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  #1  
Old 01-23-2002, 09:22 PM
Michael J Michael J is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Louisiana
Posts: 82
Default I am terribly new to all of this, please be patient with me!

I am about to delve into the world of digital recording. I thought I would ask a few questions from the people in the know to try to avoid any costly errors in purchasing my PC. PLEASE forgive me if I say something laughable!
1. I know I will be using a PC. Does PTLE favor a Pentium or Athalon processor?

2. My PC will not have an internal CD writer if possible. I have a Tascam CDRW-700 rack mount writer that I would like to use if possible. Would I connect the burner at the PC, or the breakout box?

3. Is there a certain type of hardrive I need to have?

What would be a nice pair of monitors to pick up for close to 500? Should they be powered?
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  #2  
Old 01-23-2002, 09:31 PM
Jorge442 Jorge442 is offline
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Join Date: Jul 1999
Location: Santiago, Chile
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Default Re: I am terribly new to all of this, please be patient with me!

people have had better performance with Athlons...

I wish i had an external CD burner, I could then bypass the bounce to disk function and record the mixes straight out of the spdif output of the 001. Just heard funny things about bounce to disk....

powered or unpowered monitors depends entirely on your taste/convenience


welcome!
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what a long, strange trip it´s been

www.abacomusic.com
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  #3  
Old 01-23-2002, 09:43 PM
finalcut finalcut is offline
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Default Re: I am terribly new to all of this, please be patient with me!

I like everything that I am hearing about the current Athlons, but Pentium is great to. Any new and current chip-set/ M-board should be fine - Get a fast PC, load it with ram and get all of your settings on your PC dialed in - that's real important!

Your break-out box can run your audio in to your burner. Or, You could run a smaller board like a Mackie 1402...and have your.
Digi001 break-out box, Monitors, and Burner all patched in to the board. That is a real nice and straight forward set-up

Always have a second hard drive for your audio! Get a good ATA100 7200rpm for audio. I have a Western Digital that I picked up real cheap at www.azzo.com

Monitors can be a touchy subject. Powered or not is mostly a preferance thing. My advice to you would be to go down to the local music store and listen to a few different types to see how they work with your ears. You also will want to monitor through a variety of different set ups, like the sterio in your car, a crapy boom box....

Good luck and get ready to spend lots of cash - this PC recording thing can be a real blast!
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  #4  
Old 01-23-2002, 09:58 PM
Michael J Michael J is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Louisiana
Posts: 82
Default Re: I am terribly new to all of this, please be patient with me!

this is the computer I have designed, will this PC configuration allow my PTLE setup run to full potential?

Processor - Pentium 4, 1.7 Ghz

motherboard - MSI 6547 pentium 4 ATX

RAM - 512 Mb PC-2700 333mhz DDR cas 2.5 Mushkin(two DIMMS)

Hard Drive - 60GB UDMA/133 7200RPM Hard Drive 2mb Cache

Sound Card - Multimedia 3-d stereo surround

OS - Windows ME (other options:windows XP, windows 2000)

thanks for the advice, too!!
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  #5  
Old 01-23-2002, 10:01 PM
mattm mattm is offline
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Default Re: I am terribly new to all of this, please be patient with me!

hi there

powered monitors will save you space. i can't comment on price, as i do not live in the states but you'd probably not get anything too fantastic on the powered front for $500. i like the NHTPro A10's but not sure what they're worth in $US might be about $800. check 'em out at NHTPro Products remebering that your ears should be your ultimate guide when making this kind of purchase. we can only offer suggestions as speakers are a very subjective thing. listen before you buy and listen lots.

the only problem with your external burner is the wordlength mismatch. if you are running protools sessions at 24bit and you route your mix to the burner via the SPDIF output on the breakout box, you will need to dither the output down to 16bit and good dithering algorithms cost big dollars. you could always use the analogue outs to get around this problem...

at the moment AMD has the lead on Intel and that doesn't look like changing anytime soon but you know how these things can change overnight [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] make your decision based on your own research at the time of purchase.

i like Seagate and IBM hard drives. if you buy an IBM be sure not to get one of the 75GXP models - they are renouned for their failure rate!

hope this helps

~matt

PS. the system you have outlined looks good but my preferred brand of motherboard is ASUS. not sure what the chipset is on the MSI but as it uses RDRAM i assume it's an Intel 850. if you build an Intel machine, be sure to use an Intel chipset. check out the digidesign compatiblity page: http://www.digidesign.com/compato/maindigi001win.html
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  #6  
Old 01-23-2002, 10:13 PM
finalcut finalcut is offline
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Default Re: I am terribly new to all of this, please be patient with me!

You might want to reconsider your system of choice and think about an Athlon system. Athlon is fast, sturdy, and you get a lot more bang for your buck. I am running an Athlon set up that is a 18 months old and it rocks! When I upgrade, it will be an Athlon.
Best Athlon motherboards and chipsets:
AMD 761 chipset:
GA7DX
GA7DXR
A7M266

KT266a chipset:
A7V266E
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  #7  
Old 01-23-2002, 10:26 PM
finalcut finalcut is offline
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Default Re: I am terribly new to all of this, please be patient with me!

By the way, the system that you have lined out is a good one - to answer your question. As far as getting the full potential out of pro-tools goes, there are faster set ups like the Athlons mentioned above.
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  #8  
Old 01-23-2002, 10:45 PM
Stone Knife Stone Knife is offline
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Default Re: I am terribly new to all of this, please be patient with me!

I'm there with finalcut! My home setup is pretty much as he described- It works great, and for not much money.

I'd also advise you to get a video card with lots of fast memory (like 64megs of DDRAM)to soak up lots of waveform info per clock cycle. This will help reduce the CPU's interrupt requests for video- Also, if you can afford it, should you choose a video card that has a video input bus in a higher quality format such as s-video or better, component, then you'll have a multimedia capability at the same time. I did this upgrade with an Asus Geforce3Ti, and so now can do audio and video work in this machine.
Got a very good deal/service from mwave.com
Doc
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  #9  
Old 01-24-2002, 12:20 AM
Michael J Michael J is offline
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Default Re: I am terribly new to all of this, please be patient with me!

ok, so what are the best three options for an Athalon processor? (actual product name)

Is it reasonable to plan to spend right around 1000 dollars on my computer?
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  #10  
Old 01-24-2002, 12:21 AM
Michael J Michael J is offline
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Default Re: I am terribly new to all of this, please be patient with me!

I meant to ask - what is chipset, and how do I determine a processor's chipset if I'm going to be ordering online?
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