i am actually thinking about buying a new PC for 2 things:
a) Recording and mixing the music of our band
b) shame on me: playing World of Warcraft
The most important thing is a) Recording. But now i see that most interface wont work under Linux (is this right?). Now i am looking for an mac. But i think a mac is very very expensive.
Can someone give me a hint what i should do…
a) buy a normale PC or Laptop cause i will get a more powerfull one
b) or buying a mac because most interfaces are running
I am using Ardour on Open SuSE linux with an m-audio audiophile 2496 sound card which it has 2 analog out, 2 analog in, 4 digital out. my pc is a pentium d at 3.00 ghz with 1gb ram. As for any latency, it is unnoticeable.
Ardour 2 runs multithreaded but all processing happens in a single thread, so the majority of the load will be on a single core. Ardour 3 however will be able to use any number of cores for processing.
As long as you pick an interface that does work, it doesn’t really matter that some other ones don’t work, does it? If you don’t have an interface yet, just make sure that you pick one that is well supported, and the interface support issue is moot for you.
Normal desktop PCs are pretty easy to build. I did this several years ago and am happy with it.
There are lots of hints about good PCI audio/midi cards on this forum. I use the M-Audio 1010LT and 2496 with FC13. Lots of people recommend the RME hammerfall stuff. which looks very nice, but is too expensive for my needs.
There are many USB1 cards that work and most basic standards compliant usb-audio devices work. General rule of thumb is that if it works on a Mac without requiring additional drivers, it will work on linux. For example you can use USB audio connections from things like Zoom H2, or Zoom G7 guitar inputs. USB2 sound cards apparently do not work well, you would have to do more research.
I’ve heard mixed things about firewire cards. Some work and some don’t. You’d have to do the research. I think there is a website about this… Google it.
I’d recommend you check some of these out and then ask some more focused questions detailing what you mean about recording your band. How many inputs and outputs, what instruments, all in one take, or individually mulit-tracked, mono or stereo, midi, etc…
and apart of the soundcard, one thing at least for me is quite essential: to have a silent pc! what helps a great signal to noise ratio and all of the advantages of digital audio when you feel like listening back of your audio in an airport? there are some d.i.y. pages for silent pcs but also some places you can find already built pc s …
the sound card list on http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Sound-HOWTO/x96.html
is terribly out-of date. Go to http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main
That said, Linux drivers generally do not disappear, so what was once supported will in all likelihood stay supported in later versions, unlike is the case with Windows, where Win7-upgraders have to kiss goodbye to old peripherals and just because no-one has ported the driver.
