good laptop for music production?

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-- good laptop for music production?

Posted by phoooo on Dec-23-2008 07:26:

good laptop for music production?

i used the search tool and couldn't find any threads on this

can anyone recommend a good laptop that can handle daw programs/vst's smoothly, fast/good loading time & etc, windows based.

thank you

Posted by pwnage1 on Dec-23-2008 09:08:

Are you sure you want a laptop? I mean eight hundred dollars and i could build a pc with a quad core and 4gb of ram. And with a laptop eight hundred dollars (USD) could get you a decent dual core and 2gb of ram. That will be sufficient for producing with plugins that are lightish on cpu. or you export to wav. But i would think get a desktop.

Posted by Stef on Dec-23-2008 12:31:

http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/...or.aspx?mid=330

Enjoy.

Posted by dainja on Dec-23-2008 16:11:

Macbook Pro

I made the horrible mistake of buying a PC laptop (ASUS F8VA-B1) and it's just crap for music production. The performance is great now that I've tweaked it for a few months, but it's just hassle after hassle.

-It's hard to find a laptop that comes with XP Pro... I had to spend a week installing it on mine because it came with Vista(missing drivers and stuff is hard to find)
-Alot of PC laptops have bad FireWire chips (basically, everything that's not Texas Instruments is crap), which cause problems with alot of FW interfaces
-Poor ACPI implementation in PCs means that the Intel Speedstep will fuck up your audio unless you spend alot of time disabling it
-If the wireless is turned on, I get DPC latency spikes everytime the card polls. This results in horrible crackling and such. I have to produce with the internet turned off.

Build a desktop or buy a Macbook Pro (not a Macbook, they don't have Firewire).

Posted by T-Soma on Dec-23-2008 16:42:

Im using an ASUS laptop running Vista
2.2 core 2 duo with 2 gig of ram.

Haven't had any of the mentioned problems...
I don't even see cpu as a problem any more.
In fact Intel has released its next line of CPUs (intel i7) so this should see a nice drop in the price of current models as the news ones hit the shelf.

Also, Macbook pro's 6 pin firewire has some issues when it comes to using it to power soundcards.

Posted by SKYMOVE on Dec-25-2008 13:22:

Hi,
I have been working a year and a half with a Sony Vaio Notebook incl. 2 GB Ram and XP. But with the last month my working flow became slower and slower. Please keep in mind that windows Xp only supports up to 3GB Ram and that any sequencer will get only 2/3 of these resources! SO in that case 2Gb!

Finally I guess it s better to switch to apple! If you use Plug-ins based on windows in it not a big deal to work with Xp on a apple notebook (with boot camp).

But you should wait.

Right now the present macbooks support only 4 GB Ram and you get them only with a core-duo!

I was in my local apple store 2 weeks ago and they told me that with the next year they will get the quadros for their mac books too .

I have been looking around for a new computer the last 3 month and got a lot of informationen what's important etc.

First I wanted to stay with windows - but how, if I can't get more power out of my XP?

Posted by Stef on Dec-25-2008 17:32:

quote:
Originally posted by dainja

I made the horrible mistake of buying a PC laptop (ASUS F8VA-B1) and it's just crap for music production.

Tell that to guys like ronski speed and mike shiver.

Posted by jupiterone on Dec-25-2008 18:45:

i prefer mac but it's all personal preference

if you can take care of your possessions they'll work fine. windows really isn't as bad as people say, really, it isn't. they just don't know how to keep it safe, it's like having sex with a prostitute, if you don't use a condom, you have no right to bitch about having an std, it's your fault.

same goes with windows, if you don't have anti-virus/anti-spyware/wtfever, yet you use the computer for surfing porn sites like a fiend and downloading shit you have no idea is secure or not, then ya, have fun. and don't let anyone tell you mac is that much more amazing than windows. sure, it's a simpler layout, and a bit safer and reliable, but in the end, you just can't throw the thing around and download all the internet porn gauntlets in the world and expect it to work as perfect as it did out of the box

whatever it is you're comfortable with, just be sure to take care of it. i have 3 computers, 1 for production (imac), 1 for dj'ing (macbook), and 1 for gaming (pc). all these play a specific role and are rarely EVER used for anything other than what they're meant for.

Posted by djsphere on Dec-25-2008 18:48:

quote:
Originally posted by dainja
I made the horrible mistake of buying a PC laptop (ASUS F8VA-B1) and it's just crap for music production.

that's a core 2 duo with 4gb of ram, right?

more than enough i'd say.

Posted by djsphere on Dec-25-2008 18:52:

quote:
Originally posted by jupiterone
i have 3 computers, 1 for production (imac), 1 for dj'ing (macbook), and 1 for gaming (pc). all these play a specific role and are rarely EVER used for anything other than what they're meant for.

a bit of a waste of money imo....but i think it's down to personal preference.

Posted by jupiterone on Dec-25-2008 19:03:

i didn't do it on purpose really, as they accumulated i decided to do that. first i got the pc, wanted a mac, got a macbook, performance wasn't that great to produce on so i got an imac a few years later.

Posted by Zild on Dec-25-2008 19:07:

I don't think it is a waste. I have a PC that I use for gaming/internet/office/school shit and then I have a mac that I use only for music, and a dell laptop that I use to take with me and not care if anything bad happens to it.

Getting a dedicated computer for music was the best choice I've made so far.