CPU For Composing or Recording Music

[Kurt D]

My son is a guitar instructor by trade (college degree Classical Guitar) and also composes music. He is asking me to help him build a computer for that purpose and also to make recordings. I believe there is specialized hardware for the recording part, which he is pursuing in a separate discussion with his peers.

Regardless, if he wants to process or record music and wants to stay on the Windows OS that he is familiar with, my first thought was he should go with an Intel I7. He is on a budget, so we will use his existing case, psu and RAM (16 decent 1600), which will suffice for now. Am I correct about the CPU? I assume he does not need the latest/greatest, so long as he has an I7, or would a faster I5 be better? I recall that audio processing and recording is dependent on the threading capability of the processor and this is where the I7 is king... I have used AMD for many years because I am cheap, but this is not something that AMD processors are known for.

Thanks in advance for any advice or tips.

If anyone has information on the common system/hardware bottlenecks for this application, and how to minimize them, that information would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

Kurt

 

[Kurt D]

FYI... He will not be mixing lots of tracks. The bulk of what he will be doing is recording his guitar only and also composing music. If this does not make sense, it is because I have no music knowledge at all. I think he is looking for a cost effective way to do this, more as a hobby - not a professional solution. Hope that makes sense and clarifies the requirement. makes me second guess if he really needs an I7...

 

[Kurt D]

For what it is worth, went with an X99-3 Motherboard, I-7 5820 and 16GB of RAM. The chip was on sale at the time I bought it, seems more expensive today than when I put the rigs together 6 months ago.