A complete Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) on the PC. Your choice of audio software (multitrack recording and editing, MIDI, CD recording, MP3 conversion) and hardware (soundcards, pro audio cards, analog/digital converters).
Can you handle the power and flexibility of non-destructive, non-linear multitrack digital audio recording and editing? Can you even say it? Fear not - here's a guide to all the hardware and software you'll need, with links to reviews and other PC audio resources.
September 9, 1999
Until recently, we PC audio nuts were just that: crazy fools trying to cobble together an audio system with soundcards and aspirin. These days, however, the PC Audio scene is taking off, with new multitrack options cropping up all the time. In this article, I won't try to discuss all the latest stuff out there, because the article would be obsolete in a month. What I'm going to do here is list the components you need to assemble a virtual recording studio on the PC, with a few options in different price ranges. From there on out, it's a do-it-yourself proposition! Don't call me up in the middle of the night with your IRQ problems, please!
Before we start, let's define some terms. First, Linear vs Non-Linear. Systems like the popular Alesis ADAT record digital audio as side-by-side tracks on tape, like a familiar tape deck. The data is all laid out in a straight line, you have to rewind and fast-forward through it, so it is said to be linear. When you record to a computer's hard drive, however, this is non-linear because you can access any point in the recording instantly. If you want to switch verse 2 for verse 1, you can just highlight verse 2, copy it, and paste it in anywhere you like. A non-linear environment offers the ultimate in editing freedom. It's obvious why non-linear systems are popular in post-production houses, radio stations, and so on. Instead of thinking of your work in terms of tracks, you can arrange it in clips of whatever length, that can be moved around to your heart's content.
Now, a non-linear recording setup, or virtual studio, can be a self-contained gadget, or some combination of hardware and software on a PC or Mac (or SGI or Alpha, or whatever). Stand-alone units range from top-end boxes from Otari, Fostex, and Roland, to Akai's 8- and 16-track recorders, to a new crop of digital "portastudios" of which Yamaha and Tascam are two examples. There are a few high-end systems, like Spectral, that use a proprietary box for all the audio processing, and connect up to a PC or Mac just for the user interface. The Mac scene has been dominated for a long time by Digidesign's Pro Tools line. This involves an 8- or 16-channel I/O unit that hooks up to the Mac, and a software package. In the PC world, there's more choice, but also a lot more chaos. Scads of audio cards and a plethora of software packages come and go.
Until recently, most PC audio cards had analog inputs and outputs, and could only record or play 2 tracks at once. Nowadays, most audio cards offer 4 or even 8 channels of I/O. Some still have their own onboard analog/digital converters, but digital I/O cards seem to be the wave of the future. These allow you to connect an external DA/AD converter to the card, using either the S/PDIF or the AES/EBU digital standard. We'll cover audio cards in more depth later, but for now let's start putting together our studio on the PC. Like a conventional studio, it must be assembled step by step.
First of all, a wimpy computer won't do. You need a Pentium with as much RAM as you can afford. One song can easily be 20 megs or more, so don't scrimp on the RAM. Next, you must have a fast and commodious hard drive. Decent sound (44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo) eats up memory to the tune of around 10 megs a minute. An album's worth of material will suck up 700 megs or more. To allow plenty of room for edits, alternate takes and so forth, you may want to have double that. Unlike other types of computer data, digital sound must be read from and written to the hard drive in a long, continuous stream. Stopping every few milliseconds for thermal recalibration, as the older drives used to do, will not work, nor will disk compression schemes. Also, the drive must be fast enough to pass your data through in real time. The more tracks you play or record at a time, the bigger the data stream, and thus the faster your signal path must be to avoid delays. A virtual studio has a signal path just like a regular studio. However, while the critical parameter in a traditional studio is quietness throughout the signal path, in the virtual studio it is speed. Traditionally, a SCSI "A/V" drive is preferred, but these days folks are getting good results with EIDE drives, too. For the ultimate, look into a RAID setup, which writes to two drives at once to improve throughput.
To read more about hard drives for audio, check out our article Hard Drives for Digital Audio.
The next item of hardware is an audio card, and there are lots to choose from these days. Multitrack recording requires a full-duplex card, that is, one that can record a track while playing back another. Turtle Beach, Ensoniq, and Creative offer "consumer-level" soundcards that are full-duplex, and have pretty good quality. More serious audio recordists, however, will prefer a dedicated audio card. Unlike a general-purpose "sound card," what we call an "audio card" offers only audio recording, with no onboard synthesizer (although some do include a MIDI converter). An audio card may accept digital or analog input and output, or both. The CardDplus, from Digital Audio Labs was the workhorse of choice for a while, though it's been superseded by a newer model. Although there are lots of newer cards that offer more channels, the CardD is tried and true, having been around long enough to prove itself reliable and compatible. It allows 2-track recording and playback, with analog and/or digital input and output, and very good quality. It is even possible to hook up two cards and have 4 tracks. A used CardD would be an excellent low-budget choice.
Most pro audio cards these days offer 4 or more channels of simultaneous record and playback. Some have analog input/output, meaning that they have their own onboard DA/AD converter, and some have digital I/O, and must be used with an external converter. A few have both. Click here to read our reviews of the most popular cards.
Many pro audio cards also include a MIDI converter, which is very handy. All your synthesizer and drum machine tracks can be triggered by MIDI, saving those precious audio tracks for guitars, vocals, etc. Cakewalk Pro Audio allows you to play audio and MIDI tracks in sync, but some other software packages may make you jump through some hoops to get your MIDI synced up with your audio. To learn the basics of MIDI, check out our MIDI Primer.
The ultimate is to have MMC (MIDI Machine Control), which allows you to run audio, MIDI, and even (MMC-retrofitted) analog decks all from the same sequencer program.
As the old saw goes, "garbage in, garbage out". Just as in an analog studio, your front and back ends (your Input and Output) must be the best you can afford. On the front end, you need microphones and a mixer. While dynamic mikes like the popular Shure SM-58 and 57 are adequate, you'll notice a huge improvement if you spring for a studio condenser mike. AKG, CAD and Alesis, among others, make some very nice moderately-priced condenser mikes. For more about condenser mikes, read our review of the new Alesis line.
Although you could conceivably manage to get by without a mixer, by stringing a rat's nest of cables and adapters around the back of your computer, and trudging back there to twiddle them every now and then, and probably tripping over a wire and bringing your whole rig crashing down...believe, me life will be much easier with a small board. You can plug in several mikes or instruments and adjust the levels in peace. A Mackie is a good choice, cause they're clean and cheap.
All studios need a monitor system. Little plastic "multimedia" speakers are fine for children's CD-ROMs, but a man needs a nice clean power amp and a pair of good reference speakers. If you must have small, the Bose are perhaps the pick of the litter. Check out their satellite systems, with one big woofer that sits on the floor, and 2 or more tiny tweeters. A better deal yet is a pair of "near-field" reference monitors, small cabinets with good fidelity designed to be listened to in smaller, lower-volume situations. Yamaha NS-10s are perhaps the most popular "near-fields", but the Tannoy are also very good. Get the cleanest power amp you can afford.
Beware of using your home stereo system as a monitor system for your studio. If you keep the volume reasonably low, it will do, but be aware that home stereo speakers are designed to play back "program music", already mixed and processed. Signals during tracking and mixing can contain sudden volume spikes that may damage "home" speakers.
A traditional studio contains a tracking deck and a mixdown deck. Separate parts recorded on a multitrack tape recorder are mixed down to a 2-track deck, nowadays usually a DAT recorder, and that 2-track tape is used to run off cassettes, or to produce a master for large-scale duplicating. In the virtual studio, your sound card can act as either multitrack or mixdown deck, or possibly even both at once. Depending on the complexity of your music, there are a variety of different ways to assemble individual parts into a final product. If your needs are fairly modest, you could get by without a separate mixdown deck at all (and of course you can always mix down onto a cassette, although the quality will be mediocre). If you plan to exchange tapes with other studios, however, or have a lot of copies made, you should invest in a DAT deck, for that's still the industry standard for now.
The last link in the chain is the deck that makes the final product, a cassette deck for most folks. However, if, as I do, you believe that cassettes are on the way out, get a CD-R. Of course, in the virtual studio, you can do virtual output. Your final product may be a Windows .wav file or a Mac .snd file, or even a RealAudio file, which allows for streaming playback over the Web.
What about effects? Packages like SAWPro and Sound Forge include software algorithms for reverb, delay, chorus...you name it. Applying them is processor-intensive, however, and some people don't like the way they sound. You can always route your signal out of your card, to an effects processor, and back in, but that means one more AD/DA conversion. Wouldn't it be cool to use a dedicated signal processor to add effects in the digital domain? Frontier's Wavecenter card has the same type of optical connector found on Alesis products, so it can interface digitally with a Quadraverb! Digital-domain effects are a hot topic to watch.
A virtual studio needs one more item, and that is something to back up your files on. While you're recording and editing your music, it exists only on your hard drive. If your hard drive should crash before you finish your song...And forget about backing up on peewee little 3.5" floppies. Once you've output a finished project to cassette or CD or whatever, you'll probably want to erase the digital files on your hard drive, to open up space for the next project. But you should save those files in case you want to go back and modify them later. Therefore, a high-capacity physical storage device is needed to back up your files. There are ways to do it with a DAT machine, but the ultimate is to have a "removable" like a Zip drive or a Jaz. Of course, a CD-R is also fine for backups.
Did we say only one more item? Let's slip one more in there. Most CD recorders are SCSI (though there are some EIDE ones coming out now), so you'll probably need a SCSI card, like one of Adaptec's offerings. As I mentioned, SCSI hard drives are also popular with audio folks. Also, how about your Zip drive? They come in two versions: Parallel port and SCSI. The advantage to choosing the SCSI model is that, if you want to exchange data with a Mac shop, you can bring the little drive over there and plug 'er in (Macs have SCSI built in).
Now for the software! A number of packages let you do digital audio and MIDI together. Try Cakewalk Pro Audio or Cubase Audio. SAWPro is a very popular digital recording package, as is Samplitude Studio. Sound Forge is admired for its extensive editing capabilities. If you do a lot of sheet music, you may want to add a dedicated notation package. If you want to record CDs, you'll need CD recording software. Adaptec, Elektroson, and several others have offerings, but none of them is designed specially for audio. Samplitude's Red Roaster, and Sonic Foundry's CD Architect are aimed at the audio market, and have several useful features that general-purpose CD recording packages lack.
Click here to see all our software reviews.
Like a traditional studio, a virtual studio can grow a piece at a time. Start with a powerful computer and a good audio card, and then go for the icing as you can afford it. Here are samples of minimum, medium, and awesome setups.
MIMIMUM SETUP FOR DECENT AUDIO:
Computer: 486/66 with 8 megs RAM
Decent Hard Drive
Decent Sound Card
Microphone and/or instruments with adapter cable
Powered Speakers
Computer: Pentium 450 with 512 megs RAM
2 8-gig SCSI or EIDE hard drives
Digital Audio Labs V-8 soundcard
or 2 or more Frontier Dakota digital I/O cards with Zulu or Tango DA/AD Converters
Iomega Jaz drive
CD Recorder
SCSI controller for Jaz, hard drives, and CD-R
Audio Hardware:
Assortment of good mikes: AKG, Neumann, Shure, etc.
Mackie 16-channel board
2 stereo power amps
Tannoy near-field speakers
large JBL speakers
Panasonic SV-3800 DAT recorder with digital I/O (can interface with the Frontier digital I/O)
Alesis Quadraverb with digital I/O (can interface with the Frontier, too!)
Double cassette deck
