Home Recording Solution?

[hollivals]

I've had my Mac PowerBook G4 since february 2005, never had a virus, hardly ever frozen, never done much maintainance, it's 512mb ram and 1.5 GHz chip.I've dropped it on the table, recorded with it in bars, even taken it with me to the bar, it's been everywhere, looks quite veteran now and still runs well enough to produce this on Logic Express and EzDrummer (including about 4-5 years experience in the home studio): www.hollivals.comIt costed over $4.000 in those days, now I can buy a mac 2-3 times as powerful for less than half of the price. I'll never ever go PC again.Perhaps you can find a decent used computer that is quite new and hardly used, the pricedrop should still be impressive. Mac or PC, I'm sure both will do fine in your start up setup.Good monitors are definately a must, and so are bad ones, you want it to sound good on all typical systems today, so an iPod test f.x. is vital, laptop speakers, in the car, in the kitchen with noise going on etc.Someone recommended these: http://www.zzounds.com/item--KRKRP5I haven't tried them so I can't tell.And if you haven't read it, The Mixing Engineers Handbook, I've had it for some years now and still glimpse to it from time to time.And ofcourse, silent room to record in, make sure the computer you buy does not have a cooling fan that sounds louder than an avarage Passenger Jet.

[mojobone]

I'd recommend a Mac, for the following reason; A PC will need a virus scanner, anti-spyware and a bunch of other software just for you to feel safe-you can try to avoid the internet, but many software plugins will require you to log into a site to activate your software. Either way you go, you'll want an 800 FireWire port, USB 2.0 is pretty fast, but not for streaming 16 channels or more. Try to get at least a 7200 RPM hard drive, many higher end PC laptops are available with the faster drives-trouble is, they'll cost about as much as the Macs. HP, Toshiba Panasonic, Sony and Alienware make some of the faster/better machines.

[mewman]

Sorry to join the chorus, but considering a Mac is worth the trouble. I'm sure you could find a used one for around a thousand. If you ever want to upgrade to a serious DAW, Logic is amazing for what it offers for the price. Try to find one with an Intel duo core so you can upgrade to Snow Leopard. The fact is, though, that you can still do a hell of a lot with the first generation Intels running Tiger, which is probably what a cheap older model would have.

[mfowler]

I started with Cakewalk Home Studio XL and upgraded to Sonor 8 Producer.. it has a ton of additional stuff (Soft Synths, channel tools, and mastering tools) and runs on 64 bit Windows, which allows you to have more tracks, plugins, etc. I also use an external drive for my larger soft synths and for automated back up of data. A good site to compare the performance of laptops is www.cnet.com

[t4mh]

I use an Edirol Interface. Mine is just a stereo in and stereo out model. Its just me recording track by track and so I can't think of a reason to need more I/O. It does 24bit 96kHz and USB. Easy, sounds good and is a breeze to use. There are a lot of other features but I don't really use them. I would recommend this but there are several models to choose from.Good Luck!Keith