When building your home studio you are going to need a computer for recording, otherwise known as a Digital Audio Workstation or DAW. I'm not a Mac guy, so I use a PC. PC's are quite a bit less expensive than Mac's and will do just as good of a job.
These days you can get a top of the line PC for under $500 if you shop around. I'm geeky so I usually go to Newegg and buy my parts and put everything together myself. However, HP and Dell have some pretty decent systems that are pretty reasonable and should work well as a DAW.
The things to look for in your DAW:
Processor
I would recommend an intel based processor. A 2.6 Mhz Pentium IV should be plenty. The bigger the better. I wouldn't recommend anything less than 2 Mhz.
RAM
Memory also goes under the "bigger is better" moto. PC's today can handle way more memory than a few years ago. I would recommend between 1 and 2 gigs of memory in your PC. Start with 1 gig and you can add more later. However, I wouldn't run less than 1 gig for your DAW.
Disk Space
Hard drives are getting bigger everyday. In a perfect world my DAW would have a 400 gig drive. But these can be a bit expensive. Make sure your PC can handle multiple drives. I would make sure you have at least 100 gigs, as music files can get extremely big.
Sound Card
I wouldn't worry too much about the soundcard, because if you do it right, you'll be adding your own soundcard or interface later on. Never use an onboard or cheap soundcard for your DAW.
Video Card
Shouldn't really be an issue. This is not a gaming system, so a basic video card should do the trick.
Inputs
Make sure the board you buy has a few USB inputs as well as firewire input. Lots of hardware now days is USB or firewire. Although, you can always buy a firewire or USB card if you need to.
CD Burner
You're going to want to burn your songs when you are done recording. Make sure you have a decent internal or external CD burner.
Backup
Wouldn't it suck to have your CD all done and your DAW crashes and you lose everything? Yes it would. Make sure you have something to back up all of your music. Whether it be a CD or DVD burner, DAT drive, external hard drive, etc. Even networking 2 machines together might be a solution. You want to have your music in at least 2 places.
Configuration
I have an article titled "Tweak Your Computer for Recording Audio." Give that a read, there are some great tips there. Also, I would make sure to have 2 hard drives. One 20 gig for your operating system and one (80 gigs or more) for all of your music files. This will make things run a lot smoother. Plus if your windows fails, you won't lose everything.
Also, there really is no need to have your DAW online. Matter of fact, I would recommend keeping this machine offline. You don't want virus, spyware, spam, etc. getting on your DAW. <strong>Your DAW is for recording music only!</strong> Buy another machine for email, surfing, downloading, MP3's, video, etc.
Do some homework, you should be able to get a DAW for your home studio for under $500. If you have trouble finding what you want, drop me a line and I might be able to point you in the right direction.
