How many of you have gone to a laptop-only studio?

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 3:19 pm

My DAW is a laptop. Sagernotebooks.com, p4 3.2ghz, with 1gb ram and two internal 7200rpm 8mb cache hard drives. So I get close to desktop performance. My screen is a 15.4 in 1600x1200 res screen, and I never feel like I need more. I'd love to have more, but I like portability and compactness.

Speaking of portability, in reality it's more a convenience to be able to take my lappie to a gig or to record my singer at her house. In reality, it's not that portable...it's almost 12 lbs and I get about 45 minutes of battery power with those hungry hard drives and the hot CPU. But I'm not complaining about cpu speed - it's about 1.5 years old, and I'm still not at a point of running out of horsepower.

Recently, I dusted off my old desktop, a three-year-old athlon 2200+ with 768mb of RAM. I bought a MiaMIDI card for it, and now I use it as an external sound module runnign some CPU-heavy synths like Sytrus and ZeroVector. It also serves as my internet PC and my overall sandbox for testing audio plugs, etc. I pipe in the sound from it into my DAW via SPDIF, so very clean digital sound, and the midi clock provides reasonalbe timing (which I can then correct with warp markers after recording the clip). It's not a bad setup.

radio.activity · Post by **radio.activity** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 3:30 pm

Switched from desktop to laptop last year and very happy about it. Can connect it to the monitors and all the equipment when I want to or just plug in a headphone and lie on the couch to make some music. And it's much more quiet than the desktop and (in my case) much more powerful as well. Won't go back to using a desktop.

spiderprod · Post by **spiderprod** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 3:34 pm

tomperson wrote:As for the double monitor, I guess that's not really an issue, since most laptops nowadays have a second VGA out, so it would be just a thing of getting a second monitor and that's it, wouldn't it?

spiderprod wrote:triple xeon pentium 6 9.2 ghz 4096gigb ram 7000gb hd 1200fsb ,ableton live9stpro ,apple G9 tarzan
With that setup, i guess there's no laptop on earth that would be up to the task! What are you running, google search and NASA command on that single machine? Talk about workstation

hey dude , that's just my mobile phone specs ....

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 3:53 pm

tomperson wrote:hambone, your setup is massive. But sincerely, how many of us REALLY need that kind of horse power? A really small minority, at best.

It's only because I DJ and VJ on the same machine at the same time. If I were doing audio only, I'd surely plump for one of the upcoming MBPs, and plug in a second monitor.

I'm anxiously awaiting what Apple stick in the next desktop machines. They should run circles around the current G5 desktops, in a much smaller and lighter case, and with PCI Express slots.

elemental · Post by **elemental** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 4:11 pm

I could never move to a laptop only studio. I've tried it before. I like my hardware toys too much.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 4:20 pm

elemental wrote:I like my hardware toys too much.

I think those are supposed to be for your girlfriend/wife.

tomperson · Post by **tomperson** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 5:00 pm

lol

This forum is wicked, no doubts-

dj superflat · Post by **dj superflat** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 5:26 pm

laptop only -- my HP laptop has the same processor as the new dell XPS desktops, so performance is same, no limitations on what i can run (e.g., i use reaktor as fx on almost every track, no CPU issues). i love not only having no clutter, but being able to work on a plane or in a coffee shop or wherever, even just to be able to move around the house rather than sit in the same place for music (makes it feel like work to me). i'd thought about getting xtra screen, but 17" seems enough, particularly with live (i even run my screen on very low res and can still see enough to work).

f_bohmann · Post by **f_bohmann** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 5:48 pm

tom: i used to have a pc, but i switched to a dell inspiron laptop, and i recently started to use live (bought it at 5.0.3...). no limits so far, always below 90%. the laptop has a 1920x1200 17" display, thats very cool. used a friends live 4.x setup on an older inspiron pIII 1ghz laptop before, that worked too.

i am also selling off some of my hardware, since i'll move abroad soon, and i cant (and dont want to) take all of that stuff with me. got a mackie control instead. the plan for my new studio in singapore is to do another switch to a macbook pro, 23" cinema display, mackie control (already have that), mackie control xt (maybe, dont know if i really need that), mackie c4 (as soon as live supports it), motu 828 interface and some nice monitor speakers. the only hardware i'll take with me are my 909, my 303 and an es1. (those are working flawlessly with live and a hammerfall dsp at the moment.)

f

amo · Post by **amo** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 5:52 pm

I did ! IBM latop only, + controllers at home. I guess first reason was portability, then I don't like big towers etc...

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 6:06 pm

Patch wrote: Does anybody know if ASIO4ALL will work with ins/outs that are connected by USB? My desktop has a 5.1 card that works very well with ASIO4ALL - I just need to know if I can reproduce the same setup on my laptop.

Yes, this is possible. I have a Tascam US122 that I've used with ASIO4ALL. I'm not expert on ASIO, but if your USB iface came with ASIO drivers, then it seems like it would probably work.

dj_statikfire · Post by **dj_statikfire** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 7:06 pm

Laptop studio solution, yes, but not by choice! It's the most economic way to run shit these days.

Wish I had a Jupter8, *gawk* !

THX,
Jason D

Gygaxian · Post by **Gygaxian** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 7:11 pm

Just try to get a few channels or instances of Reaktor 5 running on a laptop. Its impossible.
then again, it doesn't run that well with desktops. CPU drain of doom.

Moody · Post by **Moody** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 7:17 pm

After selling off the studio I have used nothing but my IBM Thinkpad and MicroKontrol. I kept a few nostalgic things like the MS-10 and Real to Real but, they are only for show most of the time lately. I am going to move to a full sized keyboard soon but otherwise that is it. It is all in the box.

netchaiev · Post by **netchaiev** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 7:27 pm

Laptop and a few controllers (very few, 2!!!!) and a card... that's it that way, at home or in my studio or wherever!!!!