What is the best laptop for music production?

[ceyhun242]

Avoid U series CPUs. I just tried two different models with U that failed DPC latency testing.

Can U series be as sufficiently fast as H series for music production. Are vets and plugins getting more CPU demanding so that U series may not be future proof so I better get H cpu?

Thanks

[Schmidi]

It should be enough power on paper, but I just know that both of mine experienced crackles and pops with Asio4All with minimal CPU load. I even experienced crackles with some external USB audio interfaces. I decided to just give up the search for an ultra book for music and ordered a Sager gaming laptop this morning.

[cleverr1]

What do you mean by "picking up USB drive" here? Dont all laptops have USB drive?

Older laptops like the Dell E6430 are single spindle SATA, so the options you have to include a 2nd HDD for audio are to either buy an external USB3 drive, or a drive caddy that would replace the DVD drive.

By contrast modern laptops such as a recent Clevo support 3 internal drives; 2 x M2 NVMe plus 1 x SATA.

[cleverr1]

5- Scan 3xs optimized audio laptops. Do you know how do they optimize the laptop? How is it any different from any other laptop on the market such as MSI gaming laptop?
1830 dollar without hunderbold with GTX 1660
2700 dollar for thunderbolt version with RTX 2070
https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/custom/daw-d ... on-laptops

Scan audio laptops start out as bare bones off the shelf offerings, mine is from Clevo. The big value adds with a Scan system are:

They extensively test a range of bare bones systems for suitability as audio workstations and will only select the ones that have suitably low DPC latency and adequate CPU cooling with the appropriate thermal throttling characteristics.

They do a thorough memory test and a burn in test prior to shipping.

The systems are highly configurable in terms of components you can select compared to most vendors off the shelf menu.

I'd suggest that if you want laptop for audio then going to a specialist builder is the only risk free option.

[mgw38]

It should be enough power on paper, but I just know that both of mine experienced crackles and pops with Asio4All with minimal CPU load. I even experienced crackles with some external USB audio interfaces. I decided to just give up the search for an ultra book for music and ordered a Sager gaming laptop this morning.

These types of pops and crackles usually come from DPC latency issues and that has nothing to do with CPU performance, rather with real time performance which is something else entirely. It is also irrelevant if you use an external audio interface. On my system it is primarily the NVidia card/drivers that introduce high amounts of DPC latency. Not to the point that it becomes too annoying, but it is noticeable. It pays to do a bit of research about how well a system behaves in terms of DPC latency. I came from the Mac world where this is not an issue at all. Was quite surprised about the strange problems you have on Windows systems.

[mcbpete]

Apologies for the thread hijack - I'm also looking at upgrading my laptop, as my existing one will be be nearly a decade old by the end of the year. I've found an HP 'laptop' (though looks like it'd crush your lap) with an i9-9880H processor costing about 3 times the price I paid for my old Sony Vaio back in the early '10s, however looking at the CPU comparisons it looks like I'm only getting performance of around 2 to 3 times the speed:

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/I ... 0169vs1982
https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i7-2 ... e-i9-9880H

Am I missing something (like completely misreading the results!), surely CPU clock speeds have improved considerably more than that over the last decade? If I were to compare the average CPU of something in the 90s from the same year range (e.g. 1991 - 2000), say for example 386DX/33 to Pentium MMX 200 it looks like the speed was close to 100 times the speed ( 6.5 Mips vs 400 Mips https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/BogoMips/bogo-list.html )

[electro]

USB4 / Thunderbolt4 is late 2020 early 2021

For connectivity at least 2 USB-Type A ports and 2 USB-Type C for Thunderbolt and Display

[legendCNCD]

It should be enough power on paper, but I just know that both of mine experienced crackles and pops with Asio4All with minimal CPU load. I even experienced crackles with some external USB audio interfaces. I decided to just give up the search for an ultra book for music and ordered a Sager gaming laptop this morning.

These types of pops and crackles usually come from DPC latency issues and that has nothing to do with CPU performance, rather with real time performance which is something else entirely. It is also irrelevant if you use an external audio interface. On my system it is primarily the NVidia card/drivers that introduce high amounts of DPC latency. Not to the point that it becomes too annoying, but it is noticeable. It pays to do a bit of research about how well a system behaves in terms of DPC latency. I came from the Mac world where this is not an issue at all. Was quite surprised about the strange problems you have on Windows systems.

Actually it has been a problem on mac laptops too, with wifi on especially. Also T2 chip has been bringing problems on the newer ones.

Also it should NOT be a problem anymore on any system but shitty drivers/hardware etc. exists.

[cleverr1]

Also it should NOT be a problem anymore on any system but shitty drivers/hardware etc. exists.

If only RME made laptops

[mgw38]

Also it should NOT be a problem anymore on any system but shitty drivers/hardware etc. exists.

I am using an eGPU setup. The laptop itself is perfectly well behaved, only when I add the eGPU does the Nvidia driver sometimes cause DPC latency spikes.

[legendCNCD]

Also it should NOT be a problem anymore on any system but shitty drivers/hardware etc. exists.

I am using an eGPU setup. The laptop itself is perfectly well behaved, only when I add the eGPU does the Nvidia driver sometimes cause DPC latency spikes.

nVidia driver from version to version seem to exhibit different DPC latencies, thats the reason why I have so old 65µs max DPC

[ceyhun242]

I guess Intel U can also do a decent job with audio production right? my s230 has i5 3320m, do you think any intel u 8th would perform better than my current CPU in all aspects and scenarios or U processors tend to lower power at critical times to save energy even if plugged and hence perform worse than m cpus? IF U 8th can improve CPU 1.5 2 times than my current M, then I think I would go with U series. Someone said U series perform 80% of H series, if that's true U is great then, I thought it was like 50%. Because U laptops are slimmer, lighter nad have great battery. If that will make my cpu 2 times faster than I guess I better get a U one.. like x1 carbon LG gram or hp EliteBook 840 maybe?

thank you

[ceyhun242]

5- Scan 3xs optimized audio laptops. Do you know how do they optimize the laptop? How is it any different from any other laptop on the market such as MSI gaming laptop?
1830 dollar without hunderbold with GTX 1660
2700 dollar for thunderbolt version with RTX 2070
https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/custom/daw-d ... on-laptops

Scan audio laptops start out as bare bones off the shelf offerings, mine is from Clevo. The big value adds with a Scan system are:

They extensively test a range of bare bones systems for suitability as audio workstations and will only select the ones that have suitably low DPC latency and adequate CPU cooling with the appropriate thermal throttling characteristics.

They do a thorough memory test and a burn in test prior to shipping.

The systems are highly configurable in terms of components you can select compared to most vendors off the shelf menu.

I'd suggest that if you want laptop for audio then going to a specialist builder is the only risk free option.

What do these mean?
"bare bones off the shelf offerings" and "burn in test"

[cleverr1]

What do these mean?
"bare bones off the shelf offerings" and "burn in test"

Bare bones machines are provided with no ram or drives to the builder.
Burn in test: https://www.passmark.com/products/burnintest/

The context of your question suggests you need to use Google.

[gondii]

hi, what do you guys think about something like the Razer Blade?

For example this model:

Your selected Razer Blade Pro 17
OS Windows 10 Home
Processor 9th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-9750H 6 Core (2.6GHz/4.5GHz)
Graphics NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 2060 (6GB GDDR6 VRAM)
Display 17.3" Full HD 144Hz, 100% sRGB, 6.0mm bezel, factory calibrated
Storage 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD
Memory 16GB Dual-Channel (8GB x 2) DDR4 2667MHz
Battery 70.5Whr
Keyboard Per-key RGB powered by Razer Chroma™
Gigabit Ethernet 2.5Gb Ethernet
USB & Thunderbolt 3 USB 3.2 Gen 2 (USB-A) x3, USB3.2 Gen 2 (USB-C), Thunderbolt™ 3 (USB-C)
Wireless Intel® Wireless-AX200 (802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax), Bluetooth® 5 Webcam Built-in HD webcam (1MP / 720P)
Finish Black with backlit green logo and green
USB ports Dimensions0.78" x 10.24" x 15.55" / 19.9mm x 260mm x 395mm Weight6.06 lbs / 2.75 kg