advice for a newbie

[40bends]

Hi, I'm looking at purchasing an Mbox pro 2 factory to record with my band (heavy stuff), and am not sure whether my laptop is up to the task. It is a Medion brand Intel core 2 Duo 1.5ghz, with 2GB SDRAM and is running windows vista home premium. It has a 160gb hard drive and uses esata not fire wire. Do I need a fire wire card or will the esata port work? Also can anyone reccomend a decent set of entry level monitors for recording and mixing? Thanks for your help. Matt

[mandal]

The most critical PC component for recording music or video is the speed of the harddisk. If the harddisk or transfer rate to the harddisk is too slow, all the other stuff like RAM or CPU doesn't matter !!! The key success factor for a Pro Tools LE system (or other harddisk recording system) is the speed of the harddisk.

OK - repeat after me: H A R D - D I S K - S P E E D !!!

99% of all the issues in this forum has something to do with this...

a) Do not record on your system disk C:\ (it will slow down the process)
b) OK, then you need one extra disk and the normal/easiest solution is to buy an external disk.

If you buy an external disk this disk MUST be connected to your PC via FireWire.
And that is often the big challenge...

OK ?

PCMCIA firewire card

[albee1952]

Actually, eSATA should work just fine as long as the drive is 7200 rpm.

[obsuleet]

I see that your processor speed 1.5. is that too slow for pro tools?

[albee1952]

Not too slow for protools, but too slow to run big sessions. I bet you can run 24+ tracks as I ran 32+ on a 1.83 GHZ desktop.

[obsuleet]

what about plugins? and softsynths?

[albee1952]

You will have to figure this out as you proceed. The more creative you become, the more you will ask of your computer so you will find the limits as you go. Remember a few things here. More RAM may help with softsynths. Always hit SAVE every few minutes(or enable the Auto-save feature under preferences). There are ways around a weak computer such as, use audiosuite plugs when its convenient, use a few verb plugins on aux tracks abd send to them(as opposed to inserting verb plugs on individual track). Some plugins like guitar rig are cpu hogs so record a processed track to a new track and disable the original(which disables plugins on the original track). If you have a dozen tracks of BGV's, bounce them to a stereo track and disable the originals. Always record at the lowest buffer setting your computer will tolerate, or use low latency mode if available(and don't use lots of plugins while recording). When mixing, set you buffer to the highest setting which will allow more plugins.