Ableton Forum

I have come to the end of my tether with my current lap top (Dell Studio 17 running Windows 7 64bit) as it CPU spikes every 5 seconds often causing audio stalling & dropouts, it also spontaneously shuts down with out warning from time to time when it gets warm.

Any recommendations for good quality, reliable, tied and tested mid range (up to £600) alternatives to a Dell Laptop for use with Ableton Live would be greatly appreciated.

My Set up is an M-Audio Oxygen keyboard controller, a Line 6 POD X3, the Launch Pad and the lap top, all connected by USB. I am particularly interested in any one’s set up that is similar to this without any problems but all recommendations are welcome.

you are probably anti-Dell but my vostro 1720 runs lightning reliable with just a few tweaks in XP32Bit. my feeling is there is something hidden in dell's drivers in win7 64bit machines that spikes as i tried recently on another Dell machine with that OS. i disabled everything in device manager and there was still a DP latency spike coming thru. nasty.

Pugface wrote:you are probably anti-Dell but my vostro 1720 runs lightning reliable with just a few tweaks in XP32Bit. my feeling is there is something hidden in dell's drivers in win7 64bit machines that spikes as i tried recently on another Dell machine with that OS. i disabled everything in device manager and there was still a DP latency spike coming thru. nasty.

I'm running a Vostro 1510 with Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit and I've not had any issues at all with spikes - I completely wiped the machine before installing W7 as well.

Pugface wrote:
you are probably anti-Dell but my vostro 1720 runs lightning reliable with just a few tweaks in XP32Bit. my feeling is there is something hidden in dell's drivers in win7 64bit machines that spikes as i tried recently on another Dell machine with that OS. i disabled everything in device manager and there was still a DP latency spike coming thru. nasty.


I'm running a Vostro 1510 with Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit and I've not had any issues at all with spikes - I completely wiped the machine before installing W7 as well.

I was running 32 bit Vista before I completely wiped the system and upgraded to Windows 7 64, I still had all the same CPU spike problems then. Running in 64 bit has noticeably improved the performance of software on my machine but did nothing to stop the eventuality of the spiking and unprompted shut downs interrupting my work flow.
I’ve been reading other threads about the Dell Studio range, including on the Dell forums, and the general diagnosis for creative music use is not good anywhere…I am very weary of going back to Dell for another crack of the whip.

How much do your machines cost?

S

i do not think it is the laptop, i think it is the setup

you could have a look at this, he has a dell 5 years old & all works well
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=157115

edmannprc wrote:i do not think it is the laptop, i think it is the setup

What’s wrong with my set up? My computer spikes all the time like clock work every 5 seconds regardless of the level of use, when I'm using it for music the it still spikes at the same interval but often much higher.

Resting latency spikes are around 5000 micro seconds, but will be as much as 24000 when I try to record and becomes an audible problem causing dropouts at around 18000.

Resting latency
[img]V:\Pictures\2007-08\DPC.jpg[/img]

...If i could get the pic to stick I'd show you the DPC problems

I take it you haven't considered a Mapple?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L2fsubA2-c

Piplodocus wrote:I take it you haven't considered a Mapple?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L2fsubA2-c

Considered an Apple yes, can afford an Apple no.

Also from my research it seems that the cost of an entry level Mac Book could get me a custom spec for music Lenovo from Rain, the equivalent of Mac book Pro stats. I have nothing against using a Mac but I do feel like I'm being mugged every time I think about buying one.

My budget is realistically £500, at an absolute stretch it's £1000

S

For 600 you could probably pay sombody to rob an i7 Macbook pro.

Mac is where it's at!
Go ahead world. Call me a fag and a fanboy. Whatever! I dropped the dough on a shiny new Macbook about a year ago and it's flawless when it comes to Audio. I run Live 8 and Mass amounts of VST's and up to 24-30 tracks (typically) and I barely ever come close to 50%

I record audio too (guitars, vocals) and even dropped the latency and it still works great!
Plus Macs are just Sexy as hell! Look at any big name Dj performing live and You will see the APple shining through in the darkened club. Just sayin'.

Mine's not even the new Unibody w/ the i5. I have the late 08 white Macbook w/ 4 gb RAM and 2.4 dual core. Trust me. YOU WILL NOT REGRET BUYING A MAC.

Sunsetter wrote:Mac is where it's at!
Go ahead world. Call me a fag and a fanboy. Whatever! I dropped the dough on a shiny new Macbook about a year ago and it's flawless when it comes to Audio. I run Live 8 and Mass amounts of VST's and up to 24-30 tracks (typically) and I barely ever come close to 50%

I record audio too (guitars, vocals) and even dropped the latency and it still works great!
Plus Macs are just Sexy as hell! Look at any big name Dj performing live and You will see the APple shining through in the darkened club. Just sayin'.

Mine's not even the new Unibody w/ the i5. I have the late 08 white Macbook w/ 4 gb RAM and 2.4 dual core. Trust me. YOU WILL NOT REGRET BUYING A MAC.

I know everyone who’s anyone uses a Mac these days, but I’m a nobody who works mostly locally on small but rewarding projects, which pay but not much, and uses Ableton as my best new weapon in music making. I appreciate the sentiment about how much you love your Mac, and the ever growing part of me that isn’t instinctively repulsed by the cult like status of Apple would love to be using a reliable old MacBook for my work but it’s all about the budget.

I did some personal sums and unfortunately if I spend £1600-2000 (MacBook Pro prices) I’ll need that machine to last me for 6-8 years to make the investment viable, is that even realistic? A £1000 machine would need to last me 4 years to be viable, which does at least stay in the usual extendable warranty for most manufacturers, but is a bog standard MacBook today going to handle software requirements and wear and tear for the next 4 years? Far too many unknowns for the price attached for me.

Surely for the purposes of running Ableton, primed as it is for Lap Top usage, there must be a suitable cheaper alternative that will happily/reliably manage 20-40 tracks of audio and MIDI instruments with 20-40 effects and plug-in’s running at the same time.

Right now if I do spend £1000 it’s likely to be a Rain Livebook dual i5 optimised for music, and easily up-gradable in the future should I need to be.

Has anyone used the Rain Live book? Is it worthy of the investment?

S

A MacBook is only $999 on the Apple site. Converted to pounds it is about 640.

I ended all my problems when I converted from PC to Apple. And if i want, I can run Vista on my Mac. But I don't want.

I have a Samsung R580 (Core i3, Windows 7 x64) which seems to run Live 8.2 perfectly.
May be worth checking out?