Computer / Software

I'm a DJ who's looking to get into the production side of things (house and techno). I was going to opt for a PC over Mac. What should I be looking for in terms of processor speed, memory, soundcard and so on?

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Buying a music computer from a specialist builder is an increasingly popular option for the PC musician. We rounded up some of the leading names in music PCs to find out exactly what they offer.

My PC uses an Abit KR7A-133 motherboard running an Athlon Thoroughbred XP 2400 processor with 1GB of RAM. My motherboard manual says PCI 4 shares an IRQ with the two USB ports, and that PCI 1 shares with the AGP. My Audiophile currently has an IRQ to itself and so I'm not touching it. However, I need the TC Powercore to not share an IRQ. If anyone can explain what to do, I'd really appreciate it.

I need some way to play a stereo backing track when playing live with my band. I don't want to use a CD player, as they skip, but I'm wondering what other options are there?

I'm considering moving over from my current Mac setup to a PC laptop for mobile recording, using Nuendo 2 and either an RME Cardbus interface or one of MOTU's Firewire systems. Can you point me in the right direction? Is a Centrino laptop the only sensible choice for this kind of application?

My guitar player's girlfriend has a four-year-old Gateway Pentium III laptop with 64MB RAM and Windows 98SE installed, and she has agreed to let me do whatever I need to so that we can use it for music. How do we wipe the thing clean and end up with Windows XP for an OS, 320MB of RAM and Emagic Logic Audio Platinum on there?