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Electronic Music Production, Home Studio, Music Production

How to Build a Computer For Music Production

Posted on by Rhino Star Records

Building Computer For Music Production

What kind of computer do you need for music production? What specific components and software are needed to make the best beats, mix tracks, and edit audio? This article will help answer these questions and more as we explore what is necessary to build a custom computer for music production. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re an experienced producer, we’ll show you how to put together the perfect system that will meet your needs.

Home Studio Computer

We will try to give basic direction and understanding here to anyone who wants to build a workstation worthy of its name for producing and recording music. Use the guidelines and information to help you set your computer specifications for a studio.

How to Build the Best Computer for Music Production

 
In order to produce professional-sounding music, one must have a powerful computer with specs that can handle the intense load of digital audio work. Audio engineering takes up a lot of processing power, so it’s important to choose the right tools when building your music production PC.
 
In this guide, we’ll discuss everything you need to know in order to assemble your dream machine – from CPU and motherboard selection to choosing the right software and plugins. We’ll also provide some tips on how to get the most out of your new rig. 

Home Studio PC

If you are a musician, music producer, DJ, or just love making your own music at home, then you need to have the best computer for music production. Having the right tools will make all the difference in how your final product sounds. In this blog post, we will discuss what kind of computer you need to get the most out of your recording and editing audio. So without further ado, let’s get started!

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic

Music Production Computer - DIY

Almost any reasonable computer will allow you to play music. To run and use software like Logic Pro or FL Studio and the like, you don’t usually need a special computer. But if you want a computer studio that will run heavy, busy, high-resolution (Sample Rate & Bit) projects, lots of long audio channels, work at low latency, and all without a tweet – this is another story altogether. The computer is the heart of the modern studio, including of course a home recording studio.

Strong Computer

A stable and powerful computer that can be trusted in the studio – it’s a quality of life. The last thing we want to do and think about when we make music is the computer. To get to such a studio nirvana where everything is ticking to our satisfaction we need a computer with a special specification that addresses and meets our studio needs:

 

Motherboard:

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.

The highest quality motherboard must be purchased. The motherboard holds the rest of your computer together and is responsible for communicating and transferring data between the various computer components. A high-quality motherboard will allow the rest of your computer components to work optimally and reach their full potential.

How To Choose Motherboard

Make sure the motherboard is compatible with audio work, which requires many real-time operations. Most quality boards will do a good job, but I have also come across quite a few cases where a board on which it is excellent did not carry audio projects well and reliably. There are also boards that do not work well with expansion cards such as UAD.

 

Best 5 motherboards for music production 

 
  • Gigabyte GA-A320M-S2H.
  • ASUS ProArt Z490-CREATOR
  • Gigabyte Z390 DESIGNARE.
  • ASUS Prime Z390-A Motherboard.
  • Gigabyte GV-N165SWF2OC-4GD.

Processor:

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.

A powerful processor will (naturally) deliver better results and enable heavy projects and multi-plugins, synthesizers, and effects. New and high-quality synthesizers and plugins can be a burden on the processor, and processing power is something that’s never enough.

A powerful i9 processor will suffice for a starting studio computer, with a studio computer designed to run heavyweight projects based on the M1 processor, as powerful as the pocket allows.

Best 5 Processors For Music Production

 
  • Intel Core i9-13900K.
  • Intel Core i9-10400.
  • AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
  • AMD Ryzen 7 5700G.
  • Intel Core i5-13600K.

Memory:

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.

When Building your own computer choose the most amount of memory with the best quality. Audio files and sample-based devices are low in memory. When the standard for computer studios is slowly set to 32GB of memory (still, 16GB will do the job, too).

(When both Windows and the sequencer software are 64bit). So 16GB for budget challenges, 32 GB to line up with the standard for a basic studio computer, and 64GB for those who want to run lots of audio files in addition to synth-loaded samplers and FX sends/receives.

The more RAM -Memory you have, the fewer crashes and freezes you’ll experience, you will be able to add more audio channels, more plugins, and VSTs, and run multiple software simultaneously. 

5 best RAM models for music production:

  1. Corsair Vengeance DDR4
  2. TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan 
  3. Crucial Ballistix RGB 3200 MHz DDR4 
  4. G.Skill Trident Z RGB
  5. Samsung DDR4

Hard Drives:

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.
Both studios require two hard disks (physical disks and no partitions). For optimal computer work, the operating system and software must be installed on the system’s hard disk, which can be small in size. The DATA, samples, and projects are placed on a separate hard disk. This way the system will work more efficiently and even when the (sad) day comes when we will need to format the computer – we can only format the system hard drive and leave the projects and samples in place.

Types Of Hard Drives

 

SSDs will give you much-improved performance, are significantly faster, and make the whole system work much smoother. In addition, SSDs are hard drives with no moving parts and therefore they are quieter – and we like quiet in our studio. But SSDs are still very expensive and most of us will not be able to afford Terra’s SSD hard disk. We recommend taking a small SSD hard disk system (256GB or even 128GB) on which we install our Windows and our sequencer software, which allows us to feel and use the speed and quality of the SSD without tearing the pocket.

Best 5 Hard Drives for Music Production

  • Seagate Fast external hard drive
  • Toshiba Canvio
  • WD Elements external hard drive
  • SanDisk Extreme Portable external hard drive
  • Seagate Desktop

Building Music Production Computer

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.

Computer Components:

In addition, a studio computer should be exceptionally quiet, and therefore special emphasis must be placed on quiet components, quality fans, and a good spacious, and quiet chassis. And a quality and quiet power supply, but for that in the next section

 
 
 
 

Power Supply:

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.
Please do not underestimate the power supply, and buy a quality and stabilized one as far as the pocket allows. The studio usually connects low-cost components to a computer with USB and Firewire connections, such as control keyboards, sound cards, and so on.
 
Therefore, there is a need for a strong power supply that can hold the computer and its components firmly connected.  a quality power supply is not cheap but you do not want to spare this section!
 
we would strongly recommend getting a power supply only from a well-known and reputable manufacturer (such as SeaSonic, Corsair, Silverstone, Cooler Master), and choose a 80+ rating of Bronze – This will ensure that the electricity used is low enough for optimal performance while being quieter than other models
 
 

Graphics Card:

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.
 
You should also add a reasonable video card because the graphics requirements of the software we work with are constantly increasing, as are the Windows graphics requirements. If you want to use two (or more) screens, choose a video card that supports it.
 
The GTX 1660 is a powerful graphics card that will give you all of the performance needed for music production and general DAWs. However, if your workstation also happens to be used as a 3D Renderer or high-resolution video editor/ gamer -or just has some other function where it might come in handy- then consider upgrading with something like RX 6600 XT or even RTX 3060 Ti!

Screen Monitor:

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.
Many studios use two screens, with one displaying the sequencer software and the other with the mixer or synthesizer/plugin you are currently working on. If you choose the one-screen option, it will be great. If you want a very big TV too can do the job (quality of life we ​​already said?)

5 Best Screens/ monitors for music production

 
  • Best overall: Apple Studio Display.
  • Best PC monitor: Asus ZenScreen Touch MB16AMT.
  • Best curved monitor: Samsung Odyssey Neo G9.
  • Best ultrawide monitor: LG 34WP65C-B.
  • Best monitor for dual setup: HP VH240a.

Professional Sound Card:

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.
When you go to buy a computer in a store, it should be borne in mind that the seller usually has no idea about the unique components and capabilities that a music production computer should have, and what is good for an office computer or even a computer gamer, is not necessarily good for a musician’s computer. In any case, a professional studio sound card is bought in a music store and not a computer store!

Best 5 Sound Cards For Music Production

 

  • Apogee Duet 3
  • Universal Audio Apollo Twin X Duo
  • Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2
  • Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 3rd Gen
  • Audient Id 14
Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.

Building Computer For Music Production

Additional tips and components:

External Hard Drive:

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.

Make sure your projects are backed up on external HD, or use one of the cloud services for backup.

UAD Card:

Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.
 

The Universal Audio plugins run on a dedicated DSP card with its own processor and memory, which releases a lot of processing power in the system. The card is not cheap and the plugins themselves are expensive, but the upgrade of your studio position is significant.

 
Building Home Studio For Music Production, Computer for music production, headphones, beats, speakers, microphones, acoustic, Midi Keyboards.

Optimization:

 
Once you’ve purchased a studio computer, you’ll probably want to set it up for optimal audio work. In an article on Optimizing Studios, you will find the information to help you do so easily!
 
 
 

Building Music Production Computer

With the right tools, you can produce amazing music no matter where you are. By following our guide, you will be well on your way to building the best computer for music production that fits both your needs and your budget. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out or leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you and help however we can. What type of music do you produce? Let us know in the comments below!

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