Building Your First Recording Studio, Picking Your Computer

Laptops or Desktops? If you travel a lot, go with a laptop. If you’re at home a lot, go with desktop. Simple!

Mac or PC? If you want to work at the Hit Factory in NY or Miami you’re going to have to learn to use a Mac. If you just want to sell tracks, use whatever you want just make sure you make the track hot!!

If you like Mac invest in a Mac Pro Desktop or PowerBook laptop. You can even save money and go with the PowerMac G5 if you can find one (that’s the prior model). Many colleges are getting rid of their G5’s at cheap prices. Call and ask around ; make sure you upgrade the RAM to 2GB.

If you don’t like Mac, PC’s are excellent. In fact Intel makes processors for both Mac and PC’s so it is really a matter of preference. If you’re comfortable using Microsoft Windows stick with PC.

Purchasing a PC:

AMD or Intel Dual processors. Windows Vista works best with Dual processors. No Celeron processors people!!

2GB or RAM. If you’re using Windows XP you can go with 1GB, but if you’re using Windows Vista you definitely need 2GB. Vista sucks up a lot of memory and and processing power.
SATA Hard Drives. Serial ATA hard drives. They come standard on most computers.

Usually bigger is better, but not with hard drives and audio recording! There is a lot of deleting and saving with audio production. The bigger the hard drive, the longer it takes the computer to retrieve data. As a rule of don’t exceed 250G. Tell that pushy sales associate to stop trying to sell you the 500GB hard drive.

‘Stack Your Hard Drives’. This is an expression used by audio engineers and producers that means use external hard drives to back up and store recording sessions. Again don’t exceed 250GB on an external hard drive. It would suck if you stored everything on one 500 GB hard drive and then it crashed. Stack your drives, buy multiple external hard drives.

Video Card. If you’re using XP the video card should have 128MB or more. If you’re using Windows Vista you need a video card with 256 MB or more.

DVD-R and CD-R Drives. It really does not matter that much, go with what ever is out. I do recommend having a DVD burner on hand, you can burn more info on DVD’s than CD’s

USB Ports and FireWire. Make sure you have a lot of USB and FIreWire Ports. You’ll use them to hook up your sound card and MIDI controller. Make sure the USB ports are current (no 1.0). If they’re not current you need to update them by downloading the drivers.

Computer Cases. If you’re buying a computer from a store, make sure it is quiet and it has an excellent cooling system. If you’re building it yourself I recommend Antec or Thermaltake cases. They usually have pretty good cooling systems. Check out Newegg.com

Power Supply. If you’re buying a computer in store you don’t have to worry about this, make sure it’s quiet. If you’re building it yourself, 500W or greater and again I recommend Antec or Thermaltake. Visit Newegg.com and see if you can a combo deal (power supply and case).