suitable motherboard for making music

thinking about maybe getting this one

Full Size ATX Intel Chipset
Asus P4C800E Deluxe Asus P4C800 Deluxe, S-478, i875P chipset, 4 x 184pin DIMM up to 4GB, Dual channel memory architecture, 1 x AGP 8x, 6PCI, 6-CH Audio, 6xUSB2.0, ATA 100 , S-ATA IDE Raid 0,1, FireWire1394, Gigabit Lan ,SPDIF, Hyper- Threading Technology supported



any better suggestions?

It should do the job fine - I don't think any specific Intel chipset motherboards would be any better for making music than others, unless they have some crazy unique special soundcard onboard.

That ones is about $170 more than comparible ones - it has heaps of things you wont need.

The p4p800 deluxe is good bt currently out of stock everywhere ive looked. The gigabyte or albatron ones are cheaper and you wont notice any difference what so ever.

The SPDIF out might come in handy if you have an external DAC, and it might be cheaper than upgrading your sound card if you need it.

A Mac.

In practical terms, is a Mac actually any better than a PC? I have no idea myself, but it's probably best to stick with what you know.

No, because then we'd then get Sam posting threads entitled, "what are good music making packages on the Mac"

yeh I kinda wondered about what difference the motherboard might actually make....
so surely the place to invest the $$$ would be in the soundcard? must be some fuck-off ones around. and maybe even two of them? is that poss?

guess I'm also curious how one would go about customising a PC specifically for the purpose of making music and making it hi-quality

I wouldn't think even the sound card would affect the quality of the final product, unless you're using it to record stuff, in which case you probably need specialist equipment. If you're just mixing everything stays digital and the hardware won't make any difference except for speed.

a normal asus or gigabyte MB with a 2.8 chip and 1gig of ram

2 hard drives possibly raid 0

audigy sound

Audigy sound cards are renound for how crap they are for music - they're primarily for gaming. There are much better cards around for the price, and great ones for a bit more. Check out http://head-fi.org (LINKED) for suggestions. Tell them what you're trying to achieve in the source forum and someone should be able to help. They have about 10,000 members so there's a bit of experience there

Off the top of my head, take a look at m-audio and this (LINK)

YEah quite possibly - i dont know much about sound repoduction - tho as someone else mentioned its staying digital until output so you dont need something too flash..

That was me The reason to get a high end sound card is if you're doing A -> D conversion with the PC, and if you want to hear high quality sound from the PC. My PC sound setup will end up costing aronud $1500, but that's audiophile level sound with very good headphone.