Choosing a Laptop for Music Making

velocity101 said:
The problem with laptops is their compressed bus system (the data lanes that pass data between the various components of your computer) in contrast to a desktop computer. Dollar to dollar comparison, you'll afford a desktop computer that's twice as fast given the same budget. That said, if you must use a laptop, then you shouldn't buy anything less than an Intel Core i5 (or comparable) with as much RAM as you can afford. For normal everyday use, you'll seldom need more than 4gigs of RAM but for Audio/Video recording and editing RAM capacity counts!
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Meh, I'm still making music on a socket 478 3.4GHz P4-HT and my current laptop is a 1.2GHz i3-330UM. I rarely ever do anything music-wise on the laptop.

About two months ago, I did some drum programming and processing for an Indian cat using his PT audio tracks into Cubase SX3 (28 stereo tracks) plus my own stuff (Battery3, Stylus RMX, etc). The P4 handled it without a problem. For grins and giggles, I loaded the end result onto my P3-700 machine (38 stereo audio tracks) and played it all back without so much as a single i/o hiccup and barely a CPU load.

You dudes still don't get it.
 
my laptop of choice for right now is the Asus K53e. Its discontinued, so i got it for a really good price (350 cash with 169.00 store credit for a trade in). Its mainly my on the go, oh I want to make a beat but Im not at home machine, plus its for college. So like, while Im out, I can get insipiration or whatever, lay it down, make a decent beat then transfer the project to my more serious desktop.

It doesnt have the best performance, but its got two i5 processors and i think 6GB of Ram so its not bad. It might even only have 4, but like i said its just a on the go machine not the heart. But if i NEED NEED NEEDED it to be, it could get the job done.
 
alxgry said:
my laptop of choice for right now is the Asus K53e. Its discontinued, so i got it for a really good price (350 cash with 169.00 store credit for a trade in). Its mainly my on the go, oh I want to make a beat but Im not at home machine, plus its for college. So like, while Im out, I can get insipiration or whatever, lay it down, make a decent beat then transfer the project to my more serious desktop.

It doesnt have the best performance, but its got two i5 processors and i think 6GB of Ram so its not bad. It might even only have 4, but like i said its just a on the go machine not the heart. But if i NEED NEED NEEDED it to be, it could get the job done.
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Dude, you could score film with that machine.
 
What do you guys think between the Toshiba Quosimo and like, say an Alienware M17x? I've heard good laptops for music production are multimedia laptops (good soundcard, good CPU).



"You really need to get a desktop blah blah blah-"

No, I had a desktop and it was great until I tried to take it to Starbucks with me.

"You really should get a Mac."

No, I don't want to spend 2 grand on something that wouldn't be compatible with the third party vsts I already spent much of my hard earned money on.
 
I'm looking at getting the 13" MBP with the 2.9Ghz dual core and the 8GB ram to run Ableton and Ardour with a firewire interface (possibly RME if I can swing it and convince the wife).
Anyways, does anyone have one of these? Hardware wise, it should run perfectly. Biggest thing I'm worried about is the screen size, but as you increase screen size with MBPs, the price skyrockets.
I run 3 23" on my PC that I produce on now and could probably slap one on the MBP if I wanted.
I love producing on the desktop, but I travel a lot for work, leaving me with just my MPC at night in the hotels. More offen than not, I find myself wanting to do a certain effect or sound that I cant do with the MPC and the 1 or 2 synths I have with me. So I want a laptop with balls, so when I was looking at non-MAC laptops, the price was near or just over 2k, making these MBPs cheaper (for once). Also, Ardour only runs on OSX and Linux, so that was another factor.
/rant

Just looking for some input before I shell out.
 
^^^ Only thing I care about is the Ghz and RAM. 2.9 on a dual core is great, should do really well. 8 GB is definitely as much as you'll ever need. I use FL Studio, I've done some complex tracks before; I've never gone over FL's 4GB limit even with the immense number of samples I use.

I ended up getting the Qosmio. I think it automatically OC's to 3.1-3.2 Ghz and I don't think I've ever had any CPU problems. It's a bit bulky but as a desktop replacement its great.
 
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I'm looking to buy a laptop for college so I thought I might as well get one that can also handle producing music and gaming. I'm just starting to do some research, but I thought I'd come on here for some advice and suggestions. Do Mac Pro books still reign supreme, I don't really want one, but from reading past post on here it seems laptops arent really the way to go unless its Apple. Thanks
 
Mac Pro the way to go

I was a die-hard PC only user until about 2 or 3 years ago when I purchased my first macbook of craigslist for $600. I bought the 13" unibody model with I think somewhere around 2.2 Ghz Dual core, 2gb of RAM. Slapped some more RAM in it (it honestly doesn't have to be Apple brand), sold it, bought a 15" macbook pro off ebay with a broken DVD drive. bought a DVD drive for it for 20 bucks, then resold it for 300 dollars more. Did the same thing one more time, ended up with enough money to buy a 2011 model (i7 2.2 w/ 16gb RAM) off ebay used in pretty much brand new condition. The great thing about Macs is that they maintain their resale value even years down the line. And as for music production, everything is streamlined soooo much better than on Windows; Example, the built in audio card supports multi-channel output and has almost zero latency when recording, and when using MIDI, all the instruments are found immediately without driver hassel, there are no 3rd party (asio) drivers needed at all, it supports almost all the VSTs I used in windows, and if I ever want to use windows I have it installed on a second partition (not only good for music, but games too :D). I've gone through about 3 PC laptops over the course of a few years making producing on them a nightmare since I didn't know if my computer would die on me and I'd lose all my projects, but I can be as rough as I want to on this thing and it doesn't slow down at all.
Plus its just so damn sexy ;)

tl;dr
traded on internet for years towards current-model macbook pro, got it, love it for music production. Never going back to PC.
 
i bought a acer with i3(2x2.3ghz) 6 gb of ram and intel hd graphics 3000 and its awsome performance are ate 5.5 run similar to my desktop computer with 3.2 amd quad core 1gb ati readon 4670 hd 6 gb ddr3 that run 5.9 buy a laptop these day you have something really awsome especially if you have i5 or i7 in it
 
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Both the links are very informative thanks for sharing. Well, over the last few years some manufactures produced quality product for laptops and related application and it have even made specialized models specifically for music production.
 
As a former PC technician, Here's my take. If you're going to be getting paid for your music services. Get a Mac! It's not that a Mac is all that, but both the Hardware and the software have been designed for multimedia/audio use. The Myth about Macs not breaking down as much? IT'S TRUE!!! When I had a PC Laptop, I realized I had to work a lot harder to get things to work (drivers, hardware conflict, firewire, etc). It was always something and I found myself tweaking my PC laptop more than making beats. When I got a Mac, that all changed. Many times I did not even have to install drivers! My hardware worked better and the drivers worked better!

So, if you intend on making money...get a Mac.

If you're just messing around with beats for fun, then I would get a PC Laptop because they are A LOT cheaper and you don't have anything at risk.

simple as that.
 
I agree wit u..bro

---------- Post added at 01:57 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:52 AM ----------

Word! Uve said it all. Nice 1 smoove Mode
 
When my old laptop took a dump, I went all out and got another PC laptop. MSI gaming laptop, i7, 8gbram, noreflect screen, THX sound system. Cost the same as a mac. Does exactly what i needed to do.
 
Wacco Stern said:
When my old laptop took a dump, I went all out and got another PC laptop. MSI gaming laptop, i7, 8gbram, noreflect screen, THX sound system. Cost the same as a mac. Does exactly what i needed to do.
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I found that an equally equipped Windows Laptop cost a lot less than a Mac. I have to admit, Recently I have thought about trying out a Windows Laptop since my primary DAW's native environment is Windows, but ported for Mac. Saving $1000.00 and getting the same amount of power is tempting. Hopefully all the bugs windows had over the years has been reduced.
 
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