Solved I built this do i need anything more.

[boday]

Hi I built this rig and i like it.Might be on the wrong forum. The start! Dell Precision T3500 Xeon 2.7 Quad speed step Intel. Win 7 Pro NZ $350. I then added new. Sanyo 250gb SSD, Seagate 2T 7200 Nas disc drive 3x4gb ram leaving 3 slots empty. Nvidia 1gb DDR5 GTX 750 to run 3 monitors. (2xHP Ips 1600x900 monitors, 1xDell 24" 2400x1980 monitor ) An old c-meadia 6 channel + optical in/out Coaxil in/out sound card Pci. Other Pci-e slot Powered 4x3usb hub. Wifi card. Blue tooth dongle. It also has eSATA and1gb lan. I want to turn it into a Computer Music Studio. So far ive spent including the $350 around
NZ $1200 Total

 

[matts6887]

I would say it sounds like you should be good to go as far as that goes with possibly 1 exception; and that is your old pci sound card you mention. That might not be compatible with newer windows version like 7 as there is a slight chance there might not be drivers for it but you can try it out and see what happens. Short of that; i dont see any other issues. on a slightly similar note; I have a newer sound blaster pci express sound card that i used in my previous dell tower and my newer(2012) system build and so far its worked great for me.

 

[boday]

hi Mark, the pci card is a classic and the chip is still used to day. i can get 7.1 seround off it and it takes up to bays optical in /out etc as above Ive got drivers for it and interface. It is analoge to. The real question is how many sound line in do i need, one thing that idont know about is sound in out through USB 3, the Dell had no USB 3, the card i fitted to have USB 3 fits in the spare Pci-e slot and has its own separate power supply. My thoughts were this is a clean and fast in/out, it should be able to multi channel in/out. Does anybody else have any no-how USB3 through Pci-e

 

[TheOneZeata]

Hi I built this rig and i like it.Might be on the wrong forum. The start! Dell Precision T3500 Xeon 2.7 Quad speed step Intel. Win 7 Pro NZ $350. I then added new. Sanyo 250gb SSD, Seagate 2T 7200 Nas disc drive 3x4gb ram leaving 3 slots empty. Nvidia 1gb DDR5 GTX 750 to run 3 monitors. (2xHP Ips 1600x900 monitors, 1xDell 24" 2400x1980 monitor ) An old c-meadia 6 channel + optical in/out Coaxil in/out sound card Pci. Other Pci-e slot Powered 4x3usb hub. Wifi card. Blue tooth dongle. It also has eSATA and1gb lan. I want to turn it into a Computer Music Studio. So far ive spent including the $350 around
NZ $1200 Total

May i ask whats with so many monitors for one video card? but everything else looks good. have you monitored how the temp of your computer is, during benchmarks and regular usuage?

 

[townsbg]

Sound does not actually go through usb 3.0 but it can be used by an sound card. I'm not quite sure what you are asking about sound lines. Only one device can be used at a time and if you want 7.1 sound you will need a card with 7.1 capability.

 

[boday]

Hi i bought the graphics card Nvidia GTX 750 $190 because it runs three monitors. For my laptop i have a Toshiba dynadock that gives me two extra monitors plus the laptop screen, i found the using two screens is better than one and three screens better than two. plus (the HP Pavilion20fi ips 1900x900 monitors bought new marked down from $320 to $100. Had to buy at that price. and the third monitor Dell HD 1920x1080 with cam Paid $125 New Zealand dollars)

Hi the sound card i have in the studio set up is 7.1 but i would be using it to drive two studio sound monitors. The 4 usb ports at the back connected by PCI-e to the computer i want to use to import sound in or line in. the bottle neck to me seems to be the number of line in,s i can have feeding the mixer etc. I wanted to know if anyone else had used usb 3 through PCI-e. by my reasoning should be able to give an ideal line input not restricted by bandwidth or able to bring more than 1 line in per usb port.

thanks for the replys and interest

 

[boday]

hi sorry forgot to talk about usb 3 not able to bring sound in. i thought it could. i know it can bring midi in, which is not sound. but ive read about having the sound card outside of the computer and bringing it in for mixing by way of usb. or head phones and mic,s connect through usb. the more line (input) in i can have the more people can come and jam. I know PCI-e is faster than usb 3 i was interested if anyone had explored this. thans.

hi
i didnt know how address stress testing the computer im unsure why. the spec are high enough to use as a studio computer. or do you think the graphics card is unable to run 3 monitors. the only test ive done and i dont really think it was a test was the windows performance test. 7.9 is the highest possible, 7.5 the comp.

hope this is helpfull

 

[townsbg]

As I stated before USB does not directly carry audio, if it did you would be able to connect audio devices (ie speakers, microphone, etc) to it directly. Instead you need an external device which converts sound input/output to data which is what the USB card does handle. Then you need software on the computer to translate that data. It sounds like you need specialized equipment probably beyond anything most members here have dealt with. Perhaps it would be best to find a forum that specializes in this because we just handle general pc related questions and issues. I wish we could help you further but I for one cannot but perhaps someone else here can. I hope my explanation helps.

 

[Barman58]

If you are considering external Midi, and/or multi-track devices if you can obtain what you require, and they are USB units - then you should have no issues with your USB card - USB3 is fully backwards compatible with the older USB2, USB1.1 and USB1, I've just added a 7 port PCI -express card to a recent build and run a mix of older USB devices and Usb3 devices without issue - The main difference between the versions of the USB standard is basically the maximum data throughput with each revision being approximately 10 times the previous. Obviously for general use with the right hardware USB3 devices are to be preferred, but if you are considering MIDI devices this is an old standard and does not require a high speed port

You may want to consider a traditional Midi Port or two if your have any spare slots available and you have a chance of using older external devices, keyboards etc.

 

[Shimshom]

If by music studio you mean you wish to record yourself singing and playing you can start with a simple interface such as this Yamaha Audiogram (Or similar) which I use at present and it's good enough for home recording and simple mixing of instruments
AUDIOGRAM6 - AUDIOGRAM Series - Yamaha - Australia
If you wish to go above the simple there's always the full Pro Tools but for that you'll be better off with a Mac even though it will work OK with Windows. I have a few friends here involved in the music industry 2 of which have fully professional recording studios and both are using Pro-Tools and Macs for production

 

[boday]

hi
thanks guys for your help. i have ubuntu studio which is a bit of a learning curve. yeah usb 3 makes no difference ive just found out. no need for that much bandwidth. I found a site linux music software (hit sqaud ) to help with that. i more interested in going down the windows route than linux but price performance curve will play a part. linux software being FREE, windows ease of ues
once again thanks for the help

 

[boday]

thanks for the info, i built this rig to have ago getting down my music as well as bringing other people in to record and mix their talent
im just about there thanks for the advice

 

[Shimshom]

You're welcome and good luck. It's always great to hear the results after a successful session and I always find it's better to record the instruments first then do the singing part

 

[fireberd]

I came into this thread late. I have a recording studio, using Sonar X3 DAW software. PC sound cards make poor recording I/O (interface) devices as they have poor audio latency and do not have inputs for standard microphones or instruments. Thus you need a "real" recording interface unit. I use a Roland Studio-Capture, which has 12 built in microphone preamps (two are also instrument preamps) but you probably don't need something this big. There are many two and four input units, such as the Roland Quad-Capture, Focusrite Scarlett units, etc.

I would suggest running the DPC Latency Checker to see how the system performs. If there are DPC Latency issues, you will have to correct those before you attempt to record. There is also the Respledence Latency Monitor program that goes much deeper into system latency but I have yet to figure out all that it reports.
DPC Latency Checker
Resplendence Software - Advanced System Tools and Developer Components


Finally, a comment on your OS version. 64 bit with only 4GB of RAM is a disadvantage. The big plus with the 64 bit OS is it will address more than 4GB of RAM. In fact a 64 bit OS requires more basic RAM than a 32 bit, thus you have less of the 4GB of RAM left for program use.