PC Laptop Results W/ Live 5?

simsm · Post by **simsm** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 7:23 am

Hey there. I'm thinking of purchasing a PC laptop for music production, and I was wondering what models folks on the board are using - also, what kind of performance y'all are getting. Any feedback/advice would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Matt

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 7:27 am

Check the Live5 Performance Test thread...
Many different setups compared there.

the shoe · Post by **the shoe** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 1:01 pm

for production i suggest getting a desktop as the hdd spin is double that of a laptop, which is where live gets clips from. p4 with 1gb ram should get you going.

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 3:33 pm

Do P4's still have the problem wth floating-point mathematics?
For production work, I would get/will get an AMD Athlon 64-bit machine, with 1GB+ RAM. AMD processors are cheaper and, from what I understand, better at the kind of calculations used in most audio production. I've been using AMD chips for music production for ther last 5 years and have had no problems at all.

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 9:48 pm

i suggest getting a desktop as the hdd spin is double that of a laptop

You can get 7200 rpm drives in laptops now.

You can even get SATA drives, and RAID.

dtm · Post by **dtm** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 10:12 am

Yeah dude, if you save up you are always better off with a good laptop. That way you don't end up having to buy a cheap one later to take out to gigs, and have limitations on which of your desktop's tracks you can fuck with on the fly

Michael-SW · Post by **Michael-SW** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 11:08 am

ethios4 wrote:Do P4's still have the problem wth floating-point mathematics?

Nope. But AMDs are a bit faster. Pentium Ms ("Centrinos") are very very fast too when it comes to musical applications.

Tuur · Post by **Tuur** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 11:29 am

Michael-SW wrote:Pentium Ms ("Centrinos") are very very fast too when it comes to musical applications.

Seconded. Check my entries in the performance test...

djastroboy · Post by **djastroboy** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 5:51 pm

subterFUSE wrote:
i suggest getting a desktop as the hdd spin is double that of a laptop
You can get 7200 rpm drives in laptops now.

You can even get SATA drives, and RAID.

The desktop drives are faster at a given rpm because the avg angular velocity is higher with a larger diameter platter.

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 12:39 am

If that is true, I stand corrected.

I'll still put my dual SATA drives in Raid up against a 7200 rpm ATA-100 drive in a desktop, though.

enzymex · Post by **enzymex** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 3:15 am

Six months ago I was looking into a power l/t, and the best deal seemed to be Compag/HP models with a 3700+ AMD proc, fully loaded at a $2500 price point. IBM seemed like the best performance with a two drive 7200 RPM option, but at a 5K to 6K price.

Well, I went with a desktop model instead. Water cooled 3700+ with twin 300GB drives. Love it. I still use a l/t for live: Centrino 1.4 with 1.5 GB of RAM and a single drive, but of course I am limited with the number of VST's I can load. Best to load a "Synth Rack" and change patches via controller to limit patch change time in between songs though.

Just my .02 YMMV