I have a Korg 1212I/O card in my PC and I get the message, "Excessive PCI activity."
It can halt audio playback.This is because of the way the resources are being used within the PCI bus. It is usual to put your PCI soundcard in the first PCI slot and the graphics card in the last slot. Because the Korg Card is quite long, it is not always possible to put it in the first slot. You may be able to fix this by switching off the Hardware Acceleration for the graphics card.

I want to buy a PC to run sequencer XYZ? What do I need?
All companies will give you a minimum specification for the system required to run their software. However, the minimum spec will often only run the software at a minimum level and you really want to ask for a recommended or optimum specification. If you want to do audio recording you will need a far more powerful system than if you only want to do MIDI recording. Most digital audio software now incorporates real-time effects and processing and this requires even more processing power.This is Steinberg’s minimum system requirements for running Cubase VST: Pentium 133, 24Mb RAM, a Fast EIDE or SCSI hard dive, a windows compatible soundcard and a SVGA video card

The recommended system is: Pentium 166, 32Mb RAM, SCSI AV hard drive, a full duplex soundcard (Steinberg UK has a list of recommended cards), and a PCI SVGA video card that doesn’t steal PCI resources (Steinberg UK recommends an S3 Virge 2Mb).

However, with the current price of PCs it would be folly to consider anything less than a Pentium 300 with 64Mb RAM. If you can afford a little extra then an Ultra Wide SCSI hard drive (you’ll also need an Ultra Wide SCSI card) will ensure fast transfer of audio data.

Can I use my internal hard disk to record audio?
Yes, but a second internal or external drive, preferably SCSI and preferably AV will give better performance.

When I place a CD- ROM in my CD-ROM drive my sequencer becomes unstable.
Select the Device Manager in the System Control Panel, open the CD ROM entry and double click on the CD ROM device. Click on the Settings tab and disable the Auto insert notification box. This prevents the system looking for an Autorun program on a newly-inserted CD and running it automatically. This grabs system resources, which can make sequencer playback unstable.

How do I get the latest version of my sequencer XYZ?
First, you should always register your software. Then whenever a new version comes out, the distributor will let you know about it. However, many programs also have a number of sub-releases, enhancements, or bug fixes, which are not so widely publicised. They can fix such things as driver problems and add support for new devices.

The easiest way to keep track of these is to visit the developer’s website where such updates are nearly always posted and can be downloaded free of charge. Check out the Links section for links to the suppliers of your software/hardware.