Ableton Forum

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to this forum and music production, this coming xmas I'm going to treat myself to a new PC and ableton 6, I've downloaded the demo of 6 and it looks great, my current pc is an old laptop with 512mb ram and pentium 3.
Live 6 goes very slow and freezes.

My question is I have about £1000 to spend on a new PC, although do not really want to spend all the money, would also like to purchase a midi keyboard. What would you say is the minuimum spec PC, do you have to in reality get 2mb RAM with duel core processors or can you get away with 1mb ram with pentium 4.

Any comments would be greatly appriciated.

Kind Regards
Frankie

I think just get the best you can afford, but I've been running Ableton 4 on a P4 with 246 meg RAM. Admittedly it crashes constantly, but I think you would be OK with a GIG.
I'm looking to buy a new PC in the new year and I have the same dilemma, but I think I will go dual core because presumably I can just upgrade the processors when I want to.

brightonalex wrote:I think just get the best you can afford, but I've been running Ableton 4 on a P4 with 246 meg RAM. Admittedly it crashes constantly, but I think you would be OK with a GIG.
I'm looking to buy a new PC in the new year and I have the same dilemma, but I think I will go dual core because presumably I can just upgrade the processors when I want to.

Thanks for your reply, I think i'm going to try and stretch my budget. Thanks again

With a £1K budget it may be worth your while looking at getting a Mac. You could easily get a Macbook, or even a Mac Mini with a 1.83GHz Dual Core processor, 1GB RAM and 120GB Hard drive, plus 17" TFT monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Macs are workhorses with a much superior (and stable/secure) operating system to Windows, and will run Ableton rock solid.

I used to run ableton 5 on an athlon 1600xp and 256mb sdram and managed "ok" until i got quite a few plugins going then it was unuseable (fine for dj'ing though).

Now i have an athlon 64 3200 and 1gb ram and it runs fine even with a lot of processes running. I hit about 55-60% cpu usage. I'm sure if I start adding even more effects and stuff it will start slowing down but its doing the job ok.

So yeah if you dont mind spending you're £1000 then by all means go for it. Otherwise if you'd rather spend some of it on other things (like a midi keyboard) I think you'd be fine with a similar setup to mine and should be able to stay within £500.

Damn it now I think I should buy a MacBook Pro and install XP on it... oh I don't know what to do.

That's a good idea! That way you have the choice of working with OSX or XP, although in my opinion OSX is the way to go - leave Windows behind! I promise you won't look back.

Hi

I bought a very professional PC six months ago at : Digital Audio NetworX www.da-x.de from Germany.

its an INTEL Core2 Duo E6400 2x 2.13GHz S775 ..

follow this link for further information:

http://www.da-x.de/product_info.php/inf ... e2Duo.html

regards,
808

Looks nice, although the only part of the description I understand is "Windows XP".

HARDSHELL - I know but I have a load of Windows plugins.

brightonalex wrote:Looks nice, although the only part of the description I understand is "Windows XP".

ehehehe, ok specs are:


-19" CASE, Alufront, 5 DriveSlots
-PowerSupply 430 W, low noise
-ASUS Mainboard P5B Deluxe, 8xS-Ata, 3 x PCI, 2 x PCI-E, Firewire, USB 2.0, no fan!
-INTEL Core2 Duo E6400 2x 2.13GHz S775
-CPU-Kühler, Heatpipe-Cooler, plus temp.controlled 90mm FAN
-2048MB DDR2RAM
-Grafikkarte ATI Chipsatz, 1 x DVI, 2 x RGB DualHead
-HD 300GB Samsung, S-ATA, 7200rpm
-LG DVD+- Burner, DualLayer
-Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition OEM

for about 1440,- Euros ...

... u can order also a Silent-Kit for a really Low noise Computer

best you write an email to the guy ...

[email protected]


cheers,

That does look really nice actually.
Oh Idon't know what I need.

Thanks everyone for the advice, its been really helpfull. Have now got a couple of choices:

A Dell PC intelcore 2duo 2.13GHZ 2MB ram 320GB hardrive 19" monitor £779

A IMAC PC intelcore 2duo 2.0GHZ 1MB ram 160GB hardive 17" monitor
£799

Or blow the lot and get

IMAC PC intelcore 2duo 2.16GHZ 1MB ram 250GB hardrive 20" monitor

I could also upgrade the 17" monitor with more ram or maybe a bigger hardrive.

On paper the Dell looks the best buy, Do you think the IMAC for £799 will run as well as the Dell?

Thanks