Music recording/home theater PC

[erdinger]

Hi guys. It's been a long time since I last wrote something in those forums, but I hope that you're still as helpfull as I remember you to be.

A friend of mine wants a decent desktop for recording and editing music for his band (Keyboard, Guitar, Drums, a singer and probably some more intruments). He also wants to connect this PC to a full/HD beamer and enjoy Blurays and ocasionnaly some gaming. I reckon the PC should also be fairly quiet because it shouldn't disturb the recordings. His budget for the desktop (no peripherals) is somewhere around 1200 CHF (Swiss Franks)

I probably won't overclock this PC in its first two years of use.

This is the PC that I would build for him after some browsing in a local internet store in Switzerland. Im open to your oppinions and advice but remember the focus here lies more on the music and silent part then sligh performance/price differences.

I have no idea about sound-cards so help with finding the right one would be very appreciated.

Sound card: M-Audio Delta Audiophile 2496 PCI (CHF 140) or Asus Xonar D2X/XDT, 7.1 PCI-E x1 (CHF 150)

Case: Cooler Master Silencio 550 (85 CHF)
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K BOX, 3.3GHz (205 CHF)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Advanced C1 (65 CHF)
MOBO: AsRock Z68 PRO3-M ( 117 CHF)
PSU: Seasonic S12II-430 (SS-430GB) (71 CHF) - should be fairly silent like all seasonic PSUs right?
RAM: Kingston Hyper Blu, 2x4GB, DDR3-1333, CL9-9-9-27@1.5V (61 CHF)
HD: Western Digital Caviar Black, 7200rpm, 64MB, 2TB, SATA-3 (139 CHF)
GPU: Club 3D HD 6750 CoolStream 1GB , PCI-E x16, passive (131 CHF)
Blue ray drive: LG CH10LS, BluRay ROM, DVD-Brenner, schwarz, SATA, Retail (79CHF)

The total cost comes to 1093/1103CHF depending on which soundcours i choose. As you see i got some money left in the budget to upgrade one or the other component.

Thanks a lot for your help. And if someone has links with good lecture about Soundcards for audio recording please share them here

Kind regards

Erdinger

 

[ScrewySqrl]

I'd see if you coudl afford an upgrade from the 6750 to a 6850, which will be better at gaming for a 1920x1080 HD screen. the 430 should still handle a HD6850.

on board sound is very good these days, but the sound card may still be useful if he's directly encoding sound. If you don't plan to overclock, you can get away with the base model 2500.

 

[garage1217]

If your into recording, Check out the external E-MU 0204 and 0404. Both are stellar performers with a lot of capability. I am just not impressed with most internal sound cards. External is the way to go IMO.

 

[MrBig55]

If your into recording, Check out the external E-MU 0204 and 0404. Both are stellar performers with a lot of capability. I am just not impressed with most internal sound cards. External is the way to go IMO.

+1

When recording, you have to diminish interferences, and the way to do so is buying a PCI/PCIx1 sound card, or even better (less interference), an external card connecting to the pc via USB.

 

[erdinger]

Thank you very much for your answers. You already helped me a lot.

@ScrewySqrl i think I will stick to my 6750 because he really only plays very rarely and this GPU is passiv which should help keep the system silent.

@garage1217 + MrBig55 I checked out those external Audio/midi interfaces. I think thats way more user friendly so I will probably buy one of those.

Unfortunately all my prefered retailers dont have this product in stock and in other stores its way too expensive (350 CHF instead of 230). Could you please name some alternatives or maybe a website with a lot of good reviews/articles on this topic?

Thanks a lot

 

[erdinger]

Any other thoughts on Audio interfaces or the build in general?

I want the Core i7 2500k and the Z board because of the Lucid Virtu technology so that most of the time the PC will be running of the integrated gpu