Music Mixers Guide

In every aspect of music recording on a computer, there are some important rules which must be followed in order to achieve the best possible result. Of course having the necessary equipment, which you also will find further down in this article, is of course vital. The first thing that you need to have properly set up is your computer hardware. It is of utmost importance not to save money when it comes to purchasing hardware to use for this purpose. For the purpose of music and audio recording on a computer based platform you must have a fast processor, as much RAM memory as possible and a fast hard disk with short access time. The audio files should be saved on its own drive, which you will create by making a separate partition for the audio files, or use an external hard disk with sufficient storage capacity. Always make sure to have your computer and all its drives defragmented so the audio files can be found by the system as fast as possible during playback. This will minimize the risk of the sound freezes and/or hacking and other glitches. A very good advice is not to use this particular computer platform to other purposes than audio recording, editing and mastering. Do not use it to surf the Internet or playing games. Let the capacity of the hardware work for the benefit of your audio and music projects. That way you will get absolutely the most out of it.

Things to remember:

·        Make sure you have the highest quality of hardware suitable to your budget (especially RAM and hard disk)

·        Always store your audio files on a separate partition of your hard disk (or on an external hard disk)

·        Keep your computer and its drives defragmented in order for your system to perform a smooth recording and playback of your recorded data

·        Do not use your computer for other purposes than audio recording

Another thing which also is very important, is to use balanced cables in order to avoid any kind of noise. Make sure you use the balanced inputs on your mixer, or sound card input. If you have no balanced inputs on your sound card, you must make sure that the cables are as short as possible in order to prevent too much noise. Since most musical instruments do not carry balanced output connections, you should make use of direct boxes which will create a balanced signal for the input to your sound card.

A lot of high quality software for music and audio recording, editing and mastering on a computer is available in all music retail stores, and nowadays it does not cost a fortune to buy. So the conclusion is first and foremost to focus on building (or buying) a computer which has the necessary capacity regarding audio recording, editing and mastering. The next step is to buy the kind of software you will need and feel comfortable with when using it.