What Hardware Is More Important ? Options

[shaneblyth]

in an audio setup that is not high end wgat is the better order to buy stuff in..

an extra hard drive to use purely for the audio rather than the OS
Ram in amounts over 512megs
CPU power over 1.25GHZ G4

in otherwords would it be better to buy a G4 1.25 and wack a bit more ram in it and another HD or would it be better to go for the Pure CPU power and not worry about the extra Drive and ram over 512megs

[shaneblyth]

Depends on what software/how many soft samplers/synths/plugins you'll be using, but either way you'll want more than 512. 1G of ram at least, 1.5 if you can.

Then the hard drive (because they're cheap and good value for performance ratio). Then CPU. That'd be my suggestion. However, a dual G5 will do circles around a G4. HUGE performance, it's just that the price is a lot higher than the other options.

so for a smallish setup at a home that records maybe 4-5 audio tracks tops one at a time and then some midi which i will convert to audio is it better to run for the G4 with 1 gig of Ram and the extra Hard drive
or would you go for a G5 with 1 gig Ram and no extra drive ?

I intend to use something like Maestro or Traction.. nothing too high for software and am buying my first Mac new so I am running a bit blind alls I have tried is mucking about on a Ibook G4 1 ghz laptop but that had no audio software so I am rather a newbie but have a bit of (not much) experience on PC's