Hi Steve. Thanks for the response. I neglected to mention in my original message that Sonar was definitely my choice along with Jsonar for the scripts, but the $800 budget was strictly for hardware so the cost of Sonar is not a problem. The Jsonar scripts are free, so I'll probably just use those for now.
--Warmest regards, --Rick Alfaro [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Matzura Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 4:17 PM To: PC audio discussion list. Subject: Re: Specs required for a decent DAW Hi, Rick: On Wed, 1 Nov 2006 11:57:36 -0500, you wrote: >Well, little by little I am dipping my toes into the very complicated and >confusing world of recording and editing music on a computer. My first step >was to order an audio recording device with a midi interface as well as the >necessary inputs for a decent mic and keyboard if necessary. I am now >toying with the idea of possibly having a dedicated machine just for audio >stuff. I haven't decided yet whether it will be a very hefty laptop, or a >very small desktop, but I would like to gather opinions on what the minimum >specs should be for a decent DAW. Keep in mind that I said decent, and not >spectacular. I don't have a lot of money to plunk down on this, so it will >either be a used laptop, or perhaps I'll have my Son build me a small >footprint desktop. Go desktop, unless you plan on taking your act on the road with you. Even then, a small desktop could conceivably be rigged with a handle or custom road case. >I would never be recording more than 1 audio track at once, but there could >conceivably be a few audio tracks as part of the entire project, for >example, a vocal track with a couple of other vocal tracks doing harmony >parts. The rest would be all midi, using either my keyboards as sound >sources, or controllers for any soft synths I might try using. Never say never. If you're going to mix audio and MIDI, it's either NTrack for fifty bucks, or Sonar plus CakeTalking or SonarTalking, whatever they call it this week, for a combined cost of nearly four hundred. NTrack is a good program, but not intuitively obvious to operate, and its manual has the egregiously annoying property of having the keynames omitted because they weren't put into the document as text to start with. >What would be the minimum I would need in terms of memory, and cpu speed? I >know the HD is also an issue and this is one thing that concerns me when >considering a laptop since they usually use 5400rpm IDE drives. Would a >laptop cut it if it had a reasonably fast cpu? Laptop CPU's barely break the 2ghz mark because of heat dissipation problems. They're all this incipid Cintrino class machine which operates at about 1.73ghz. I'd recommend not a byte less than a gig of memory, and not a rev less than a 7200rpm drive. >Regarding the audio/midi interface I ordered, for now, it is going to be USB >2.0. I do understand and agree with the fact that FireWire would have been >much better, but the problem I ran into was that I had to spend quite a bit >more money to get the features I needed in a comparable device using >FireWire. There's always PCMCIA, ya know. _______________________________________________ PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... http://www.pc-audio.org To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This list is a service of MosenExplosion.com. To see what other lists we offer, visit us on the web at http://www.MosenExplosion.com _______________________________________________ PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... http://www.pc-audio.org To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This list is a service of MosenExplosion.com. To see what other lists we offer, visit us on the web at http://www.MosenExplosion.com
