Hello!
I want to buy a notebook for a few audio things:
* record music, but only one or two tracks a time
* playback music, mostly wavs, and the odd
* act a a live VST synth module
It is NOT meant as a production station. I will keep doing that with my desktop machine, as I find big keys and big screens more comfy. I will simply make a song on the desktop, bounce all stuff to a few wavs and transport those to the laptop. Recordings go vice versa.
Option 2 and 3 will be used together (I want to lay down a tempo track and some atmospheric stuff as a foundation for the rest of the band and play one VSTi along with it. Nothing spectacular, say about 6 tracks of wavs and one instance of Albino2.
So... I am not wanting to spend my year income on this, and I am not too knowledgable about laptops. That's why I ask your opinion about this rig. Will it be able to do as I please (combined with an USB midi/audio I/O thinghy)?
ASUS A6K/MT30 (aka Type Z92K-B020H)
Processor: AMD Turion 64 MT30
Cache: 1 MB
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Home
Chipset: SiS 756 + SiS 964L
Memory: 512 MB DDR333
Video: NVIDIA GeForce Go 6200, 256 MB
HD: 80 GB
USB 4 x
Firewire 1 x
I have no clue what the HD is, and I rather would like to stick with the one that it comes with. Buying an external one for big recordings is an option, but I'd love to travel as light as possible.
I will up the RAM to 1 gig, I think and add a Novation X-station25as I/O and controller.
Thanks in advance!
discosux
Can somebody comment on this Notebook?
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- KVRer
- 17 posts since 16 Jun, 2004 from Amsterdam
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- KVRer
- Topic Starter
- 17 posts since 16 Jun, 2004 from Amsterdam
ps. What is an easy and reliable program to get this done? Cubase SX is a bit of an overkill and I do not trust that G&T*&T*&T* USB key to be nice in the middle of a gig. I have an copy of Tracktion 1.6 (yups, the free one from Mackie) and will have a look at that. Seems not so cluttered... any other suggestions?
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- KVRist
- 80 posts since 8 Oct, 2003 from London/Manchester UK
I run tracktion 2 on a thinkpad x41, using a firewire card and connected to a firepod (8 track recording); runs like a dream.
For your purposes, any laptop will do fine. Be aware that the laptop CPU you speced will probably eat battery.
Be aware that most laptops (such as mine) have pedestrian hard drives and these can be limiting sometimes.
Tracktion is great software in my opinion; easy to use and very functional. Also good for laptop users because you can easily transfer projects between computers (I do it all the time).
Make sure you are using a decent external sound card; laptop sound cards are about as sh*t as they get, designed to make dinging sounds and not music. Maybe for you I would recommend an m-audio or something similar (Presonus, the makers of my firepod, have released a new product today, maybe that's good)
Hope this helps!
Chris
For your purposes, any laptop will do fine. Be aware that the laptop CPU you speced will probably eat battery.
Be aware that most laptops (such as mine) have pedestrian hard drives and these can be limiting sometimes.
Tracktion is great software in my opinion; easy to use and very functional. Also good for laptop users because you can easily transfer projects between computers (I do it all the time).
Make sure you are using a decent external sound card; laptop sound cards are about as sh*t as they get, designed to make dinging sounds and not music. Maybe for you I would recommend an m-audio or something similar (Presonus, the makers of my firepod, have released a new product today, maybe that's good)
Hope this helps!
Chris
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- KVRAF
- 5851 posts since 9 Jul, 2002 from Helsinki
I'm pretty sure Asus A6-range is among the best budget laptops, I'm getting either one of them or a Sony Vaio FS3xxx.
Unless you especially want to AMD 64-bit, the A6V (Centrino) versions run longer (+1 hour) for the same battery and do not heat as much, which means a quieter machine. I read a good head-to-head comparison of Asus A6 Turion and Centrino laptops that was translated from this French original, but can't find it anymore.
The Turions in that test were ML-versions, however, so the MT-30 in your post should produce less heat, but it is also clocked a lot lower so the very slight performance advantage with FPUs is lost. Turions are fast with floating point operations, which is good for VST stuff, and unless you want to spend a bit more for the Centrino's better power-to-performance, that laptop should be great for you. 64-bit Windows is coming before next Christmas... and applications will follow.
The HD runs only at 4200 rpm, so maybe you should consider changing if you intend to record audio.
Unless you especially want to AMD 64-bit, the A6V (Centrino) versions run longer (+1 hour) for the same battery and do not heat as much, which means a quieter machine. I read a good head-to-head comparison of Asus A6 Turion and Centrino laptops that was translated from this French original, but can't find it anymore.
The Turions in that test were ML-versions, however, so the MT-30 in your post should produce less heat, but it is also clocked a lot lower so the very slight performance advantage with FPUs is lost. Turions are fast with floating point operations, which is good for VST stuff, and unless you want to spend a bit more for the Centrino's better power-to-performance, that laptop should be great for you. 64-bit Windows is coming before next Christmas... and applications will follow.
The HD runs only at 4200 rpm, so maybe you should consider changing if you intend to record audio.
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- KVRer
- Topic Starter
- 17 posts since 16 Jun, 2004 from Amsterdam
Well, the reason I go for this machine is simple: it's the best I can find for 1000 Euro at a shop nearby. I hate E-commerce, and like to handle stuff I buy first. I haven't got any preference for a certain processor, but I do like the graphics board and I always had good experiences with ASUS.
Thanks for the hints!
ps. Any experiences with the Novation X-staion controllers?
Thanks for the hints!
ps. Any experiences with the Novation X-staion controllers?
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- KVRer
- 14 posts since 9 Oct, 2005
Very pro on Asus stuff. I would choose Asus over Sony anyday. On the other hand, not very pro on AMD mobile solutions. Can you not find one of the Asus notebooks that use a 2 Ghz Pentium M? You would get much better battery life and the 2 Megs of L2 cache is a dream.
Either way...good luck and I'm sure you'll enjoy whatever you get. It's pretty hard to go too wrong these days with laptops. Even the cheaper stuff if really, very nice.
Scott
Either way...good luck and I'm sure you'll enjoy whatever you get. It's pretty hard to go too wrong these days with laptops. Even the cheaper stuff if really, very nice.
Scott
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- KVRAF
- 5851 posts since 9 Jul, 2002 from Helsinki
It's way more € up here! What's the shop called? I can save hundreds of euros if I e-commerce my laptop... and there aren't any proper laptop shops here anyway.discosux wrote:Well, the reason I go for this machine is simple: it's the best I can find for 1000 Euro at a shop nearby. I hate E-commerce, and like to handle stuff I buy first.
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- KVRer
- Topic Starter
- 17 posts since 16 Jun, 2004 from Amsterdam
http://www.mycom.nl/
... hope your Dutch is in good shape, though.
Now I only need to decide on the I/O bits...
... hope your Dutch is in good shape, though.
Now I only need to decide on the I/O bits...
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- KVRist
- 80 posts since 8 Oct, 2003 from London/Manchester UK
Recording audio on a 4200 rpm hard drive is fine... you can probably get 40 or 50 tracks playing at once.... it's fine so long as you dont start doing heavy BFD/sampler stuff.