Music production rig

[Ghosthud1]

I know im normally decent at speccing up computers but when it comes to sound production i have no clue.

Making a computer silent has always been a struggle for me and i would appreciate your opinions.

The purpose of this rig

the rig is been built on behalf of myself but is been funded by a mixture of family members. It will be going to my brother who has finally cleaned up his act and is now 6 months clean from his previous issues surrounding drugs and crime.

The rig will allow him to produce music on software suites such as ableton, reasons and another mastering package i cant remember the name of. I can remember him trying to use this software on my macbook and it completely thrashed the i5 CPU.

Whats required:

High quality sound card (he generally produces with his headset)

Higher end cpu

Motherboard with alot of USB connectivity (keyboard, controllers etc)

Case has to be small as possible but be quiet

SSD/HDD combination (He doesn't want to be loosing everything)

Graphics (on chip or low powered pci-e card)

Power supply (quiet and sufficent)

fans/controller

The budget is £900 and should be in time for his 22nd bday on may the 10th

Will we see ivy bridge in time for his bday? or is sandy bridge the only option?

His newest creation under his new name

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8K19u893Uw

A track he made around 2 years ago under his old name, he made it on an old pentium 4 computer with i think half a keyboard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYIDNkQp1iE&feature=relmfu

 

[sheroo]

From what I've read about Digital Audio Workstations, one of the most important things to get right is the hard drives. They recommend that you have 3 - O/S, Project & Samples Library.

Do you already have a monitor, K/B etc? The case that immediately springs to mind is the Fractal Design R3 Mini (mATX). You can get a Gold rated 400W BeQuiet PSU, which might be a good place to start.

 

[Firat]

From what I've read about Digital Audio Workstations, one of the most important things to get right is the hard drives. They recommend that you have 3 - O/S, Project & Samples Library.

Do you already have a monitor, K/B etc? The case that immediately springs to mind is the Fractal Design R3 Mini (mATX). You can get a Gold rated 400W BeQuiet PSU, which might be a good place to start.

Sound card wise, you would need something ASIO compliant, I have used reason, cubase and fruity loops for music production on my creative sound blaster titanium hd, I'm not sure what asus make but the card I have has very low llatency which is key for music production.

Case wise I would recommend a fractal r3 to minimise rig sound.

The be quiet fan less mentioned above is perfect for this rig!!!

I wouldn't wait for ivy, it may not be out in time. Go for a z68 and use the CPU integrated graphics, as you not going to need graphics power, which also means less noise.

Lots of ram ( like 16gb would help) when rendering tracks,

Whatever harddrive you choose make sure of you can put them in raid 1 ( you don't want to loose the tracks)

Motherboard wise probably a mid range gigabyte/ asus board- like the UD4? Or something with a lot of USB ports!

Hope I got everything !

Gd luck

 

[Ghosthud1]

Thanks for the input guys!

Not upgrading or looking into hardware for the past 6 months has put me behind abit!

He will be taking my asus 24" screen, mouse and keyboard and will be buying myself a new 27" screen

 

[yuri04]

In my experience there is one thing extremely important in an DAW. This is stability. It must be the top priority for a professional workstation.

but lets start at the beginning,

what hardware does use now, this will determine what we will have to build the rig around.

In this I mean, what monitors (speakers), headphone, interface, mics does he use.

I.E.

I use a firewire interface, so when buying a new rig, I look for a FW chip on the motherboard, or if I can't find one (or a proper one) I know I have to buy a FW expansion card.

also I would like to say that it's awesome of you and your family to do this for your brother.