Hardware considerations

Your sound card is what converts audio from an analog signal to digital when you record, and back from digital to analog when you play it back. Sound cards differ in their ability to handle different types of audio data. Almost all sound cards can record and play back CD-quality audio (44100Hz, stereo, 16-bit), and most can also record and play audio at various lower-quality settings. Some can record at much higher settings, like 24-bit/96kHz. Cool Edit 2000 can record and play up to 32-bit audio at sample rates up to 10 megahertz. To find out what your sound card can do, select Settings from the Options menu and look at the chart under the Devices tab.

Your hard disk drive(s) also play a key role in recording and editing audio on the computer. Audio files can take up a large amount of space-- roughly 10 megabytes per minute of CD-quality audio. That means one three-minute song can take up 30 MB! Your hard disks' capabilities affect both the storage space requirements and the throughput speed necessary to handle these large amounts of data.

It's a good idea to maintain at least three times the size of your file in unused hard disk space. For example, if you are editing a 30MB file, you should try to maintain at least 90MB in unused space. If you want to do extensive editing and storing of audio, you may want to consider getting an additional hard drive.