Don't you just love being in control? Well, it seems that hi-tech musicians do and these days spend by far the greatest proportion of their time behind computer terminals which offer a degree of control that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.

But for many, the process of buying a computer - either for the first time, or as a replacement for an existing machine - is fraught with difficulties, incomprehensible jargon and unhelpful, partisan attitudes.

Spending money is easy. Spending money wisely isn't - especially if you're looking for a computer which will not only serve your needs as a musician, but will also permit entry - either now or at a later stage - into other areas, particularly the world of multimedia production.

Whilst diplomacy prevents me from coming right out and saying the best computer for music and multimedia is the Apple Mac, what I will say is that no other computer has as good a user interface or as good a range of music and graphic software - or the power to put it all together.

The two latest Macs are aimed squarely at the multimedia market. They're the Quadra 840AV (around £3400 with 8Mb RAM, a 500Mb hard disk and CD drive) and the Centris 660AV (around £2100 with 8Mb RAM, a 230Mb hard disk and a CD drive). Apple has dropped its RRP pricing policy in favour of SRPs (suggested retail price) so any dealer worth their salt is knocking a few hundred quid off.

It's interesting to note that the US price of the 660AV, for example, is $2799 (around £1950) so although the UK consumer is getting tucked up yet again, it isn't by as much as usual!

Both AV models have many options built in which would be expensive extras on any other machine. The 840AV is the fastest Mac so far produced. Both models have video In and Out sockets and can record QuickTime movies from a camcorder. They can also send the Mac's screen image to a video recorder or TV and record and playback audio. A voice recognition system is also included, and they can send faxes and serve as telephone answering machines (Teasmade facilities are not, as yet, included...).

If you can't run to one of these, there's the Quadra 650 at £1550, the Quadra 610 at £1160, the LC 475 at £940 and the LC III at £690 - although personally I'd opt to go more upmarket than the LC III, especially if you want to work with graphics now or in the future. Prices, of course, are guaranteed to change by the time you read this.

Interestingly, Apple are currently standardising on the 68040 processor and although a 68030 machine will still run 99.9% of Mac software, the time may come when it won't.

The main drawback to buying any Mac is Apple's marketing strategy, which guarantees a price cut within six months of its release. In fact, the two AV models had their US launch prices reduced before they even made it to the market!

Many people associate Macs with high prices and this has been true until recently. Apple basically chewed off their own feet by maintaining inflated prices and thus encouraging an elitist image of their products which commanded only a small market share. With a modicum of marketing sense the company could have made some deep incisions into the body of the PC. Ah well...

Some people still think Mac prices are still too high, but at least they run a native operating system - unlike Windows on a PC - so you don't need the mega power of a PC to run applications. And the Mac front end is far superior.

As with most other things in life, if you want performance and ease of use, you've got to pay for it. In spite of everything, a Mac would certainly be my first recommendation as a computer for both music and multimedia applications.

PCs give you the most computing power for the price. But when you run an application in Windows and on top of DOS you'll find you need all the power you can get! As there are more PCs by far in the world than all the other computers put together, prices are keen and software is plentiful.

Although you can pick up a reasonably powerful 386 (the PCs are named after the processor which controls them) for about £700-£800, I'd strongly urge anyone to pay a bit more and get a 486. It's currently the most up-to-date and future-proof PC and we are starting to see some software packages which really don't perform well on a 386, again due to the massive amounts of processing power required to a program on the straight and narrow.

There must be well over 100 companies cobbling together PCs, and trying to decide which machine to buy isn't easy. Even though several systems may have similar specs, the only way to compare them is to run comparative tests. Of course, only computer magazines have the wherewithal to get hold of the machines and do this, so they are your best source of information.

In fact, if you finish this article remembering only one piece of information, let it be this - you must do your homework or get independent expert advice (that is, not from a dealer or high street store) before buying a PC.

486 prices range from £1000 upwards, though you could expect to pay around £1500-£1600 for a powerful top-end machine. Many now have the ability to be upgraded to the Pentium chip (the so-called 586), but while it's always useful to keep your options open, I personally wouldn't pay too much simply for the ability to upgrade.

PCs still have to catch up to the Mac in terms of graphics and multimedia integration, but it won't be long before they do. There are already more budget sound cards than you can wave a MIDI lead at as well as several pro digital recording systems plus video cards and a goodly range of graphics software. Microsoft is about to release the second version of Video for Windows.

When everything's working, PCs are fine but configuring the things, plugging cards into them (sound and video), setting up the system in the first place and even doing general housekeeping tasks is a pig. Make no mistake. I reckon well over 50% of home PC users are not running their computers to their maximum potential.

Still, it seems PCs may yet take over the world; certainly, they are the most future-proof computer system currently around. Although there is the PowerPC to come (see box out).

The Amiga is probably not the first computer you'd think of where music is concerned. It has none of the industry-standard sequencers although Dr T has a range of often numeric music software and there is the rather desirable Bars & Pipes Professional (a review coming up in MT soon). Though Amiga CD-ROMs haven't really caught on, the computer does at least have one direct-to-disk recording system.

Where the Amiga really scores is as one of the major forces in the graphics and animation industry. It's a popular genlocking machine and can lay claim, amongst other things, to being the computer used to generate the piccies for Catchphrase along with many other TV programmes.

To emulate this, however, you'll need a bit more than an Amiga 500; look at the 4000/030 (£1199.99) or the 4000/040 (£2099.99) which come with a built-in 120Mb hard drive (not particularly large for multimedia use), but without a monitor which will set you back another £300-400 for a decent model.

The 4000s really are rather tasty multimedia machines capable of displaying 256,000 on-screen colours from a palette of 16.8 million. There is a wealth of graphics, video and animation software available and to say they are capable of generating impressive productions is like saying Spielberg makes canny movies.

If you can't run to a 4000, there's the Amiga 1200 at £349.99 (monitor and hard drive extra) which has the same colour display capabilities. It currently comes bundled with several programs including games and paint software, but you may need a few upgrades to do any serious multimedia stuff.

At a year old, Atari's Falcon is still relatively new. Although based on the musician's favourite computer, the ST, it is altogether a heavier piece of kit with the ability to display 65,536 colours at once and with a dedicated DSP (Digital Signal Processor) chip which can process data in real time very quickly. Already four direct-to-disk recording programs have appeared using the DSP which require no additional hardware - making the Falcon very attractive for musos on a budget.

It has audio, video, SCSI II plus a variety of other connection sockets allowing it, for example, to accept external video sync for genlocking. It doesn't yet have a standard for CD-ROM support although it is capable of multitasking, and there are already several alternatives to Atari's own multitasking operating system, MultiTOS.

The Falcon to go for is the one with 4Mb of RAM and a 210Mb hard drive (£999, monitor extra). The basic machine has 1Mb of RAM and no hard drive (£499), but you'll need more than this for most serious work. It's worth remembering, too, that many ST music programs won't run on the Falcon and not all are being updated to do so.

Dedicated Falcon software is starting to appear slowly but surely, though this is restricted to music programs at present. The Falcon's multimedia potential is there but has yet to be fully realised. If, however, you want to control external devices such as video players and the like, the Falcon has the sockets.

Having mentioned the Falcon, we can't really ignore the good ol' Atari ST. This is still the most popular music computer in use in the UK, a job it does well and very cheaply, despite looking its age alongside the current generation of machines. Certainly, if you already have an ST there's no reason why you can't use it to run your sequencer and sync it to another computer which would handle the graphics. Current prices are around £200 for a 1040STE.

The final computer on our list is the Acorn Archimedes. An excellent machine, it has been done no service at all by Acorn's marketing strategy which effectively limits its area of interest to education. It's a powerful computer with an excellent GUI - well able to handle graphics, video, sound and CD-ROM. Photo CD software is currently being developed.

Archimedes computers include the A3010 at around £400 but for any sort of serious work you need to look at the A4000/5000 which range from about £1100 upwards.

Arc software includes a range of graphics, 3D drawing and video programs plus a growing number of CD-ROMs. The range of MIDI sequencers is small and most are aimed at the home and educational user rather than the pro, and unfortunately there are no real multimedia packages - not as yet.