I don't know much about this topic, have specific questions and am sure things change with this type of thing from year to year so want to start a new thread, even though I am sure there have been many before.

I have only briefly (it had overheating issues and lasted only a short time) had a laptop chosen specifically for music production. I think that one ran much better but it has been a while and my projects were smaller back then. For most of the time I have just used whatever laptop was on a good price at Best Buy. That works for the first half of making a song, but later on it can't really run the project without skipping. With that being said, I am looking for a new production laptop.

The FL Studio (the DAW I use) site lists the CPU's to try to get and gives a chart with the performance of many possible CPU's: http://support.image-line.com/knowl...ase.php?ans=214

I am able to spend like $800 tops and it looks like the only i7 laptops in that range have cpu's that are really low on the chart (still higher than what I have I think though). I don't need a supercomputer or the gold star setup like Raphie would have. This isn't about making Porter Robinson or Madeon type music that would be really taxing on the cpu. I just need something that rarely skips running the relatively straightforward projects I make.

*Is an $800 dollar i7 (with a 3,000-4,000 benchmark score) laptop good enough for a moderate level producer like myself in terms of performance? Image line recommends 7,000 benchmark but is that really necessary?

*Could I save money buying like a $500 laptop then buying a $300 CPU separate (I don't know how you install it at this point but would figure it out), or would that not run well?

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Important thing is to get a quad core if its your main production machine... that means getting a 15" laptop. An i5 quad core will do just fine.

That being said if you don't use CPU hog plugins like Diva, you could get away with using a dual core i5... You just have to bounce things from time to time and can't go crazy spamming huge VST chains.

If you can go for quad core i5.

I don't know much about Windows laptop pricing but I am sure there are $800 quad core laptops out there...

yeah

If you see things like "ReaMOTE" and "FX teleport" plug in. THere are many of these types of things.

these things are useful for unlimited realtime power in your music processing
machines of your studio. THis is done by connecting machines by LAN cables.

Linux DAW's have a similar principle.

So, while you may have that laptop ......if it's a little underpowered you
can always hook into other Slave machines, in realtime, for extra
processing power on single music projects.

http://wiki.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/ReaMote

other DAW's also have these features.

V

Start with this :

http://www.amazon.com/MSI-GP60-LEOP...ds=notebook+msi

Apparently works well for music production and with addition of external card (doesn't have to be any expensive one) will to the job for you.

Darek

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quote:

Originally posted by Zak McKracken Im now procuding on a 3,6GHz i3. No need for Quac Cores imo. RAM and SSD is more important.

I am guessing you are not using CPU hog plugins like Diva, Aether, Serum, or even Massive on certain settings...

If you only are using Sylenth 1, CPU usage won't be a problem. If you are using circuit modeling / plugins with high amounts of oversampling / physical modeling a dual core wont cut it.

Thanks for the responses.

quote:

Originally posted by TranceLover007 Start with this : http://www.amazon.com/MSI-GP60-LEOP...ds=notebook+msi Apparently works well for music production and with addition of external card (doesn't have to be any expensive one) will to the job for you. Darek

So ya think that one will work well for me. I'll consider that one. Thanks, for taking the time to give me a link to a specific computer. Why do you think I need an external soundcard?

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Songwriter/artist and reluctant producer.

My Soundcloud

http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-1...-15-7548-laptop

___________________
Analogue Mastering
Esoteric sound for the discerning ear

quote:

Originally posted by Trancelover03591 Thanks for the responses. So ya think that one will work well for me. I'll consider that one. Thanks, for taking the time to give me a link to a specific computer. Why do you think I need an external soundcard?

This is only a suggestion if you have rather heavy project and you need some hookup for a guitar or mic at the same time - convenience.

Edit: I know one producer who successful use this laptop with:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Scarlett2i2


Cheer,

Darek

___________________
I like that freedom with no boundaries, no restrictions, no rules setup by somebody else – it's only me and my music.

SoundCloud

Traxsource

Beatport

Facebook

DariusX Page

quote:

Originally posted by Raphie http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-1...-15-7548-laptop

That one has a benchmark of ~3,900. Imagine Line recommends around a 7,000 benchmark. However, I currently have about a 2,500 benchmark. It is possible that upgrading 1,400 benchmark points will be enough to make my projects run smoothly though.

___________________
Songwriter/artist and reluctant producer.

My Soundcloud

You're probably right, I would go for most CPU performance for the buck

___________________
Analogue Mastering
Esoteric sound for the discerning ear

A good thing is to get a high spec (not the highest as you're getting in to diminishing returns at the top end of scale etc) but honestly, the biggest performance upgrade I've ever done is a fast SSD.

When I did it to my last year old laptop it was as if I'd gone out and bought a brand new, much higher spec laptop. YMMV, but I can;t live without SSD's anymore.

I just got this new touchscreen Laptop, Lenovo i5 with 8GB RAM which is much higher spec than my old Asus but it feels slightly slower for some tasks due to it only having a 7200 rpm HDD. I know the moment I slap that intel 520 SSD in there it will be a beast.

Best single upgrade you can do any computer now.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN A good thing is to get a high spec (not the highest as you're getting in to diminishing returns at the top end of scale etc) but honestly, the biggest performance upgrade I've ever done is a fast SSD. When I did it to my last year old laptop it was as if I'd gone out and bought a brand new, much higher spec laptop. YMMV, but I can;t live without SSD's anymore. I just got this new touchscreen Laptop, Lenovo i5 with 8GB RAM which is much higher spec than my old Asus but it feels slightly slower for some tasks due to it only having a 7200 rpm HDD. I know the moment I slap that intel 520 SSD in there it will be a beast. Best single upgrade you can do any computer now.

Hell, for me I can't go back to non PCIe SSDs... the ones in Macbooks are roughly 2x faster than the ones found in most PC's. Most Kontakt libraries load near instantly.

#firstworldproblems