Music production on a laptop

[erussx2]

Does anyone here do all of their music production from a laptop. As a keyboard player, I even use my laptop as my sound source for my live keyboard rig.

Does anyone else do that?

[Shane Sanders]

Does anyone here do all of their music production from a laptop. As a keyboard player, I even use my laptop as my sound source for my live keyboard rig.

Does anyone else do that?

Yeah, I do. I find the ability to move the angle of the monitor is essential to a comfortable long session as I tend to have back and neck problems as it is. CRT monitors just don't seem to swivel enough to cope with my horribly wide range of sitting/slouching positions.

Lately I have been thinking about investigating those VR glasses again as there may be something now that gives me what I want: the ability to hold my head anywhere I want, independent of where the mouse or input control is.

My machine: P4 2.4 GHz, 1 gig of RAM, several fast external drives. All my samples are on a portable drive as well as all my mp3s.

[Lucid]

Not all, but I can do a lot on it. Laptop as softsynth, drum sampler, guitar amp modeller, loop-based sequencer etc. I love the ubiquity of my little laptop.

[erussx2]

several fast external drives.

So you have a laptop and SEVERAL external drives? How do you do that? Does your laptop have more than one fire wire connection?

[Shane Sanders]

several fast external drives.

So you have a laptop and SEVERAL external drives? How do you do that? Does your laptop have more than one fire wire connection?

My laptop only has one Firewire port, but you can daisy-chain many drives off of the one main drive. That's what I have going on. Laptop -> drive1 -> drive2, etc.

[erussx2]

several fast external drives.

So you have a laptop and SEVERAL external drives? How do you do that? Does your laptop have more than one fire wire connection?

My laptop only has one Firewire port, but you can daisy-chain many drives off of the one main drive. That's what I have going on. Laptop -> drive1 -> drive2, etc.

Well I'l be darn! That actually works? So I can put Audio data on one external drive and my plugin streaming data on another and the computer will know where to get the data it needs? That will make my streaming of info faster won't it?

[Shane Sanders]

several fast external drives.

So you have a laptop and SEVERAL external drives? How do you do that? Does your laptop have more than one fire wire connection?

My laptop only has one Firewire port, but you can daisy-chain many drives off of the one main drive. That's what I have going on. Laptop -> drive1 -> drive2, etc.

Well I'l be darn! That actually works? So I can put Audio data on one external drive and my plugin streaming data on another and the computer will know where to get the data it needs? That will make my streaming of info faster won't it?

Works here, but I do have all my VST's on the main laptop drive (so that I can do some work away from my house). But you can put the data anywhere, the computer will keep track of the drive names.

However, all my track waves and samples live on a second and third drive. Two other drives house various things like mp3s and my rather large graphics projects.

[erussx2]

several fast external drives.

So you have a laptop and SEVERAL external drives? How do you do that? Does your laptop have more than one fire wire connection?

My laptop only has one Firewire port, but you can daisy-chain many drives off of the one main drive. That's what I have going on. Laptop -> drive1 -> drive2, etc.

Well I'l be darn! That actually works? So I can put Audio data on one external drive and my plugin streaming data on another and the computer will know where to get the data it needs? That will make my streaming of info faster won't it?

Works here, but I do have all my VST's on the main laptop drive (so that I can do some work away from my house). But you can put the data anywhere, the computer will keep track of the drive names.

However, all my track waves and samples live on a second and third drive. Two other drives house various things like mp3s and my rather large graphics projects.

Can you tell me what system you run and tell me how many and what kind of plugins you can run at the same time without crashing or taxing your CPU?

[Rabid]

I think my laptop is a P4 1.6 maxed out with 512 meg memory so it is not going to replace my desktops. However, things opened up when I bought a Firewire card and connected an external drive.

If I am careful I can put together songs on my laptop and I do a lot of work while sitting back in a reclyner. But when it is time to get serious and pull out the heavy duty synths and effects I have to move on. The laptop does work well if I connect a MotifES or an Emu XL-7 and use hardware as my sound source, but even then the smaller screen is not ideal for working in Sonar. Reason is fine, but not Sonar.

Oh, I have put together songs in Acid 4 using over 60 tracks on my laptop. I considered that to be pretty good results. Someday I will try pushing Ableton Live and see how far it will go.

Robert