Barbelith Underground > Radio & Music > Music Making Hardware and Software

hey Iggy

Also depends on how portable you'd like the system. You can get more processing power from a desktop machine for a lot less money- however they're often noisier so you don't want the computer box in the same room as you're recording.

At the moment it's also advisable not to get a machine running windows vista as many drivers for audio interfaces etc are still in development. And vista is rather big and slow.

As for audio hardware, you do need to decide which software you'd like to be running first. Logic will only work on macs. If you get a digidesign interface (e.g. mbox above) it will only work with protools. If you want to use Linux the inteface needs to be supported by alsa: www.alsa-project.org

Pretty much any computer will do the job, although fast hard drives and plenty of RAM are more important than out and out processor speed. Things like how much noise it makes and build quality are often more important than the chips inside, although it's often a good idea to go with intel based hardware as they also make things like the USB bus meaning there's less chance of there being confilcts with the sound card.

There are a few of companies who make 'out of the box' audio PCs- carillon and red submarine, for example which come with software+hardware and set up to work with a particular system. However they're not very cheap.

Microphones are the most important part of the recording process. Although dynamic mics can have some use when you don't want higher frequencies there, or want certain emphasis, condensers are far more accurate. They also require 'phantom power' (on most mic preamps, but do check). The microphone you want depends on what you want to record but Rode and SE electronics mics are both good bets in that kind of price range. A company I've heard some very good things about is Line Audio (possibly 1 guy in Sweden), although I haven't actually used any of it so I don't know yet.

As for interfaces the mackie Satellite looks like it does what you want (has 2 decent preamps + a/d conversion) and is stupid cheap now (under £150), althgouh there may be a reason the price has dropped from £400 in the last 6 months or so (driver problems?). It also doesn't have any digital I/O if you need to hook up CD players or other digital devices or MIDI (although you could get a separate MIDI interface if you need that)

Decent headphones/monitors are a must- industry standard cans are pretty much Sennheiser HD25 and Beyer DT100 both can be got for about £60-£80

Another couple of things to consider: Where you record is also very important. If you're multitracking you want to get rid of most of the sound of the room with acoustic treatment, duvets etc will probably do.

Finally control surfaces can be very useful whilst mixing, knobs/ faders are a lot more immediate than a keyboard and mouse.

For loads more opinions etc see forums at places like
SoundOnSound