Which is better E8400 or Q6600?
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] =2&bop=And

Ask this.  Do you need a quad core capabilities or blazing dual core speeds?  if you do a LOT of crunching or decoding or HEAVY graphics coding, then a Quad.  If you crave FPS for games, then a dual.

will be used mainly for recording audio, DAW, & a little video editing, not a lot of gaming

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] w=0&nojs=0
 
this thread has some cool bencies that should help you out.  Not sure why more people didn't see it or post on it.  I'd say go with the q6600

Level101, so do the research now you know what you need.

with the Q6600 overclocked, it will perform just as well and even better than the E8400 when using 4 thread apps. Bottomline, Q6600 will offer you more flexibility.

quoted for truth
The Q6600 is great for heavy coding, graphic editing, and maybe servers too. But when you're talking about gaming, there are virtually no games out there right now that can use all four cores. For now the e8400 is definitely better .