I did too. I bought a Gateway PIII 650 Mhz Solo 5300 notebook computer for about $100 on ebay and the docking station for $25.00 and upgraded hard drive to 70GB (had a compatible one lying around so no cost) and bought 512mb ram for $100.
Loaded up XP sp2 updated everything and it worked great. Then installed:
Mcafee, Windows Defender, Adobe Acrobat, Office 2000 and all updates. So far so good.
Next, bought a used M Audio Delta 66 card and breakout box for about $100 with six in and outs 24 bit/96kHz full duplex interface using ASIO drivers (6ms latency) and a midisport 4x4 midi usb breakout box for like $75. Everything worked great.
So then I scored the following software from a friend who was moving really cheap:
1. Reason 2.5
2. Acid XT
3. Sonic Foundry Forge 4.5
4. Virtual DJ Studio 3.1
5. Sax & Dotty's Karoke Software
6. Some utilities that convert various audio formats and Nero of course all 1-6 for about $100.
Hooked it up to a nice kurzweil 88 key midi controller some box I got with it that changes all kinds of midi parameters which is very cool (both $800) and everything worked great except the notebook doesn't do the dual screen thing so you can't have two different screens showing at the same time which is a big hit to doing karaoke professionaly with this notebook.
Ran it out to a friend's PA system and it worked great. Voile' a relatively cheap 24 bit performance rig that can be used to play gigs, songwrite, in the studio etc...
My total cost= was $500 plus $800 for the kurzweil gear.
Obviously there are many ways to go including APPLE of course so do share: Anyone build a digital music workstation? If so, how did you do it? What worked and what didn't.
Loaded up XP sp2 updated everything and it worked great. Then installed:
Mcafee, Windows Defender, Adobe Acrobat, Office 2000 and all updates. So far so good.
Next, bought a used M Audio Delta 66 card and breakout box for about $100 with six in and outs 24 bit/96kHz full duplex interface using ASIO drivers (6ms latency) and a midisport 4x4 midi usb breakout box for like $75. Everything worked great.
So then I scored the following software from a friend who was moving really cheap:
1. Reason 2.5
2. Acid XT
3. Sonic Foundry Forge 4.5
4. Virtual DJ Studio 3.1
5. Sax & Dotty's Karoke Software
6. Some utilities that convert various audio formats and Nero of course all 1-6 for about $100.
Hooked it up to a nice kurzweil 88 key midi controller some box I got with it that changes all kinds of midi parameters which is very cool (both $800) and everything worked great except the notebook doesn't do the dual screen thing so you can't have two different screens showing at the same time which is a big hit to doing karaoke professionaly with this notebook.
Ran it out to a friend's PA system and it worked great. Voile' a relatively cheap 24 bit performance rig that can be used to play gigs, songwrite, in the studio etc...
My total cost= was $500 plus $800 for the kurzweil gear.
Obviously there are many ways to go including APPLE of course so do share: Anyone build a digital music workstation? If so, how did you do it? What worked and what didn't.
. 
