• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Best Operating System

B

BigVoiceGuy

This kind of a dumb question...I am re-doing my home studio and want to know the best operating system to load the latest version of adobe audition on. Laptop...desktop, doesn't matter, just what is the best that any of you have seen.
 
A frivilous and somewhat tongue-in-cheek answer would be: The one you know best. :)

I'm not sure I can justify it with logic, but if I were doing today what you are doing I would go with XP and be watching the soon the arrive Windows 7 very closely.
 
Desk top running XP with as much memory as possible, biggest flat screen monitor you can afford. And get a good mouse too. That is what I am using for Adobe 3.0 and Soundbooth 1.0.
 
Get a solid desktop. (we like the Dell Vostro's running 2 gigs and Win XP)

Get either a good sound card (Lynx, Delta-44 or CarDeLuxe etc) or a solid USB or firewire interface for audio

We love our wireless trackballs for editing.

BUT invest in a standalone external hard drive to hold all of your audio. The operating stuff including the temp directory for editing etc for Adobe Audition 3 can stay on the "C" drive, but save all audio, mutitrack settings etc to an external drive. Keeps the operating speed snappy, and if the tower's HD crashes you can still keep your audio.

These have gotten so cheap that we now replace these external drives every year and shelf the hard drives by year (2006, 2007 etc...) and if we need to go back, we just pull it down and fire it up.

I needed a track I used on a 2005 car spot this past week, and found it in about 2 min.
 
I would recommend a desktop. Get a Dell business class machine, such as a Vostro or the older Optiplex series. I've seen a very nice set-up that consisted of a Dell GX620 (Optiplex) with XP OS and a Delta 44 audio card.

If you're on a budget, you locate an off-lease Dell GX620 or 745 for a reasonable price--some even still have the Dell warranty or a warranty from the reseller. I know one company in Canada that sells them and offers a 3-yr warranty for an additional $25.

Here are a few additional suggestions. I agree with using two HDs: one for the OS; the other for the audio. The suggestion for an external HD is a very good one. Also, because RAM is so inexpensive, load up and you'll be richly rewarded. If you're using XP, use the Windows Classic view to turn off the unnecessary graphics. I would also occassionaly run a registry cleaner. I believe one of the best is RegSupremePro, which is the one we run on our iMediatouch system. Unfortunately, RegSupremePro has been discontinued, BUT a freeware "light" version, called PowerTools Lite, has been released. Also, keep the machine defragmented; If you wish to automate the process, use Diskeeper or something comparable.

Here are some links:

http://www.macecraft.com/

http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.aspx


Good Luck....
 
MACs, IMO opinion, are far too pricey for what you get.


I too suggest a PC (desktop). My present rig is a P4 2.4Ghz, with 4GB RAM (expandable to 16GB), running XP Pro.

I do as Jeff described in that my audio for producing is done/saved to an external.

Heck, you can get a 1TB outboard HD for under $120.
 
The other thing to think about is keeping your PC offline as a stand-alone workstation if at all possible... no internet! That way you don't have to junk it up with resource-hogging anti-virus programs. I've been doing this for the past 5 years, just using a thumb-drive to transfer files to/from my internet PC, and it's worked out great for me.
 
Jeff: up where you live you may not get the basketful of circulars with your newspaper that I do down here in the backwash of the Atlanta's sprawl. Office Max, Office Depot, Staples, Best Buy run specials rather regularly where they will have the 1TB USB external drives at maybe $119. 500MB and up to 750 MB under $100 with some regularity. And then with a bit of driving there is Computer Micro and Frys who bomb us with colorful print ads and some attractive pricing from time to time.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom