1. Music Computer: Digital music production center
The majority of today’s music production takes place in the digital domain. To record digitally, you’ll need a computer.
But here’s the good news– Modern computers have plenty of processing power for audio tasks. You won’t need to buy a special, souped-up machine to start your home studio.
A laptop or desktop with decent specs has enough processing muscle to get you started.
PC or Mac used to be a hot debate in the pro audio community, but in recent years the difference between the two platforms has diminished.
Use whatever type you’re most comfortable with.
But if you already know you’re going to be putting your music production computer through its paces with lots of demanding plugins, here are the computer specs that matter most.
Processor speed
CPU processor speed is still one of the most significant factors when it comes to processing power for audio.
Look for more cores and faster clock speeds for a better overall processor.
Hard Drive
Running an SSD (solid state drive) as your system boot drive is one of the best upgrades you can make for your PC in general.
But it also helps for music production. Using an SSD makes your computer more responsive and quicker to start up.
You’ll see the benefits if your DAW and other music applications are installed on the extra fast SSD.
Adequate RAM
You may think you need to max out your computer’s RAM to get the best performance in your DAW.
This isn’t always true. 8 GB of RAM will handle basic audio tasks just fine.
But if you’re planning to run multiple instances of heavy multi-GB sample libraries at low buffer sizes, you may want to expand.