A friend of mine does audio production (ads, promo’s etc.) for a local radio station. His wife would like to surprise him with a pc for Christmas that would let him set up his own home studio, preferably without spending a lot of intial money. What would be important for a machine for this purpose? Is there anywhere that sells for this marketplace? Anything I’m not thinking of to tell her?
Dave Salvator wrote up a couple of pieces on this:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,838565,00.asp
and part II:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,978500,00.asp
IIRC, part two talks about different components for different budgets.
Thank you, never occured to me your site would run something on this topic. It looks like this isn’t something they are going to be able to jump into cheaply. Still could they buy the basic pc and upgrade the audio parts as they go? If I read it correctly even a basic audigy would give him something to play with till they can afford the whole thing.
If they’re willing to spring for an Audigy ZX Platinum SE, then they can get the low-latency ASIO drivers, which are used by most mid-level and high-end music apps. And the music editing bundle is decent.
Honestly, I’d just go for a PC with lots of fast RAM, a decently fast CPU, lots of HD space… and on-board sound, and let the friend decide what sound card to get (or get it out of him over drinks). Professional sound cards are on a completely different level. I’m sure your friend already knows his dream card.