I'm looking at building a Digital Audio Workstation, and was curious as to what kind of hardware is needed. I've talked to some people, and they said an Audio interface(external audio card, I think), and the keyboard/synthesizer. This is just hardware, the software would control the patches, and sounds of the 'instruments'. I'm looking at either Ardour, or Digital Performer on an intel MacBook.

Am I completely off base? I have a limited budget, and was wondering what the minimum requirements would be. The budget would need to include the price of the MacBook ($949 refurbed through apple), and I'd like to stay under $1500, preferably around $1200 if possible.

Why go through all that when for a measly $8,000 you can get this. Powered by Linux too!

it's mainly because I don't have $8000. I'm really only looking to use software and a keyboard to create music, it doesn't need to be professional grade by any stretch(although the better it sounds w/in my price range is always good).

Do you really need professional quality? You can just get a nice keyboard with a MIDI interface and connect it to your soundcard. Your soundcard will have to be a SB Live! or better for decent flexibility and hardware synthesis. Then, with RoseGarden, you can do basic composition and synthesis without the expensive equipment. I've been actually been meaning to connect my stuff like that for a while.

no no, not at all. By soundcard, I assume you mean the audio interface? This would be on a MacBook laptop, so the internal soundcard isn't going to have a MIDI interface, let alone hardware synthesis.

Ah, that changes things a bit. Was under the assumption you were talking about a desktop. Yeah, you'll probably have to get a Linux-supported USB or FireWire soundcard. Just to make sure we are on the same page, an audio interface are the 1/8" jacks, and a MIDI interface is the serial port like jack.

The way I'm using the term 'audio interface' is something like this and the keyboard I'm looking at is here. Is the audio interface an external video card? I'm also probably goingto be using MacOS, instead of linux, although I might try linux as well. What I'm trying to figure out what kind of equipment is necessary, and how I would set it all up.

someone must know? please?

LinuxJournal recently had an article DAW's. Good luck with it

I would look at what you want to do with your music hardware. For example, do you plan to record software based synthesisers? Are you using an electric guitar? Are you going to do any vocals? Is it just you, or are there other musicians that you will be collaborating with?

Answering some of those questions yourself may give some guidance.

If you are just going to use some software based synthesisers/samplers and maybe some vocals or an instrument or two to be overdubbed later, something like the presonus firebox would be good. It does midi, has 4 audio ins (two of which have decent pre-amps, good for microphones) and 6 audio outs. It has good latency and will work on macOS out of the box and on linux with freebob.

Since the macbook that you are looking at does not have a cardbus slot, you are limited to firewire or usb audio interface. Firewire has more bandwidth; usb interfaces are a little cheaper.

For a keyboard, if you have extensive piano playing background, look at something with weighted keys. If weighted keys isn't needed, nor do you need an 88 keyboard, look at a usb based keyboard with 61 or 49 keys. For the ultimate in portability, you can even go with something like the m-audio oxygen8. Most keyboards now transmit midi data over usb, and they also usually have a regular midi out as well. You would have the flexibility to plug it direct into the computer, or into the midi part of the interface (such as the aformentioned firebox).

Look into some small monitor speakers (as in pro-audio, not computer) or a good set of headphones also.

A word of caution if you are going the MacOS route: Software will eat up your budget BIG TIME. Digital performer costs $500 alone. I'm not sure if that even gets you any software instruments. Assuming that you are still a student, you can get an education discount on some software.

Give some of the linux audio stuff a shot. Take a look through the archives of the Linux Audio Users list to see what can be done.

I'm just looking at using a keyboard, and a computer, and using software 'instruments' in order to make the music. Probably some recorded voice as well, but not initially(budgeting and so forth). I've already got a nice set of headphones, and I'm probably just going to get a small keyboard. I've been looking into the linux route, and ardour looks kind of promising, at least, assuming it does midi(couldn't tell one way or the other from the site).

Yeah Baby! Finally, finally, Finally I get to speak out! Ah man! This is exactly the kind of thread I like to get involved in!

So, I might be getting a little grasp of what you're trying to accomplish here, and since you're posting in a Linux forum, I'm assuming you use, well, Linux!

So, the very first thing we take here is, well, as you requested, hardware.

Now, I use a p-iv 1.5 GHz without HT and 256 MB of RAM. You might think that this is too modest a configuration, and it might be, too, but the software I use works flawlessly on it, coupled with the new 2.6 Kernels and of course, Fedora Core.

You might want to get a good processor (2 GHz+) and put in all the RAM you can get. If you get a branded PC, the company will usually take care of the rest of the components. You can opt for a MAC, 'cause Linux runs on it too. But a PC will be way more cheaper (and configurable) when it comes down to the individual components, and if you're planning to use a Mac and not use Linux on it, well, I can't really be of any help to you at all.

So, you do plan to use Linux, eh? So, here you go. We shall take one single step at a time ...

1. When you say that you want the software to provide the instruments, I sense that you're implying a soft synth. A soft-synth is, well, a software synthesizer, which you can operate from an MIDI Keyboard, or ever your regular QWERTY keyboard! A very fine example of this is ZynAddSubFX. You can use it from your regular 109 keys-keyboard, without any problems - I do it all the time. And it's got a (very) big library of banks (piano, guitar, bass, brass, pad, strings etc.), and it's so configurable that you can create your own banks. There are a lot of soft-synths out there, but this one is easy on resources, easy to use and configure, and it's my favorite!

2. So, you have just got your first soft-synth, eh? You know, if you're running Linux on the computer you're viewing this page with, you can actually download ZynAddSubFX right now and see for yourself the powerful and professional sounding sounds this software can create! Google for the binary for your OS, or just download the source and compile! Do note, however, that you will need the JACK Audio Server to use this. You can use it without JACK too, but then it will use the native Linux Audio Drivers (OSS), and you won't be able to use any other audio application with it. As long as you're getting JACK, get QJACKCTL as well. It is a controller for JACK, and will come in VERY handy.

This is a good place to start :
http://jackit.sourceforge.net/apps/

3. So, synth is compiled and ready to go, eh? Go on, record a few tunes. ZynAddSubFX features an in-built recording mechanism. So, did you record something? It is missing something, isn't it? Try to play your favorite song and record it. Play it back. It is definitely missing something, isn't it? Listen to the original song which you're trying to play, if you have the CD. Figure out what's missing? Here's a hint : Drums.

You can play drums along on ZynAddSubFX, as it has a drumkit bank as well, but a better alternative is Hydrogen. This is a pattern based drum machine for Linux. The keyword here is pattern, and if you can somehow understand that, a whole new world of possibilities might open up for you. So, download Hydrogen (binary or source) and install it. Play around with it for a while; read the manual and the tutorial (which come with it) and play the demo songs to get a feel of it. Using it is very easy, provided you have the ear and the rythm. Hydrogen lets you create individual patterns and then bind the different patterns into a whole song. Then, you can play this song and at the same time play along on ZynAddSubFX to get a pretty good sound. Hydrogen can output to jack, by the way.

4. So, now you've got a drum track, and a synth track (or possibly more than one synth track, if you're cool , but how to combine them all? The answer is Audacity. It is a multi track audio editor; the keyword here is multi-track. You can import all the different tracks here, and individually adjust them so that they start at the exact positions that they're supposed to, and then select all the tracks and mix them together. You can also adjust the volume and panning (among other things) of the individual tracks, and apply some really cool and highly useful effects. Audacity, sadly, does not support JACK, and you will have to record all different parts of a song individually before importing them into Audacity. However, Audacity can record a new track while playing other ones, meaning that you can connect a mic or an electric guitar and record right into your current project. By the way, Audacity can save project files which will save all the settings exactly as you see them in the Audacity window, and can export the entire project (or a single track, multiple tracks or individual selections from tracks) to .wav and .au as well as .ogg and .mp3 (external library required) formats. So, again, the possibilities are endless.

Footnotes ------------------------------------

There are a LOT of good audio software out there. These are the ones I use the most. Some more I like include Gnuitar, Ecasound and Ecamegapedal.

There is also the LADSPA plugin interface, which provides a lot of cool plug-ins which can be used by any LADSPA aware application. Currently, I have 137 LADSPA plug-ins installed which I can use in Audacity, Hydrogen, Ecamegapedal, TerminatorX and many others!

If you use Fedora, you can find pre-compiled binaries for these (and a lot of other) cool programs at Planet CCRMA.

I'm glad you said it. I thought about it, but Mac people can be so touchy about that sort of thing.

I'm not a "Mac person" to say the least. However, in the electronic music class I took, we used digital performer/mac/synthesizer/keyboard controller. I'd like to use something as close to digital performer as possible, and eventually digital performer itself. I found ardour, which seems to be close. I'm planning on using a mac, and potentially dual-booting, so as to be able to try the linux based solutions as well, without needing to change the setup.

what's the purpose of having an interface like the prosonus firebox, if most keyboards connect via USB anyway? is it necesarry initially? I understand midi is the standard, and eventually I'll expand my hardware, but I don't have that kind of budget right now. Other thoughts?