Laptop Advice
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- KVRist
- 355 posts since 21 May, 2006
hi all. Due to illness and other stuff, not bothered with music for a few years, but now tryingto get back into it. I loved my PC setup with Cubase, and want a similar setup now, only with a laptop instead of desktop. Windows based preferred. Ideally want something that has all inputs ready to go etc. Decent price is important as well, can't afford anything high end. Any ideas/pointers appreicated.
"Producing music so bad, even TIMBALAND won't rip it off"
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- KVRist
- 93 posts since 26 May, 2009 from CA, USA
You'll probably want to go for one of the cheaper i7 processors. Some are combined as a tablet and touch screen but you can save some money skipping those since there's so much you can do already with that processing speed.
Windows 10 seems pretty stable now but go for 7 if you want the best stability. Just remember, they're going to stop support for 7 in a few years.
Also, think about getting a keyboard that lights up so you can use it at night or if you take it with you on a gig.
Seriously though, in the age that we live in, even older laptops can do some amazing things. You can get something great for a few $100 and sometimes limitations can breed creativity. There really aren't many limitations though compared to when they had to record on tape and chop it up or deal with synthesizers going out of tune...
I would get some more advice from users of Cubase who use that as their main DAW. Keep learning that like you would a real instrument and practice every day and learn music composition & you're on your way. And, get a good external sound card / audio interface.
I hope you're all healed up and get to have a lot of music making ahead of you!
Windows 10 seems pretty stable now but go for 7 if you want the best stability. Just remember, they're going to stop support for 7 in a few years.
Also, think about getting a keyboard that lights up so you can use it at night or if you take it with you on a gig.
Seriously though, in the age that we live in, even older laptops can do some amazing things. You can get something great for a few $100 and sometimes limitations can breed creativity. There really aren't many limitations though compared to when they had to record on tape and chop it up or deal with synthesizers going out of tune...
I would get some more advice from users of Cubase who use that as their main DAW. Keep learning that like you would a real instrument and practice every day and learn music composition & you're on your way. And, get a good external sound card / audio interface.
I hope you're all healed up and get to have a lot of music making ahead of you!
Let Me Blog You: http://blog.volterock.com
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- KVRian
- 673 posts since 6 Dec, 2015
Yes, get references from users who actually work on laptops.
There is one thing you *can"t* guess in advance, it's if the laptop drivers are well written or if they suck.
First of all, most laptops come with a lot of crapware that have never been thought for real time use and *will* bog the performance of your processor down, even the powerful ones. So the first thing you should do with a brand new laptop is do a fresh install of Windows.
Sadly, Windows 10 also installs a ton of crapware like Cortana and all the preinstalled apps that you don't really need like games suggestions background update of meteo, windows search indexer, and such. You might want to remove the antivirus as well. These will use up all your precious memory and greatly reduce stability, so you will also need to clean up this mess so that your PC works as it should be.
But there are laptops that come with botched drivers that add latency, and there is nothing you can do about it, apart from going the Linux way... for instance, the keyboard driver of my otherwise fine ASUS ZenBook laptop is such a piece of crap software that it adds non negligible latency, and I have to live with it, because there is no alternative driver. Or I have to plug in an external keyboard.
Also, some laptops have a really shitty headphones output. In some of them, you can actually hear the processor running because the audio circuit is polluted by interference from the rest of the electronics.
And those things, of course, are vital informations you can't know in advance by reading spec sheets or even asking the manufacturer. That's why you need user feedback. Or get a Mac. In any case, it's a good idea to buy from a place that allows to return the laptop if it's not satisfying.
For audio apps, it's better to have 4 fast cores than 8 slow cores, i.e processor speed trumps number of cores. Some fast i5 procs perform better than some low end i7. Dive in to https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ to know what maximum performance to expect from your laptop. Unfortunately, high proc speed also means more power consumption, hence less autonomy. Your laptop doesn't need a fancy graphic card, the motherboard's own GC is sufficient. But make sure you have plenty of RAM, especially if you can't upgrade, which is often the case for laptops. People often run out of RAM faster than they run out of CPU power. That's because RAM is expensive and thus it's the first thing the manufacturers sacrifice to drive the price down. Unfortunately, since they also add crapware because they get money when they do that, you get a laptop that's barely usable from the start.
My Zenbook is great in that department: i can upgrade RAM, change the dead battery and the hard disk to a SSD. Today 8Gb of RAM is a minimum, 16 Gb is comfortable unless you use lots of samples.
Finally choose PC with plenty of USB slots so that you don't need to attach an external hub for most uses. Also get a SSD if you can. SSD are especially awesome for laptops, they are much more reliable than mechanical disks, and they use up far less power.
There is one thing you *can"t* guess in advance, it's if the laptop drivers are well written or if they suck.
First of all, most laptops come with a lot of crapware that have never been thought for real time use and *will* bog the performance of your processor down, even the powerful ones. So the first thing you should do with a brand new laptop is do a fresh install of Windows.
Sadly, Windows 10 also installs a ton of crapware like Cortana and all the preinstalled apps that you don't really need like games suggestions background update of meteo, windows search indexer, and such. You might want to remove the antivirus as well. These will use up all your precious memory and greatly reduce stability, so you will also need to clean up this mess so that your PC works as it should be.
But there are laptops that come with botched drivers that add latency, and there is nothing you can do about it, apart from going the Linux way... for instance, the keyboard driver of my otherwise fine ASUS ZenBook laptop is such a piece of crap software that it adds non negligible latency, and I have to live with it, because there is no alternative driver. Or I have to plug in an external keyboard.
Also, some laptops have a really shitty headphones output. In some of them, you can actually hear the processor running because the audio circuit is polluted by interference from the rest of the electronics.
And those things, of course, are vital informations you can't know in advance by reading spec sheets or even asking the manufacturer. That's why you need user feedback. Or get a Mac. In any case, it's a good idea to buy from a place that allows to return the laptop if it's not satisfying.
For audio apps, it's better to have 4 fast cores than 8 slow cores, i.e processor speed trumps number of cores. Some fast i5 procs perform better than some low end i7. Dive in to https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ to know what maximum performance to expect from your laptop. Unfortunately, high proc speed also means more power consumption, hence less autonomy. Your laptop doesn't need a fancy graphic card, the motherboard's own GC is sufficient. But make sure you have plenty of RAM, especially if you can't upgrade, which is often the case for laptops. People often run out of RAM faster than they run out of CPU power. That's because RAM is expensive and thus it's the first thing the manufacturers sacrifice to drive the price down. Unfortunately, since they also add crapware because they get money when they do that, you get a laptop that's barely usable from the start.
My Zenbook is great in that department: i can upgrade RAM, change the dead battery and the hard disk to a SSD. Today 8Gb of RAM is a minimum, 16 Gb is comfortable unless you use lots of samples.
Finally choose PC with plenty of USB slots so that you don't need to attach an external hub for most uses. Also get a SSD if you can. SSD are especially awesome for laptops, they are much more reliable than mechanical disks, and they use up far less power.
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- KVRer
- 6 posts since 28 Jul, 2016
I bought an Asus GL502VM (gaming laptop) as a 'portable' DAW for use with fl studio.
to be honest it's much faster than my tower PC which has an intel I7-4770K and SSDs in it.
reasons for a gaming laptop are that it doesn't have the usual low power (reduced cores) CPU in it that other types of laptops come with, lots of RAM and HDD space (I added a stinking fast M.2 SSD to it) and with the graphics card.. I can use it for pretty much anything including 'games'.
it wasn't 'cheap' but it's giving hardly anything away to the tower, it's quiet and portable.
to be honest it's much faster than my tower PC which has an intel I7-4770K and SSDs in it.
reasons for a gaming laptop are that it doesn't have the usual low power (reduced cores) CPU in it that other types of laptops come with, lots of RAM and HDD space (I added a stinking fast M.2 SSD to it) and with the graphics card.. I can use it for pretty much anything including 'games'.
it wasn't 'cheap' but it's giving hardly anything away to the tower, it's quiet and portable.