New laptop? (windows only)

[chris harbin]

I'm around 80% sure of getting a new lappy, not 100% though.

Here is the one I'm looking at :

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-15-6- ... Id=6534578

Just noticed it's not a touchscreen, that might not be what I want (but I really don't use the touchscreen much on mine) But the processor is quite high in GHZ. Some of the models are WAY overpriced, I don't not want that. Might go down to an i7 and save some coin.

The Dell I have is old (maybe 5-7 years old) and it's woefully underpowered for music production. It's an i7 but it's a crap i7. It's old enough that it's not "compatible" with win 11. I hate it It's SUPER fiddly with the trackpad, terrible battery life (even with an updated battery) and I HATE the keypad.

I have not done enough research on chips for lappy's to know if there will really be a huge performance dif (I'm not assuming! ) but the other specs are right where I want them. It won't be a heavy-hitter, but the one I have can barely run anything with ASIO. As mentioned though, this is 4+ GHZ which should be good for performance.

Not a need, so not totally sold, but any thoughts would be appreciated.

[chris harbin]

Heh......

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/28 ... -i9-13900H

Gee, I wonder if the new one would blow away mine?

One thing of concern: It says 2.6 GHZ but up to 5.4? I'm not sure what that means. It says 4.7 on the Best Buy site, and 4.1 on the Intel site. Hmmmmmmmm

[yur2die4]

Yeah. Looked up the best buy link to glance at the cpu and was pretty dang impressed. Jealous even haha plenty of cores and plenty of mhz.

I was just going to chime in that as long as it’s not a U or power conserving cpu, you should be good to go if it is powerful. I think there’s another cpu model similar to the U’s now. But yeah, I’ve seen friends get screwed over with those CPUs.

[chris harbin]

hehe, well, I actually bought something a little on the lighter side.

That one is NOT a touch screen, I decided I want that.

Here is the one I got, it's not the same power at all:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspi ... Id=6504380

Here is the benchmark against my old one:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/28 ... l-i7-1260P

It's 4fiddy cheaper, and they had it in stock locally. Honestly, I got to thinking and I'm not using it for music that much. But I HATED my old one. This is already an improvement. We'll see, if it sucks, it will go back. But my old one is WOEFULLY underpowered as you can see, and I do like the idea of schlepping a lappy around for music use (on top of the countless other things I do.

It's lower GHZ at it's base, but many more cores. It's going to be a while before I get it set up so......stay tuned.

[chris harbin]

So far, so good. Haven't done any heavy hitting, but Push 2 works, soundcard works, Atom SQ works, really good CPU use so far, no hiccups or dropouts

[chris harbin]

This is performing very well, except for maybe the ram. Looks like ram is still cheap (this is just 16GB)

It's odd, because there seems to be so many things running ram, not sure if I need them. I did find one key that helped, but who knows what else lurks.

[chris harbin]

TWO PSA/FYI's:

A. If anyone gets a windows 11 lappy, make sure you either get 32+ GB of ram, or buy that if it only comes with 16. Doze 11 takes up WAY too much ram to run. I looked at many "fixes" for this and there just really aren't any, or much. It's easy to change (other than the fiddly little itsy bitsy screws ) You'll thank me later

B. Live is still yet another host that HATES being higher than 50-60% CPU use. Reason is like this too, I HATE IT! So again, GHZ is king. It's not huge here because this isn't my main computer, but it's annoying to be sure when stress-testing

[yur2die4]

Have you configured your computer for music making? On my Win laptop I used to make sure to set up a power profile that switched to full power for the cpu when I used Live. That meant usually that my fan would be on nonstop but it was more reliable. Otherwise it ‘relaxes’ during music downtime and then chokes when I start pushing it as it catches up.

Btw, the ram thing is good to know.

[chris harbin]

Yeah, thanks for the tips. I disabled the "C state" as recommended by many, that might help. This is an easy one to configure in the bios, some lappys have terrible bios access.

But this can be a problem even on a real powerful desktop. Something about Live (I remember from WAY back) and Reason that if they get much past the half way point, they gag. Studio One is really optimized and really doesn't have this issue.

[chris harbin]

Hmmmmmmmm. OT, but since I'm here thought I'd bring it up. My youtube/streaming sound is now AWFUL! I've got all the gobbly gook turned off. Reading up online gives all kinds of advice but none of it works.

Sound like everything is in a bathroom (and I think it's the bass in particular, but the Maxx is off)

Anything like Live or other audio apps sound great

[chris harbin]

Scratch that, plugged in my gueetar, and it sounds terrible too.

Eeeeek, what did I do? Hmmmm. Must.........find........solution..........

[chris harbin]

PHEW! Unistalled/reinstalled the drivers, now........it works. Man, who knows what was up with that!

[chris harbin]

In fact, when my deliveries arrive, I'm going down to GC and picking up a VOLT interface. I've had issues with this Audient lately (drivers doing odd things)

COME ON UPS/FED EX...........

[yur2die4]

Sometimes it is as simple as a bad cable or loose cable.

[chris harbin]

Nope, it's a bad unit. I don't know why but I've had terrible driver issues for about 3 months now. Odd because before that, it was ace. We'll see with the new VOLT, but so far it's great. Better latency. If it doesn't keep reverting back to the dreaded "17.5" output latency it will be money well spent.