What's the best bet for the money? -Sound Forge - PC

Subject:What's the best bet for the money? Posted by: DeeDee Date:4/17/2000 6:51:00 PM Hey, I'm considering purchasing a new CPU and was wondering what you all think is the best bet for the money. The same for sound cards, CD Burners and such. Lastly, what Sonic foundry software pruduct do you get the most out of? I'd be using it for personal recording; mostly vocals, drums and guitars and possibly keyboard for CD and online delivery and some work for others. I'm getting more and more serious and plan on continuing in that direction. I've got about $3,000 to play with. DeeDee dee@mokalive.com
Subject:Re: What's the best bet for the money? Reply by: Jeff_Lowes Date:4/17/2000 11:56:00 PM I am running Sound Forge 4.0e (I would use 4.5 but I don't like the jittery scrolling feature), XFX2, Noise Reduction 1.0b, CD Architect, Acid XPress and Siren XPress on a Dell XPSTr 600MHz PIII which runs @ 100MHz clock speed with 128M RAM, 7200 RPM Ultra ATA Hard Drive, 32M Diamond Viper 770D Ultra AGP graphics card and a Zefiro Acoustics ZA2 sound card and I have had very little (if any) problems. I have loaded the Audio Plug-in Chainer (in SF) up with Noise Reduction, Paragraphic EQ, Parametric EQ, Graphic EQ, Multiband Dynamics, Graphic Dynamics and Reverb and previewed in real-time without so much as a hiccup; even while opening and closing windows and tweaking out parameters. The processing speed is quite fast, even on long (30 minutes+).wav files. I like my sound card, but I know I will have to update to a 24-bit version soon (mine currently runs at 20-bit). CD Architect has given me no problems at all burning to a TEAC (Tascam) CDRE55S SCSI burner. I haven't dove into ACID extensively yet to see how my system will handle multiple tracks, however, I've had absolutely no problem playing the SF ACID demos. I suspect that if you go with SF, you will probably need VEGAS, Sound Forge and CD Architect (at least). I haven't tried out VEGAS on my system so I don't know just how much horsepower it really needs to run properly. You could probably pick up a system comparable to mine for around $1800 (not including software, sound card and CD burner & adapter). Incidently, be sure to get at least a 17" monitor. Also, if you don't have them already, spend the money to get yourself some nice nearfield monitors; if you can't be sure of what you're hearing as you're recording, you'll spend an awful lot of time tweaking and testing trying to get it to sound right. Jeff Lowes On-Track Recording Rondi Anderson wrote: >>Hey, >>I'm considering purchasing a new CPU and was wondering what >>you all think is the best bet for the money. The same for >>sound cards, CD Burners and such. Lastly, what Sonic >>foundry software pruduct do you get the most out of? I'd be >>using it for personal recording; mostly vocals, drums and >>guitars and possibly keyboard for CD and online delivery >>and some work for others. I'm getting more and more serious >>and plan on continuing in that direction. >> >>I've got about $3,000 to play with. >> >>DeeDee >>dee@mokalive.com

I am running Sound Forge 4.0e (I would use 4.5 but I don't like the
jittery scrolling feature), XFX2, Noise Reduction 1.0b, CD Architect,
Acid XPress and Siren XPress on a Dell XPSTr 600MHz PIII which runs @
100MHz clock speed with 128M RAM, 7200 RPM Ultra ATA Hard Drive, 32M
Diamond Viper 770D Ultra AGP graphics card and a Zefiro Acoustics ZA2
sound card and I have had very little (if any) problems. I have
loaded the Audio Plug-in Chainer (in SF) up with Noise Reduction,
Paragraphic EQ, Parametric EQ, Graphic EQ, Multiband Dynamics,
Graphic Dynamics and Reverb and previewed in real-time without so
much as a hiccup; even while opening and closing windows and tweaking
out parameters. The processing speed is quite fast, even on long (30
minutes+).wav files.
I like my sound card, but I know I will have to update to a 24-bit
version soon (mine currently runs at 20-bit). CD Architect has given
me no problems at all burning to a TEAC (Tascam) CDRE55S SCSI burner.
I haven't dove into ACID extensively yet to see how my system will
handle multiple tracks, however, I've had absolutely no problem
playing the SF ACID demos. I suspect that if you go with SF, you will
probably need VEGAS, Sound Forge and CD Architect (at least). I
haven't tried out VEGAS on my system so I don't know just how much
horsepower it really needs to run properly. You could probably pick
up a system comparable to mine for around $1800 (not including
software, sound card and CD burner & adapter). Incidently, be sure to
get at least a 17" monitor. Also, if you don't have them already,
spend the money to get yourself some nice nearfield monitors; if you
can't be sure of what you're hearing as you're recording, you'll
spend an awful lot of time tweaking and testing trying to get it to
sound right.

Jeff Lowes
On-Track Recording

Rondi Anderson wrote:
>>Hey,
>>I'm considering purchasing a new CPU and was wondering what
>>you all think is the best bet for the money. The same for
>>sound cards, CD Burners and such. Lastly, what Sonic
>>foundry software pruduct do you get the most out of? I'd be
>>using it for personal recording; mostly vocals, drums and
>>guitars and possibly keyboard for CD and online delivery
>>and some work for others. I'm getting more and more serious
>>and plan on continuing in that direction.
>>
>>I've got about $3,000 to play with.
>>
>>DeeDee
>>dee@mokalive.com