Livening up your digital studio gadgets

That's what it should look like

This little piece of mine is intended to provide an ongoing basis of the hardware for recording in an all-digital environment. Starting from a normal user to a musician's point of view, I intend to touch upon core facets of the digital studio environment.

The worlds of tape machines and mixing consoles are already falling behind the digital world of audio recording and mixing systems. But before creating a digital world for music we have to choose our tools very carefully.

Think of a good purchasing strategy and try sticking to it. Through this you can avoid buying expensive gear that becomes obsolete or doesn't do what you want it to do. To pick out good quality, well-designed equipment to start with, buy something which gives you the flexibility of extending your setup, as your projects get more involved.

The first piece of hardware is the computer itself and the PC running Windows 2000 (with service pack 3) or XP (with at least service pack 1) is the absolute best choice. These days it seems like the average home computer is somewhere between a Pentium III and IV, a few Gigs of Hard Drive, between 128 and 256 megs of RAM etc. So, many of you already have the main gadget of the studio sitting right there on your desktop.

When you already have a suitable computer, the remaining expenses involve getting it fitted with the right software and audio card. You may be tempted by the vast array of stand-alone direct to hard disk devices as a replacement to your PC, but the flexibility and upgrade potential of the PC will far outweigh the stand-alone units.

Now comes the hardest part -- choosing the perfect audio hardware.

The soundcard converts audio signals to digital information to record and conversely, it turns the results of your recording editing and mixing back into audio and puts it into the real world again. For professional use there are a wide range of soundcards available. Cards such as M-Audio Omni Studio, M-Audio Delta 66, M-Audio Delta 1010-LT, Lynx TWO-B, RME DIGI96/8 PAD, Hammerfall DSP MADI, Audiotrak Maya44, ESI Waveterminal 192L, Audiotrak Prodigy 192 range from USD $200 - $900 and are not available in our country. Either you have to order it or get someone to get it for you. But if you are simply using the recording capabilities to help in composing songs and you will not be attempting to get finished masters then you may well be able to use one of many very inexpensive sound cards such as The Creative Soundblaster Audigy II and Sound Blaster Live! series. These cards are also available in value packs so one can get a cheaper version if they are running short in budget. The main feature it must have is something called full duplex capability. This simply means it can record and play back at the same time. The main difference between the type of card you may find already in a home computer and something that is intended for pro quality digital recording, is the signal-to-noise ratio and the amount of simultaneous inputs and outputs you will have.

So, if you don't need the multiple ins and outs and aren't going to be producing finished product that needs to be dead quiet, then you have a wide choice of common soundcards ranging from Tk 2,000-10,000. Just look for the full duplex feature. Another feature you may need as a composer is a MIDI interface, if you are going to use MIDI keyboards and want to sequence them in the computer as well. A comparative chart of professional sound cards may be found at soundcards. electronicmusicworld.com.

The best part of a PC-based system is that you can have more than one sequencer or audio recording programme, you can add more programmes for effects and editing, you can add more outputs or inputs in the form of a bigger audio card or multiple cards and you can have as big a hard drive as you need.

Many companies have developed effects programs for the PC environment in the form of Active-X plugins, including makers of high-end audio software like Steinberg, Cakewalk, Fasoft and Soundforge. The most popular form that these plugins are available are the VST and DirectX, and once installed they can be called by any professional audio editor installed in your system. So when the newest and coolest effect becomes available in software you can bet it will be available on the PC with Windows, and probably ONLY the PC.

Next you need a reasonably fast hard drive. Most of the UDMA drives are quite capable of multitrack recording but the faster the better as this determines the amount of total tracks you can play back or record at one time with most software. Some programs, such as Cooledit Pro (Now known as Adobe Audition), do a background submix that allows more tracks to play back than separate tracks and are almost unlimited in this respect.

The basic thing to keep in mind is that faster hard drive equals more tracks that can be played back simultaneously, so a 7200rpm hard drive would be a better option to choose over the conventional 5400 rpm drives as it has a faster transfer rate. A faster CPU equals more real-time effects that can be used at once.

You also need some RAM memory. Its often said that 128 meg RAM is the minimum but 256 or 512 is more like it, and it enhances the performance so much and these days RAMs are cheap enough and worth upgrading.

Another slick fact about the computer world is that you can also record your project direct to CD or DVD.

Finally, make sure to design your studio installation to be easy to work with. Even the best equipment in the world will still need to be installed competently. When you get down to work, make sure your equipment does what you expect it to do. That means you'll need to learn about the equipment and then figure out what you need and how to use it.

In future, I wish to share my thoughts on a wide array of music software. Until then, play with your hardware and enjoy your music!