Building a home recording studio...help?!?!

[Crystal]

So my father gave me an "early" inheritance. I've paid things off with it, but now, I'm looking at clearing out my storage room and using it as a recording studio to hopefully improve the quality of my music.

I have mixcraft, I know I'll need a usb midi piano and a good microphone w/ a boom and pop filter. Possibly egg crates or padding to put up on my walls so I don't disturb the neighbors. Not sure if I'll need a mixboard since I have no clue how to use one and I reliable computer. I found a good computer, but I'm clueless as to what kind of microphone to buy.  I will be doing vocals and possibly playing guitar in my music. So if that means buying two separate mics that's all well and good too.

I'm looking to put about 2K into this little venture so I would like to get my money's worth without losing quality.

Any suggestions?

[Ant]

  keep in mind that a good PC and a good sound card are a must.Mixcraft~5 is a great editor but your editor is only as good as your sound card.Your PC,you should have something that is 64 bit,8gigs ram, and about 4 processors.

[Crystal]

I was looking at a e-machine at (yes I'm gonna say it) Walmart, it has 1 terrabyte hardrive and large memory (either 4 or 6 Gigs can't remember right now) not sure how good the soundcard is on it however. I'm reading mixed reviews right now. Its a relatively cheap computer (costing less than 400 buckaroos) I really would like to invest into a desktop (my laptop is on it's last legs right now, I'm expecting it to completely crash on me anyday now) with a top of the line sound card and enough capacity to be able to do multiple things (like have Mixcraft, Jamstudio, Word, open at the same time w/out crashing) and be able to hold all my drivers for microphones, midi piano etc.

I heard Macs are pretty good, and come with Garageband (program similar to mixcraft) already. Most have a condenser mic already built in. I haven't used a mac since I was in college. They are on the pricier end of the spectrum however costing anywhere from 1000-2000 dollars. I know it'd be a worth while investment...since I know most of the top music producers today use a mac for their producing.

Still not sure what I want to do yet...Apple has free shipping and they would ship it within 24 hours so if I ordered it today I would probably have by next week...hm...so many options...

[Ant]

  WE have 4 PC's  1. HP 32bit,2. 64bit e-machine.1. Asus 64bit,8gigs,4 processors. the asus is what I use for all my music.my sound card is a Emu 1212M PCI 24-Bit/192kHz Balanced Interface.

[wyotryot]

Ant is absolutely right, Crystal - for making music the sound card, size of ram, processor speed should be the top priorities.
My son is building his own desktop so he can get back to making movies - he's got $1600 into it so far. Stuff ain't cheap!