Best laptop for Ableton Live - on stage performance

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Dragonbreath
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Re: Best laptop for Ableton Live - on stage performance

Post by Dragonbreath » Fri Apr 26, 2013 5:26 pm

You can say im wrong but bottom line is my experience is real and true. Side by side my macbook pro 15" core duo 2,53ghz 4 gig ram vs a toshiba laptop core duo 2,4ghz 4 gig ram. I though that at 0,13 ghz difference in processor that difference in cpu performance would almost be the same. The difference shocked me even after a brief attempt to optimise the pc. I probably could of done more optimising but it would have involved turning off a bunch of features. You can come up with all he excuses you but story is real. Does it mean all pc would fare as bad in a similar. Maybe not, but it reveals to me that looking at cpu specs is not enough to make a good comparaison of perfomance.

H20nly
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Re: Best laptop for Ableton Live - on stage performance

Post by H20nly » Fri Apr 26, 2013 7:02 pm

right, all that is fine and dandy and i could go into a long diatribe about how much bloatware a Toshiba laptop comes with but my point was that if you choose wisely you can buy much more computer for the money. in my reference i used the 2000 dollar price point of my iMac. it it has a quad core i5 running at 3.1 GHz.. at bare minimum i could easily outspec the number of cores and the amount of RAM that it came with and have plenty of money left to spare.

your comparison is unfair in that it has a third party adding to the mix. wiping that computer loading a clean install of Windows, not from Toshiba, would probably change your level of surprise to... meh, can't tell either way.

how well your soundcard/interface runs on Windows vs. Mac is also a matter of drivers and can vary greatly from manufacturer to manufacturer.

you're essentially comparing a boutique item (like a custom hat) to the rest of the market but you're not comparing it to a similarly speced boutique version, just to the typical everyday joe version.

tldr; car analogy version: a Ferrari vs. a Ford Mustang??... the least you can do is compare it to the Ford GT.

this argument is old and the rules have changed. both are nice. both have their advantages. it's only preference at this point.

skatr2
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Re: Best laptop for Ableton Live - on stage performance

Post by skatr2 » Sat Apr 27, 2013 3:34 am

Dragonbreath wrote:You can say im wrong but bottom line is my experience is real and true. Side by side my macbook pro 15" core duo 2,53ghz 4 gig ram vs a toshiba laptop core duo 2,4ghz 4 gig ram. I though that at 0,13 ghz difference in processor that difference in cpu performance would almost be the same. The difference shocked me even after a brief attempt to optimise the pc. I probably could of done more optimising but it would have involved turning off a bunch of features. You can come up with all he excuses you but story is real. Does it mean all pc would fare as bad in a similar. Maybe not, but it reveals to me that looking at cpu specs is not enough to make a good comparaison of perfomance.
You are comparing spec to spec when you should be comparing pricepoint to pricepoint. For the cost of that macbook, you could have gotten a better laptop than that toshiba and run circles around that mbp. I own that model macbook (2009 i believe) and know there were many windows PCs that were doing better CPU usage wise than that year macbook. Just look at the performance threads for live8. while a lot of people on macs were getting in the 30s on the newer i3/5/7 chipsets, alot of PCs were pushing down into the teens.

Here were my specs on that system when I used it regularly on live8:
1) Ableton Live CPU Meter %? 53%
2) Laptop/Desktop? Make/Model? Apple MBP 13"
3) Operating System? Snow Leopard
4) Ableton Live version? 8.2.2
5) CPU Make, Model, and Speed? Intel 2.53g Core 2 duo
6) Amount of Ram? 2g
7) Soundcard (and driver version if you know it)? Internal
8) Hard Disk Drive Speed (if you know)? 7200rpm
9) Number of playback tracks? 8

upping the ram to 8 helped a fair share on playback issues, but only adding an external soundcard pushed it down into the 40s. Point is the problem many people have with mac is the cost factor. People knock windows for charging 2bills for an OS, when truth be told apple charges way more than that for theirs as you charge an arm and a leg for their computer and just so happens theirs is only sold on their machines. The technology you get in an apple is the same as you get in a PC, and when comparing price, its technically worse for the money. It has some good things like core audio, a nice aluminum finish, and a refreshing OS experience than what most people grew up on. But thats what your premium is going toward. NOT top of the line internal components. Its pointless for some to say "you could have gotten the same for less" because clearly the technological equal to the mac on windows may actually lag. But you could get WAY more for the same price that won't lag and likely if you are not computer stupid serve you exceptionally well.

Glu0nVoidwalker
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Re: Best laptop for Ableton Live - on stage performance

Post by Glu0nVoidwalker » Wed Sep 25, 2013 9:57 am

Hi guys,

Since this thread is quite large and turned into a discussion about pricepoints and Mac VS Windows I am just going to ask again rather than weed through the entire thread.




I have been using my desktop PC as a workstation for Ableton.

Recently however I started collaborating with a friend of mine and a desktop PC isn't handy and isn't made to be moved frequently.

So investing in a laptop is sensible at this point.

My preference goes to Windows, simply because I'm used to it and am against Apple out of principle.


So no whining about which is better, I am looking for a good production laptop to run Live 9 .

Budget, I'd say around €1000

wascal
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Re: Best laptop for Ableton Live - on stage performance

Post by wascal » Wed Sep 25, 2013 3:08 pm

I'd go for a refurbished 15.4-inch MacBook Pro (2.3GHz Quad-core Intel i7) from the Mac store - usually around €1000 and reliable as hell.

Then with some money from gigs I'd stick 16gb in it and an SSD for a couple of hundred euros.
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H20nly
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Re: Best laptop for Ableton Live - on stage performance

Post by H20nly » Thu Sep 26, 2013 9:48 pm

@ Glu0nVoidwalker - since you mentioned your preference is Windows... Lenovo ThinkPad T series.

i would recommend taking a roll back to Windows 7.

M-bition
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Re: Best laptop for Ableton Live - on stage performance

Post by M-bition » Thu Sep 26, 2013 10:00 pm

I would probably buy/configure an BTO notebook or something similar. Easy to configure the CPU and amount of RAM you want. Get the best CPU you can afford. I think its best bang for the buck.

nadmiar
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Re: Best laptop for Ableton Live - on stage performance

Post by nadmiar » Tue Sep 15, 2015 1:06 pm

Hey Guys,

Since nobody updated the topic, I would like to know if you will recommend a Mac Book Pro or a Pc worth 1500/2000€ nowadays?

Regards

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