Laptop: Centrino/Pentium M/Pentium-4M/Athlon64/others???

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 2:16 pm

This may get asked a lot, but I couldn't find suitable knowledge.

Basically I want to know which CPU I should be looking at for a laptop.

I want to simultaneously record:

1 bass
2 guitar
1 kick
2 overheads
1 snare
1 extra mic for room ambience

So thats eight tracks at once. I'm planning on getting an Alesis IO26 for the soundcard duties. I just need advice on the laptop.

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 2:32 pm

Any of those will work to record 8 track at once, even with a 4200 RPM drive. Obviously more CPU power and faster drives are better, but not necessarily needed for what you want to do.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 3:41 pm

Cool, so I should be fine with any laptop that isn't too old then. This is basically so my band can record its jams and then edit each part individually to construct tracks.

posssu · Post by **posssu** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 3:57 pm

Also consider a Macbook. If possible, take your audio interface with you when you go to the shop, run your multitrack program from an usb-stick maybe and try to record eight empty tracks on the computer in the shop. This way you can test it before buying.

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 4:23 pm

Try and avoid integrated graphics memory if you can a well. If you get a newer core duo or core 2 duo based system, this is slightly less important.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 7:55 pm

If I had a laptop that had a PCMCIA input, but did not have a firewire input.. could I use a PCMCIA card to add a firewire input, and would it be as reliable and speedy as a normal firewire input?

I ask because I plan to use the Alesis IO26 Firewire soundcard, and stupidly I might add, I just won a laptop on Ebay. But it doesn't have a firewire input.

Yes, I am dumb for not checking.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 8:23 pm

Amberience wrote:If I had a laptop that had a PCMCIA input, but did not have a firewire input.. could I use a PCMCIA card to add a firewire input, and would it be as reliable and speedy as a normal firewire input?

yes.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 8:36 pm

Awesome - thankye kindly Machinate

Looks like I'm half way there to recording my band. wheee!

pulsoc · Post by **pulsoc** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 2:53 am

Everything I've read about the core duos with the 2Mb pipe suggest it is the total shit.

Ikay · Post by **Ikay** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 3:25 am

Hi,

I would like to know what makes Mac's more stable over PC's for Dj'ing with Ableton Live in particular. I'm assuming its more stable as many International DJ's ( PVD, Sash, Carl Cox , Richie hawtin,Mathew Dear) seems to be using a Macbook running Live, Traktor, Serato etc.

I'm a PC user and have been running Live 6 demo, Reason, cubase, sonar 6 and Traktor 3 for quite awhile now, but am looking to get a new Notebook in the next few months. My ideal specs would be to get a system with a1.5 - 2GHZ Core 2 duo processor
and 2GB of RAM.
I live in Melbourne, Australia so Mac's are more expensive here than the states and a Macbook would be about $1000 more expensive than a PC notebook with the above specs, but would be wiiling to spend extra if there are significant advantages specially for Dj'ing using Ableton. Do the Mac's Crash Less than PC's ???

Ive asked this question on a few other forums, and what Ive heard is its a matter of prefference, but i have my doubts as i'm yet to see international DJ using a notebook other than for a Mac, probably as they can afford to pay a higher price and Logic 7 being only Mac software.
As a person who's looking to get into music production and Live performances, what would you guys reccomend? Im also on a budget so I'm probably gonna dedicate the notebook i am getting to both Dj'ing and producing. while using my Old notebook to connect to the internet and other stuff.
Othr than for the price what are the most significant advantages of a MAc over PC in particular for Live performance

Sorry for the long post, and thanks heaps in advance

dannyk · Post by **dannyk** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 3:37 am

@Ikay: OSX is not inherently more stable than XP. Where XP falls down is if you have tons of programs installed and you surf the net without anti-spyware/anti-virus software. Also badly written programs or hardware drivers can bring the system down. This is true for OSX too, its just in my experience it happens more often in windows due to their being more hardware/software configurations to deal with.

If you keep your setup looked after and don't download tons of programs & drivers for XP you'll be fine. Personally, I chose to go with Apple because I use the internet on the same machine I make music on - and I don't really want to pay for anti-virus software.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 5:37 am

If buying a new PC lappie get an Intel Core2Duo processor (pentium m and centrino are less powerful). Also ensure (as it will come with Vista) that you get Vista Premium, Business or Ultimate to make better use of multi-core processing (Vista Basic is lacking) and that you have a minimum of 1.5 GB ram as Vista can eat up half a gig. Also avoid integrated graphics and Microsoft recommend a graphic card with 256mb of memory. PCMCIA allows you to connect a firewire card but quite often a 4 pin firewire 400 port is built in. You can also use the PCMCIA port for audio cards such as Echo Indigo IO/DJ or to connect RME's awesome cardbus products.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 5:43 am

Oh and last thing if poss get an internal HDD at 7200 rpm for extra track streaming capability, most come with 5400 speed which is OK but 4200 speed drives will limit your track count severely. And get an external usb 2.0 or firewire HDD for streaming audio files and keeping your internal drive free of clutter and for running the o/s and Live. Or partitions. Or both ! This is especially important if you use track freezing as Live stores frozen tracks as 32 bit files which really eat the storage space. Periodically, I go back into .als projects, unfreeze the tracks and delete the files in the ableton frozen tracks, last time I did this 17.6 GB of files were in there, cluttering up my drive. As I had already mixed/mastered those project files I unfroze and delted, I can always refreeze later if remixing is required etc.

Ikay · Post by **Ikay** » Thu May 10, 2007 1:00 am

Hi, Thanks alot guys.

Would you be able to reccomend me any particular notebooks/ brands in general ?? Sony VAIO, HP, TOshiba, ASUS etc ??

Thnaks again.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Thu May 10, 2007 1:18 am

I went with an iMac in the end, and boy am I glad I did!! It's super fast, a lot faster than my Athlon 64 4200 setup.

Laptop: Centrino/Pentium M/Pentium-4M/Athlon64/others???

Laptop: Centrino/Pentium M/Pentium-4M/Athlon64/others???

whats more stable , MAC or PC ???