The Macintosh has been the computer of choice of creative types for nearly twenty years. Most major recording studios and record companies use Macs to control their digital audio installations. The MacOS is "user friendly," and Macintosh computers are relatively easy to upgrade and maintain. Although Macs are expensive when compared to typical Windows PCs, the extra cost is well worth it for many people. Should you decide to base your studio around a Mac you'll want the following...

1) A recent-issue Power Macintosh. Even a humble eMac, iMac or iBook can be equipped with a FireWire multichannel interface like the Mark of the Unicorn 828, while a G4 or G5 "tower" can house one of the several PCI card/audio interfaces available, such as the RME Hammerfall DSP or Mark of the Unicorn 2408 MkIII. In some cases, you can upgrade an older PowerMac with a G3 or G4 processor upgrade.

• Get as much RAM installed as you can afford. The absolute minimum you should have for MacOS 9.x or higher is 256MB; 384MB or more will make things run much more smoothly.

• There is no reason to play around with older, pre-PowerPC Macintosh computers. Sound editors and MP3 encoders rely heavily on a fast floating point processor ("FPU" or "math co-processor") for processing their data. All PowerMacs have an excellent FPU integrated into the main processor, while some older Macintosh computers don't have any FPU at all.

• The PowerMac G4 and G5 processors in new Macintosh computers are actually faster cycle for cycle than any Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon. This means that a Pentium 4 at 2.4 GHz is really no faster than a Mac G5 at 1.6 GHz. Forget the bigger numbers; a Mac G5 will be a lot faster than a Pentium 4 at the same clock speed.

• The eMac, iMac, G4 and G5 come standard with an IDE hard drive and a CD-R or combo CD-R/DVD drive, as well as decent quality 16 bit audio playback built in. The eMac/iMac/G4/G5's major selling points are their speed, easy Internet connectivity, ease of use, and the fact that they're very nicely styled. You may have noticed that these new Macs have no serial ports (the old "modem" and "printer" ports) for connecting older MIDI interfaces or Mac-compatible printers. Instead, these new Macs have USB and FireWire (IEEE-1394) ports. This means that Mac users upgrading from older PowerMac G3's up to an eMac, iMac, iBook, G4 or G5 will have to buy brand-new USB MIDI interfaces. Also, only the G4 and G5 tower models have PCI slots — and only the G4 notebooks have CardBus slots — so a FireWire audio interface will need to be installed for recording high-performance multitrack audio to an eMac, iMac or iBook.
  • Mark of the Unicorn offers two FireWire digital audio interfaces, the MOTU 828 and 896. These can be used with any Mac G4, iBook, iMac or eMac equipped with a FireWire port. The Digidesign Digi 002 also connects using FireWire.
  • Digidesign offers an entry-level ($500) Pro Tools interface called the Mbox, which connects to the host computer through USB and uses Digidesign's Pro Tools LE software. If you want to play with what the big boys use, here's your chance.

For the more budget-conscious, there's the "Wintel" or "PC" platform. It used to be that the "Wintel" PC was an artistically-inclined person's worst nightmare, but things have really changed since MS-DOS was put out to pasture. Even though Windows 95 and Plug 'n Play made PC's much easier to use, they're still more of a challenge to configure and use than Macintosh computers. But if you're willing to become a bit of a computer nerd you can get a lot of power for less money. Here's what you'll need to get started:

Recommended PC configurations:

• Processor:
  – If you are getting a new Windows PC, I would recommend an Intel Pentium 4 at 2.6 GHz or faster running on an 800 MHz front side bus, using dual-channel DDR SDRAM.
• Motherboard:
  – for Pentium 4: Asus P4B800 series with i865 or i875 chipset.
• AMD Processors:
  – If you need to pinch pennies, a good choice would be an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ or faster running on an Asus A7N8X or other name-brand motherboard based on the nForce2 chipset.
• RAM:
  – 512MB minimum, 1024MB better (PC3200 or faster DDR SDRAM recommended).
• Hard drives:
  – One 20GB or larger IDE drive to hold your Windows installation and programs, along with a separate, 40GB or larger Maxtor or Western Digital 7200 rpm ATA-100 or ATA-133 drive for your audio files.
• CD-Recordable drive:
  – Plextor (internal IDE, or external FireWire or USB 2.0 interface)
• AGP video card:
  – Matrox DualHead or other twin monitor card, with two reasonably good video monitors. Audio apps take up a LOT of screen space — and once you get used to having your mixer in one screen and your track view in another, you'll never want to go back to a single monitor again.

1) A Pentium III or Pentium 4 equipped IBM-PC or compatible computer. The Intel Pentium 4 processors are good for audio work, and are the most compatible with the various soundcards and other peripherals made for use with Windows PC's. The latest Pentium 4 processors operate with an 800MHz front side bus (FSB) speed (really 200MHz "quad-pumped").
The Intel Celeron with 400MHz FSB (1.7 GHz and faster) should also be OK for audio work, though it won't be as quick as a Pentium 4. The AMD Athlon XP is as fast as the Pentium 4 and seems to work quite well for audio—and costs a lot less. The AMD K6-2 and K6-III chips (Pentium clones) are now completely obsolete. Avoid the IBM/Cyrix 6x86, MII and MIII, and VIA C3 chips, as they never worked well in music computers. Using anything slower than a Pentium II 450 will make it very difficult to work with large digital audio files.

• In general, it's best to use a PC that is built on a motherboard (the big circuit board inside the case) made by a well-known, reputable motherboard manufacturer. Each motherboard is built around a 'core logic chipset' that functions as the 'heart' of the computer system. You want to choose a motherboard based on a chipset that is compatible with all of your hardware and software. For Pentium 4 and Celeron, the Intel chipsets are the most compatible, because all the software and sound card manufacturers design their products to work on Intel hardware first, before they check their products on the other chipsets. For Athlon XP, the nForce 2 chipset is generally best, though some say the latest chipsets from SiS work just as well. Motherboard manufacturer names to look for include Intel, ASUS, Gigabyte, ECS, MSI and Soyo. I recommend ASUS or Gigabyte for best performance, Intel for widest compatibility.
  
  • At one point it was necessary to use Rambus R-DRAM if you wanted to use a Pentium 4, but this is no longer true. Today's dual-channel Double Data Rate (DDR) SDRAM is every bit as fast as Rambus, but less than half the price. The latest P4's with 800MHz FSB use dual-channel DDR-SDRAM.
  • For the 1999-era Coppermine core Pentium III and Celeron processors, the best chipset choices were the Intel i815e and VIA Apollo Pro133A. It's best to avoid the Intel i810, i820 and i840 chipsets, as these had bugs that were never completely ironed out. Generally, it's a good idea to avoid chipsets from SiS, PC-100, PC Chips, Aladdin or others.
  • For older Celeron, Pentium II and Pentium III processors up to 500MHz, a good motherboard built on the Intel i440BX chipset is your best bet. (The Intel i440BX was very stable and remained in production for a long time.) The Intel Seattle BX-2 motherboard is still widely available. The ASUS P2B and CUBX, and the A-Bit BH6 and BX6 were the "classic" i440BX motherboards.
  • Dell and Gateway computers always use Intel processors and are always built on Intel motherboards, which always use Intel chipsets. Computers made by these manufacturers are usually a safe bet if you specify one that uses a chipset that is well supported by the audio card manufacturers (such as the Intel i845, i865 or i875 chipsets).
  • At the time of this writing (December 2003) the best chipset for use with the latest AMD Athlon XP CPUs is still the nVidia nForce2. According to all trustworthy sources, it's better than any of the recent chipsets for Athlon XP from VIA and SiS, although some people are reporting good results using SiS chipsets. Everybody seems to be afraid of VIA chipsets.
  • If you already have a lot of PC133 or DDR SDRAM you want to keep using and you're looking to upgrade, I would recommend using a Pentium 4 2.4GHz or so, with an Intel, Asus or Gigabyte motherboard based on the Intel i845 chipset (unless you're running a ProTools 24|Mix setup, in which case you'll need to ask Digidesign what you should be using). If you are re-using your old PC133 SDRAM, make sure the motherboard you choose is designed to accept it. Likewise, if you're using DDR SDRAM, make sure to get the version that will work with that. NOTE: The ASROCK 8I845G motherboard is very inexpensive ($65 or so) and can run at 533MHz FSB using old PC-133 SDRAM. It also has two DDR-SDRAM slots, so you can upgrade without buying a new motherboard.
  • A great resource for heavy-duty PC tech talk is Tom's Hardware Guide, where you can learn all you ever wanted to know about PC performance and related topics. Also check the RME-Audio website for computer audio-specific info.

• There are now several companies that will custom build a PC optimized for music production. These often include your choice of CPU, RAM, operating system, audio and MIDI interfaces, and software. Check out Central Computer Systsms and Wave Digital Systems. Some large music stores are also custom building music computer systems, including Sweetwater Sound.

• If you're building your own PC (or upgrading), always use high quality parts! I've seen systems malfunction because of weak power supplies, substandard "generic" RAM or lousy motherboard design. Stick with well-known name brands and you should be OK.
  • For RAM, Crucial, Mushkin, Corsair and Micron are my favorites. I've also had good luck with Kingston, Siemens, Hyundai, Hitachi and Samsung RAM. Beware of "generic" RAM!
  • For IDE hard drives, I've had good luck with the recent-production Maxtor 7200 rpm drives. Western Digital drives are reputed to be good too. I've found Fujitsu drives to be very reliable, if a bit slow. A 5400 rpm drive is fine for the system drive (Windows and apps), but you should choose a faster 7200rpm drive for your audio disk. Get one with an 8MB buffer if you can afford it.
  • For SCSI hard drives, I like IBM UltraStar LVD or Ultra160 drives. Again, the faster the rotational speed, the faster the drive. I've had bad luck with Seagate and Quantum drives, but that is my own experience. But who uses SCSI anymore?
  • For CD-R, I've had good results using Plextor drives. Others have reported good results using Panasonic, Sony, Lite-On, TDK, Ricoh and Hewlett-Packard CD-R drives. FireWire, USB or IDE CD-R drives will only work well with recent-issue, fast computers (500MHz or faster). For older computers, use a SCSI CD-R drive (with an appropriate PCI SCSI controller card, of course).
  • A frequently overlooked piece of hardware is the power supply (usually supplied with the case). An underpowered power supply will cause instability. It's always a good idea to get a good case and power supply from a quality manufactuer like Enlight, Inwin or SuperMicro. (Good after-market power supplies are made by Antec and Enermax.) If you're running an AMD Athlon XP processor, make sure your case has an AMD-approved power supply installed, and be sure to install adequate cooling fans in your case! Intel Pentium 4 systems require power supplies designed especially for them. A great place to look for high quality cases and power supplies is PC Power & Cooling.
  • Also watch out for compatibility issues between peripherals. If you're really set on a particular soundcard or audio interface, check the manufacturer's website for links to user forums or newsgroups where you can read about users' experiences with various types of peripherals and software. You may find that advanced features of a particular soundcard won't work in your favorite audio program, or that a certain video card will cause problems in your particular system. This is the price of the PC's "open architecture"—there are many possibilities, but hidden pitfalls abound!

• Your best bet for a "Salvation Army Special" is an old Pentium II 266 to 400MHz based PC. The original Pentium is too slow for multitrack editing, but will work fine for stereo recording/editing. If you're scrounging around for a 'freebie' starter PC, definitely avoid older (pre-1996) Pentium 60, 66 or 90MHz PC's. These often have ISA, Vesa Local Bus (VLB) and PCI slots all on the same motherboard. These first-generation Pentium machines had a lot of problems and are not compatible with most modern hardware, such as the latest sound cards, video cards or RAM. Also, AMD K6, K6-II or K6-III ("Super Seven") were unreliable, and are not recommended.

• For the operating system, most of you will want to be running Windows XP Home Edition, although some prefer Windows XP Pro Edition (XP Pro has more advanced networking features, but either one will work fine for audio apps). You'll want a 1GHz or faster PC loaded up with at least 512MB of RAM for running multitrack audio with XP. Pentium III computers faster than 450MHz or Athlon computers slower than about 1GHz will run well with Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 4. Pentium II/Celeron slower than 450MHz or older Athlon/Duron computers will probably run best with Windows 98 Second Edition or Windows Millenium Edition ("Windows Me").