus will be the actual computer set up - speakers for mixing - and any other accessories. It's going to be a real minimal project but I'm hoping through the year when I have a bit more money I can expand.

I'm going to be skint through college so this is a treat for myself to keep me occupied when the bank account is pretty low :)
 
with that budget it'll be tough to put a box together, I'd start with a Xonar Essence STX for soundcard, which is AFAIK still the most affordable production-quality onboard soundcard, and then look to eBay for a motherboard and CPU. Pretty much any quad-core CPU from the past 5-6 years will suffice so just pick out the one you can afford, figure out what socket it belongs in then find a motherboard that features said socket.
 
You can get a refurbed laptop for $300 US (4 gigs of ram, intel). Ableton is $100. A MIDI to USB device for $50. And spend the rest of the money on a decent set of cans.

A ASUS Xonar Essence is $200. You can buy a Tascam US-144MKII for $150 and it includes a copy of Cubase LE. Probably less used. Ebay has them for $90.
 
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i see people with more knowledge on gear than i, so ill leave that to them.

i just wanted to say not to stress it too much, reminded of this interview..

RBMA: Seeing as we're on the subject of equipment, everyone in this room is a musician or a producer and so on, if you go back to ‘93, ‘94, what kind of equipment were you using to make your first records?

Moodymann: Anything I could borrow, I don’t think I owned nothing. I went into Guitar Center, quietly testing out something so they thought, but I had my cassette and I was in there making a track. I spent about an hour on it and put that motherfucker out about six months later. That is true. Anywhere I could get acknowledgement from, I put two tape decks together and made it.

RBMA: So you made a 12” in Guitar Center? Inside the store?

Moodymann: It was wack, it was nothing to talk about. I think I pressed no more than 20 of them. But I’m going to tell you something. It ain’t what you got, it is what you do with what you have. It ain't what you do, it is how you do it, and that goes with anything.
 
^^ I used a Tascam 4 track and a copy of Making Waves (Win95), basic sequencing software and made some decent ambient and techno with it, people sample casios all the time. Hell, why use MIDI?
 
Yeah sweet, I'm pretty sure quad core isn't much. I'll need about 3.4 GHz processor ( or anything around that), 8 gig ram. I should be able to get that under £150. The rest of the money will go on a sound card, case and graphics.
Meh, I may as well just create a beast of a computer, it will probably be better. I'm sure i can save up a few hundred more.

For software my mate can get me cubase or ableton ( can't remember which) for free with a load of other programs. He has a band you see and has a good set up. He's even allowing others go use it for a little money.
I have used reason in the past but it is really time consuming but I can learn as I will have the time. I find logic pro so easy to use and straight forward.

Although i got a distinction at college for music tech my knowledge on hardware is next to none. It was mostly theory we got taught along with thorough use of logic pro. I do however have a lot of knowledge about drum and bass and other genres haha.

Any sites which are good for buying parts? Ide prefer to build it myself.
 
jpgrdnr said:
You can get a refurbed laptop for $300 US (4 gigs of ram, intel). Ableton is $100. A MIDI to USB device for $50. And spend the rest of the money on a decent set of cans.

A ASUS Xonar Essence is $200. You can buy a Tascam US-144MKII for $150 and it includes a copy of Cubase LE. Probably less used. Ebay has them for $90.
Click to expand...

the Tascam thing would be good for recording, but once you get into recording and XLR gear it'll go over budget quickly. The Xonar is meant more for playback than production, but it does have high SNR, quarter-inch outputs and a built-in pre-amp that make it good value for headphone use. A good set of open-back headphones is a pretty close substitute for monitor speakers, though in terms of price suitable headphones are about on-par with cheaper monitors. Maybe for these goals it doesn't even make sense to budget for a soundcard right away, it might be better to start with using the audio processor that comes with the motherboard and instead spend that money on a cheap keyboard that could be used as a MIDI controller. That way OP gets to start making music right away instead of having to slough through all the technical stuff first.
 
Well I have a digital piano that is midi compatible. It's touch sensitive too and has the full range of keys so I'm pretty much ready to go.
I could, however, get a small keybourd anyway. They're around £50.
A microphone would come in handy and a recording device to sample sounds but most of these items will be secondry. I just wanna put some beats to my chords.
 
the new macbook pros are made for this type of thing. you can walk into an apple store with $2500 and walk out with everything you need in terms of software, ram, disc space, you name it. the new pros are built for it and built to handle it. a lot of people balk at the price, and why wouldn't they, $2500 is not cheap. but taking into account the sheer craftsmanship of the machine and its abilities should be more than enough to warrant the price. i mean producing and editing quality audio puts a huge load on any computer, and i think that's where the macbook pro shines. being able to handle audio as well as video editing and not blink an eye while you do everything from checking your facebook to playing COD does not come at a cheap price.
 
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2500 is crazy expensive though. You can build a kickass computer /w sound card and extra music stuff for less than $1500, and thats if you even pay for the OS.

when you buy an Apple computer most of your money is going towards funding their experimental projects / advertising and at this point to pay off Dr Dre. The actual computers aren't anything special, people are just used to having a slow Windows computer.
 
apple just has strong followers that will not buy anything else, i'm one of them lol, and i'm still waiting for them to release the iTV lol. anyways, regardless of the price and your opinion of the reasoning behind it, they still make quality products that are innovative and as of recently becoming quite adaptable to non-apple products. the only thing i wish apple would do now is allow their computers to easily upgradable like they were in the past.
 
I don't know much about the sound side of computers, so I'll leave that to the others to discuss.

You can build a desktop/tower capable of running mac os and windows/linux rather than buying an apple pc, it's cheaper, future proofed etc.

Depending on your budget, it would work out something like

Case - I like lian li cases, but there's tons to choose from
Mobo - I'll leave this blank, as an audio rig there may be a preference. Choose a mobo wisely, I personally think it's the most important component.
Processor - I5 is a great entry level, there's not a huge difference between it and the I7, go for unlocked core (denoted by a 'k' at the end of the model) to open up over clocking.
Heat sink - (If you don't intend to over clock, or only marginally, then the stock that comes with the CPU is sufficient)
Ram - 100 6gb minimum, I'd recommend 16gb, I love corsair vengeance ram. Graphics apps make full use of RAM, I assume audio apps would be the same
SDD - For the os, so doesn't need to be huge.
HDD 1 - For use as a scratch disk, again doesn't need to be huge.
HDD 2 - Storage, 7200rpm is good, I usually use green drives for storage
HDD x - As many hard drives as you need, obviously bumps up the cost. RAID array's aren't necessary for most people. Utilise cloud storage for redundancy.
PSU - 650w is sufficient for most rigs.
Graphics card - I don't really know what's new in the last year or two, so leave this for someone else. I use a radeon 6870 (I think), my rigs 2 years old.
Fans - Stock fans are usually fine, you can upgrade for sound efficiency, or extra air flow if needed.

I currently run windows 7 and mavericks in dual boot.

From my mac overview
Code: 
  Model Name:	iMac
  Model Identifier:	iMac12,2
  Processor Name:	Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed:	4.41 GHz
  Number of Processors:	1
  Total Number of Cores:	4
  L2 Cache (per Core):	256 KB
  L3 Cache:	8 MB
  Memory:	16 GB

This cost me about £1000 2.5 years ago, the same rig today I reckon could probably be done for 600-700. The same rig as an apple machine, probably still £3.5k+

If you want to put parts together, this is a good tool http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/

Android should make an OS ( unless I'm mistaken and they already do?) and create a new system.
Click to expand...

They make Chrome OS, it's geared for netbooks and utilises the cloud. Never tried it though.
 
if you dont plan on playing any games on it you could get an A-Series APU from AMD. That series has a GPU built into the CPU so you wont have to spend anything on an unnecessary discrete Graphics Card

AMD is also noticeably cheaper than Intel, and unless you plan on showing off benchmarks to your friends, doesnt make a lick of difference to the average user

Could probably get away with 4GB of RAM and add more later if desired. If you use onboard graphics I would try to get at least PC 1600 RAM as that will improve the performance

500W is more than enough for a PSU with no GPU. Could probably go with 400W. More about which brand you get tbh

for what you need, id reccomend going budget on everything except the sound card and a Solid State Drive.

as far as the Motherboard goes, just make sure it has Sata 6.0Gbps connectors, Sata 3.0 Gbps is on the way out
 
^ The reason I tend to lean more towards intel chipsets is purely from a hackintosh point of view, intel's much easier to get running in this scenario.

If this isn't a consideration I do agree AMD offer good chipsets, the performance difference between Intel vs AMD is marginal but given the price points AMD is better value for money.

I've never run a computer purely on onboard graphics, so can't comment personally, but I believe they're quite good these days.
 
Oh I didnt know he was trying to do that

I dont use any music software or anything so idk if Macs are the only acceptable option for that but I cant encourage anyone to get one really as I just dont like Apple from a personal computer standpoint. I think they make great phones and mp3 players, but when you get down to the nuts and bolts, they're overpriced and have limited upgradability except for what Apple oks. And the theory is that the user will only get quality parts, which is true, but you pay out the ass for them. And its not that Windows pcs cant get quality stuff, you just have to do some reading up on stuff
 
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