Re: keyboard workstation vs. controller + PC for the hobbyist composer

On Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:46:16 -0500, "Rick Massey"
<seafox@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Don't fool around with sound cards if you have the money. There is a
difference, as sound cards rarely have flat frequency response in their
input stages to keep a microphone from feeding back, among other things.
There are audio interfaces that are very reasonable, (M-Audio's Delta series
comes to mind) that will give you far more joy. A sound card is not an audio
card, and though there may be no perceptible difference to most people with
a lossy format like MP3's, you can hear the difference on a CD release if
your ears are good and you've not gone to MP3 anywhere in the chain.

I definately agree that an audio interface is needed the moment you
want to record input from a microphone (pre-amps if nothing else).
Admittedly my comments about sound cards were (somewhat narrowly) in
lined with the way I use a PC for music, since I don't record outside
audio, and everything I do ultimately ends up in MP3. My comments
were mostly intended to point out that you need ASIO/WMD drivers for
low latency and (to my knowledge) this is not possible with the
on-board sound of PC motherboards. Some of the higher-end Creative
X-FI cards use EMU chips and have features found on audio interfaces,
but for anything beyond the hobbyist level, then absolutely go with an
audio interface.

On the topic of computers, get the fastest processor you can get, as Hank
above said, but absolutely load the machine up with as much RAM as you
can.If you have to bump down a tick or two in speed to afford maxing out the
machine's memory, do it. Think of it this way: you have a room, with a lot
of furniture, and you need to be able to move it around a lot. Which is
easier, a large room or a small room whre you only have enough room for the
furniture and a few walkways? The larger room, of course. The room is your
RAM and the furniture is your applications and other data going into it.
Also remember that most operating systems will occasionally lose a memory
address while running, so that represents a hole in the floor. RAM is your
best friend.

I will refrain from outright disagreeing here, but I don't find RAM to
be a big bottleneck on my system. I am speaking purely from a Windows
perspective but unless you are using a 64-bit OS, you won't be able to
use anything beyond the first 3.5 megs or so anyway. Anything below
2GB seems obsolete these days, but I only have 2GB on my 32-bit XP
music PC and I don't find myself using all of that for music. That
could be because I don't use a great deal of samples? The only synth
I have that is a RAM hog is Omnisphere, where many of the sounds are
built from layers of samples.

If you can manage to dedicate a machine only to music you'll be a lot
happier. I have two machines that only do music applications in the studio,
and they are more stable, less prone to problems, and can be optimized for
music only, thereby focusing their needs. If you need to view word documents
or spreadsheets on that PC for musical reasons, then find Word Viewer and
Excel Viewer from Microsoft, (they're free) instead of installing the full
app. This is just one way to minimize your conflicting uses for the machine.

True, and the more you can minimize background services running on
your music PC, the more resources available to make music.

If you're running Windows, make sure your interface has both ASIO and WDM
drivers, as this will minimize headaches down the line.

Finally, take the time to learn the keyboard shortcuts for programs that
have them. Rodents are serious time eaters, and if you can keep your hands
on the keyboard instead of constantly reaching for the mouse or trackball,
you'll see great improvements in time. This is handy, because the muse is
sometimes fickle, and the faster you can create the less likely it is that
your muse will flit away to something else -- Muses have serious ADHD.

I use a combination of keyboard shortcuts and mouse... to me the mouse
is of enormous benefit. In theory, with enough work I guess one could
program their music keyboard to do most things through MIDI messages
to the host and rarely lay hand on the PC keyboard or mouse at all,
but to me if I were going to do that I would be better off getting a
single workstation and limiting myself to the onboard user interface.
I guess a lot of that could depend on your actual physical layout of
things and personal preference.
.

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