| Home recording and general music post from the archived Yabb Recording Website Message Board. Some of the info here may be outdated but many of the audio recording and home studio tips are still good. Note: The only tags I made and attempt to convert are italics, bold, center and underline. So if you see some gibberish surrounded by brackets, just ignore it.
Recording Website Archived Yabb board Post
Febuary 2001 Yabb Message Board Archive
Subject: Basic PC recording question
by draz | 04/01/01 at 04:37:27
Hello everyone,
I'd like to know from those more experienced how vital it is that the computer you use to record audio be used soley for audio.
Reason I ask is because presently I use a Dell 420 Workstation and it's fantastic for my needs in graphic design. It's a PIII 800 Mhz 512 ram system.
Can I expect many pitfalls along the way using this computer for both audio and design? Is anyone doing it like this with any success? I don't think I could afford another workstation at this point.
Thanks
draz
Subject: Re: Basic PC recording question
by Slider | 04/01/01 at 17:04:06
Hey Draz. I know two reasons why it's nice to have a dedicated computer for audio.
1) It's nice to have the space on the harddrive for large wav files. Obviously, if is already packed with program files, then there is less space.
2) YOur recording software may have application conflictions with other programs and may cause crashes.
Both these reasons are not to say that you cant record audio on your regular computer. I am sure lots of people do it, and I myslef use cool edit 2000 with no problems. So it obviously can be done. There may be other reasons why you should use a dedicated computer but I havent run into them yet. Good luck.
Subject: Re: Basic PC recording question
by pcrecord | 04/03/01 at 09:07:50
If you really don't want to buy another pc for gaming that's fine. But save your ass and buy a second hard drive, install windows and your home software on this one and make a dual booth. That way if you crash, only your games crashes. I'll just say that everytime you install a software, your performances are subject to be reduce.
Hey if you don't do that, you can also burn a working image of your hard drive and when you'll crash (i'd say will), you'll just have to transfer it back.
good luck !!
;)
Marco
Subject: Re: Basic PC recording question
by DanS | 04/03/01 at 10:18:48
I used a Dell DimPII300 for over a year with full apps installed, and 1 hard drive, and never had any problems. I now use a Dell DimPIII 600, that I reformated to get rid of everything not related to music, but only cause I have the luxury of 2 pcs. I still only use 1 hard drive. No problems. I have 256meg of ram though.
Subject: Re: Basic PC recording question
by Steve_S. | 04/03/01 at 11:18:10
[size=2]Being poor folk, I use my computer for everything and get by well. It's a PII450 with 250 meg of ram. I have games and the often dreaded Microsoft Office suite of products. When I use the computer for audio, I just make sure all programs and background (Ctrl-Alt-Del) programs are turned off. Performance is still pretty good even though this is now a 2 year old PC..... [/size]8)