The Music Production PC
Producing music and audio on a PC was once a cruel joke. One would cobble together random hardware components and audio cards only to find Windows driver incompatabilities or phantom glitches. The excitement of creating a frankenstein monster that barely functioned was a lot of fun though and recording studios began to move from analog tape to computer harddrive It was common for DAW software in the 90's to not even recognize the hardware and drivers. Fast forward to today's Golden Age of Music Production where even a stock PC off the shelf can be tweaked to produce decent music. Audio professionals seeking PC perfection can acheive it piece by piece.
Windows 7 through 10 are all used for music production. Although the hardware specs are constantly changing, a strong workstation can be crated from scratch. The CPU and Memory should be high performance and reliable.
MUST HAVES (specs are subject to change!)
CPU - This is the brain of a computer and the bare minimum you should have is a i5 processor. Some CPUs have multiple cores and many professionals tend to work with an i7 Quad Core or higher.
RAM - This is the computers memory and you need at least 8 GB of RAM. Many recommend having at least 16GB but a music production PC can handle 32GB which really kicks in with heavy plugin usage, video production and audio middleware
SSD - Plenty of hard drive space is key and you need at least 500GB. Plugins and Virtual Instruments can take up a ton of space and 1TB is even more helpul. You don't want to ever come close to running out of space on an SSD as it can cause problems so the larger the better. Speed is also a major factor and not all SSDs are the same. The Envoy EX Pro is desiged for professional use and can handle the rigors of game audio production and dvelopment.
Screen - It helps to have a nice sized screen in front of you but it's even better to have a giant screen across the room.
For those collecting the parts and going the DIY route, these specs are a good starting point as of summer 2018:
