Hi refreshener,
That's very kind of you, thanks a lot!! Well, I can't promise my set-up will work for you, but it sure has been excellent for me. I highly recommend the Sweetwater Creation Stations. You can build your own for way less money....and I'm a pc geek, but to be honest, there comes a time when in my business, time is money and I can't be messing with building my own pc, driver issues, installing crap...trouble-shooting. It's just worth the extra money to me to have someone do it. The guys at SW built the box for me, installed all the software I would be using, installed the soundcard, the midi stuff, my controller drivers etc. Then of course they shut it down and pulled them all out, but they told me what slots they installed stuff in so when I got the box, all I did was put in my stuff, booted the system and I literally was recording in under 10 minutes. To me, you can't put a price on that, ya know? Sure, if you can't afford it, it's one thing...but if you can, it's totally worth it.
One of my reasons for this decision was, at the time, I was still running Win 98 SE. I could no longer run some software unless I had XP, so it was time for me to make the switch. The last thing I wanted to do was learn a totally new OS as well as possible driver issues and other things that could have come into play. I had a record deal by then and needed to keep on working without trouble shooting and fixing issues. That stuff just gets old after a while no matter how much you know about pc's, ya know? I just didin't feel like dealing with it.
I think one of the key things about my system is how the drives are split. A few guys have told me that I'm living in the old times dedicating one drive to just Windows, one for recordin appz, plugins and samples, and another for streamed audio and wave file saves. But to me, this has worked flawlessly in the passed on slow systems, I felt it would work well on a newer one...and it has been perfect since I got it. Seriously...not a single issue other than running a bit hot due to a fan that needed to be replaced....which SW sent to me for nothing 2 years ago.
Any time the system has crashed (which honest has been rare) it's been my fault trying to do things I shouldn't be doing at times. I definitely recommend at least a dual core or quad core processor or higher with at least 4 gig of ram to run the stuff of today without a hitch. A few 7200 RPM drives or faster, and the UAD cards are really incredible as they take the strain off your pc for running great effects through their own DSP. Not a necessity for a hobbiest, but for a SERIOUS hobbiest or semi-pro, definitely something to consider.
If price is not an issue and you don't feel like dealing with the BS of system building and tweaking at this moment...definitely look into having a pro system built. If you're in no hurry and feel like taking on a little project where you work on it in your spare time, you'll probably save about $1000 doing it yourself, but of course this can sometimes come with quite a few headaches. Good luck in whatever you decide man and thanks for the kind words!
