Choosing a PC for audio work

Assuming that budget is a concern here are my recommendations on what to look for when choosing a PC to use for audio recording:

CPU
Of all the components inside the PC, the CPU is by far the most critical. Get the fastest one you can afford. There is a big debate between manufacturers, which we won’t get into. The important thing to look for is ‘dual core’. Computers are only designed to do one thing at a time. The operating system will allocate time to each task running and continuously cycle through each, giving the impression that several programs are running. A dual core system is therefore actually able to do… WOW!!! TWO things at a time. Although this might not seem to make much difference, it does. The general rule is that a machine with two 1.5 GHz CPU’s will perform better than one 3GHz CPU.

RAM
The more you use virtual instruments and samplers, the more RAM you will need. It is recommended to have at least 1Gb for general audio production. You must pay attention to how the RAM will affect the speed of your system. E.g. an Intel P4 CPU can send data to the rest of the system at 800mhz which means that you will need a pair of DDR400 RAM modules (each module can cope with 400mhz) to take advantage of this. Therefore you should buy your RAM in pairs, e.g. if you want 1Gb total RAM, get two 512Mb modules.

HDD
Almost every DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) manufacturer recommends that you have two separate Hard Disk Drives in your system. One disk will have the Operating System and all other software installed on it, and the second will be for audio projects and files. Partitioning a single drive to give you two ‘drive letters’ will not improve performance in any way. The size of these drives will depend on the volume of work you go through. A multitrack project can take up to 4 GB of space, so if you are recording projects of this size everyday, you will need a significant amount of space. It is recommended that you back up all your completed projects on DVD’s and remove them from your Hard Disk to keep them clean.

You will obviously need several other components in your system, DVD writer, good graphics card, but the above mentioned items are the critical ones, that you should spend the most on.