Budget home studio

[kundun]

Hello to everyone!


I have dilema that needs to be resolved. As I am not much experienced in this field I would very much appreciate You help.


To intruduce me self - I am musician from Belgrade (Serbia), I`ve studied composition, but after my studies unfortunately I worked in completely different fields (due to some personal isssues).
I am now slowly trying to get back in composing / producing.
Just to note - while I was composing I did it in old fashion way (paper and pen) I use Sibelius only for printing scores.
Now, I want to use Cubase also, for composing film or game music (but I am beginner in this field).


So, I am trying to make basic (budget) home studio, to save money as much as I can and to make something that I can start to work with.


I have EMU 1212M music card, which I bought several years ago, but did not use it.


Do You think I can use this music card, althought is little bit "old fashion" / out of date?
Can it do the basic job properly (normally) for starters?


I am plaaning to use this music card on this kind of computer (I dont have it, I will by it):
PROCESSOR: AMD FX-4350 Procesor 4.2GHz AM3+
MOTHER BOARD: Asus H81M-K (Intel 1150)
RAM MEMORY: DIMM DDR3L 2x8GB 1600MHz Kingston HyperX Fury
HARD DRIVE: Seagate Barracuda 1TB


Something like that.
Is it ok?
Will it "match" the EMU sound card that I can work?
Will I have problem with latency?


I will also get a midi keyboard which is "piano like" as much as I can afford. I am thinking about:
M-Audio Oxygen 88 or
NEKTAR Impact LX88+


and studio headphones.


I am sorry if I wrote this little bit confusing...
I hope that I made important points: something normal to work with and cheap as it gets.


I also have some questions about music laptops, but I will potentionally point them afterwards...


Please help and many thanks in advance!!!


Chears

 

[OGBama]

Welcome to FP and I hope that you find this forum to be an excellent resource, but that depends on how you take constructive advice and/or opinions.

I suggest that you sell the card that you have as technology changes and this is the era of audio interfaces so latency is important.

 

[musca]

You should buy a better CPU.
If you want to make film/gaming music, then you'll probably have to use some big sample libraries which require both good CPU and RAM.
I had problems with FX6350 and FX8300 when I use a lot of high quality sample libraries.
Working only with headphones might be very hard and frustrating, you'll also have less concentration, so I suggest you to buy a pro pair of monitors.

 

[krushing]

Yup, the AMD FX-4350 seems to be a bit aged. I'm not too well versed on CPUs of today, but I think you could probably get a decent i5/i7 for just a bit more - or whatever the AMD equivalent is these days.

As for the keyboards...there simply aren't very many fully-weighted MIDI controllers today. I'm not sure the Oxy 88 even exists anymore and the Nektar Impact is semi-weighted - but if semi-weighted is ok, then there are plenty of options.

The EMU soundcard might be a bit of a problem - the latest drivers are for XP & Vista, and date back to 2011, so they're ancient. That said, people seem to have got it working under Win10, but of course support is limited and no guarantees on how long it'll work.