Both required understanding of sound theory, studio components, equipment and signal flow in addition to trained ears and problem solving skills.

The differences between the two based on the very different mediums and the further consideration need to be aware while working in computers.

Audio processing is very demanding task for the computer, therefore it is vital to have a strong computer (in regards to power processing capabilities), and in addition audio softwares require a generous amount of RAM to operate especially those which load multi samples into RAM.

{mospagebreak title=Basic Configuration&heading=Basic Configuration}Basic configuration requires Intel Pentium 4 or AMD equivalent based system of 3 GHz processor and a minimum 1 GB of RAM.

Although configurations varies, it is recommended to assign two hard drives to the computer, the first to have 2 partitions, one (C: by default) for the operating system and the second to install all programs into (D: by default).

The second hard drive is recommended to be a large and fast hard drive (SATA drive or the more expensive A/V drive) to store samples and as files recording destination.

Configuring Windows for audio work could be followed from this site http://musicxp.net

Professional sound cards (could be also called “audio interface”) differ from normal computer or onboard sound cards by better sound quality capabilities and converters from Analogue to digital and vice versa, able to play and record in 24Bit resolution and up to 192 KHz sampling rate compared to 16Bit and 48 KHz in regular sound cards.

Another aspect of professional sound card is their ability to use the ASIO http://www.steinberg.de/Steinberg/VST5b09.html?Langue_ID=7 drivers which enhance the audio streaming in and out of the computer, lower the audio latency and improve the integration between the audio software and hardware.

These sound cards are available from music retailers and other online retailers. Some of manufacturers are: Digidesign (http://www.digidesign.com), Echo (http://www.echoaudio.com), Edirol (http://www.rolandus.com/edirol), M-Audio (http://www.m-audio.com), MOTU (www.motu.com), Mackie (http://www.mackie.com), Presonus (http://www.presonus.com), RME (http://www.rme-audio.com).