I'd recommend a Pentium class machine, with at least 32 megabytes of RAM and 1 gigabyte of free hard drive space. Audio data eats up hard drive space and unless you want to waste sound resolution and processing time by compressing your data, you really need to be working with uncompressed WAV files.

You'll inevitably be doing a lot of processor intensive work as well. Things like noise reduction and pitch effects can be tediously slow, so invest in a fast processor with a decent floating point and cache unit. The Intel Celerons are the best for this purpose (yes, better than the real Pentium II/IIIs often, because their cache works twice as fast). AMD come a close second, though their floating point performance (critical for audio processing) is inferior. Don't touch a Cyrix/IBM processor if you're serious about audio work. They have poor FP performance and are much better suited to business applications. At FloorTen we use a Celeron 366 clocked to 458 mhz. It *zips* and the processor only cost us 70 pounds! The Celerons offer best performance to price ratio of all the processors currently available.

Memory is also quite important, especially if you'll be using a clunky, slow OS like Windows 98! Have at least 32 megabytes RAM to avoid having to use the hard drive as virtual memory continually.

Often skimped on is the soundcard. Many manufacturers just use cheap clone cards with poor features and audio quality. For producing audio drama however, this just isn't practical.

Amongst the problems encountered with pool quality soundcards are bad hiss, buzzing, tinny sound and misaligned recording bias. The latter problem is particularly prominent on cheap "Vibra" SoundBlasters, and causes the recorded wave to not be centrally aligned. When you then come to mix that wave with other waves you can experience popping and irregular clipping which sounds awful! It also limits the dynamic range of your soundcard, which is definately a bad thing.

We use a SoundBlaster AWE 64 Gold, which has excellent quality, and also has a few useful synth sounds built in too. The SoundBlaster Live cards are also a popular choice. Avoid brandless and cheap OEM versions of cards as you cannot count on their quality. Something you should also ensure your soundcard does is full-duplex recording/playback. The ISA SoundBlasters can only manage one 16-bit dupex channel, which means that if you try and record and playback at the same time one of the channels will have to be 8 bit. This is usually the playback channel, though problems can arrive if your software doesn't support this. If you'll be using a lot of full duplex, ie. for music as well as speech work, it's probably worth considering buying a SoundBlaster Live or professional pro audio card.

One or two good quality microphones

Again the words "good quality" are key here. Cheap karaoke microphones are not suitable. As a general guide you should be not paying less than 30 pounds ($50 US) for any microphone. You can usually tell a good microphone from its build quality. It's head should be weighty and sturdy and the lead at the bottom should not connect directly in. Instead there should be a three-pin XLR (cannon) socket at the base of the mic for attaching a lead of your choice or a radio transmitter. Mics with pre-wired leads are almost always inferior quality. Avoid them.

Mixer (Optional)

If you intend to work in stereo or have the need to combine sound sources together, consider buying a mixer. This needn't be anything more than a cheap two channel disco mixer if you want, but make sure it's an active mixer (ie. a powered one) rather than just a passive mic mixer, because you'll need to take a powered line-out to go into your line-in on the sound card.

If you're working in stereo then you need one microphone for each of the channels. On the mixer you'll then have to pan one channel to the left and one to the right. Make sure your mixer is stereo of course and has panning capabilities. A mono mixer is useless as your soundcard already contains a mono input for a mic.

Synthesiser (Optional)

Although you might not opt for doing your own music initially, a synthesiser will become indispensable when you do. It will function not only to create musical sound, but as a master MIDI controller and also may be useful for creating sound effects. Almost all of the bleeps, zaps and humms on Dr Who would have been created using synthesisers.

Roughly speaking synths can be divided into two categories: sample-based and synthesis-based.

The sample-based synths have a set of samples of all the instruments already inside and in effect just play them back when a key is pressed, albeit with complex alterations. Many of the larger "workstation" synths fall into this category.

The synthesis-based synths are more flexible because they create their sounds either mathmatically or with analogue oscillators. The sounds you get are less realistic because they're generated imitations rather than perfect recordings, but the extra flexibility makes them worth it.

At FloorTen we use mainly a Yamaha AN1x analogue-modelling synth and a Yamaha DX7 FM synth. These are both wonderfully flexible machines and are capable of wide range of sounds and timbres. We recommend Yamaha intruments above all other brands. You can hear the DX7at work in our theme tunes.

Your sound card may also have built in sampled sounds (called a wavetable-synth) which you can access once you have a decent MIDI controller. This negates the need for the synth you buy to have the basic piano, brass, drum and string sounds as they will already be present on your soundcard. However beware on-board synthesisers with less than 2 megabytes of RAM. Their sample-quality will be poor. Our AWE 64 Gold comes with 4 megabytes RAM as standard and still the basic sounds are in mono.