Ableton Forum

hi folks,

how many laptop users out there use an external hard drive? i'm on a pretty limited budget and so far i still need to get reason 3, novation x station and a set of monitors. there's 512mb ram on my harddrive on my laptop, which has a 1.4 processor, do i need this external harddrive or what? one last thing, does anyone know what the latency is like for the novation through USB? you guys are usually pretty good in response to these kinds of questions, so its time to let yourselves shine! budget is one thousand pounds, feel free to recommend changes to my software + hardware suggestions dudes.

thanks again

If you already have a laptop with a good internal hard drive, I'd say put your money into other upgrades first, and then consider upgrading this if you have anything leftover.

Plus, a good set of studio monitors will still work great 3-4 years down the road. That's not to say that the hard drive won't, but it will definitely be obsolete far sooner.

get the monitors first. thats the last thing your sound passes through before it hits your ears. good ones make all the difference.

studio monitors with a flat frequency curve is always priority number one.

as a producer, you are only as good as your ears, and if you are mixing on some home stereo setup that reproduces sound with no regard for accuracy, your final product will reflect that when heard on other sound systems.

reason is crap. if you're already using ableton live 4, you have already graduated from using reason.

on the hard drive issue, I use a lacie pocket drive connected via firewire, and my data read speeds are slightly better than my internal drive; BUT my laptop only has a 10G internal drive, if it were bigger I would not go external. I'd have one less piece of crap to lug around, and one less power outlet to need.


oh... and I don't mean to be a smart ass, but the 512Megs of ram is on your motherboard, your hard drive is also connected to your motherboard. your ram effects your computer's performance, and your hard drive is nothing more than storage, and really only effects your performance if it's full or needs to be defragmented.

no..i don't mind being corrected on computer issues, after all i know feck al about them (as you can see ). what attracted me to reason though was the apparent ease of use (i am a newbie after all), the attractive looking interfaces, (silly me maybe?) the constant good reviews i am hearing, the samplers/synths/drum machines etc. what puts me off ableton is the idea that i wont be able to use it and after a while get frustrated and lose interest in the whole thing. if someone can list me some benefits to using ableton then i may change my mind???

thanks

I use a firewire drive with my laptop.

An external drive is essential for backups and as they are so cheap now (you can get a 80GB one for 70 quid) you'd be daft not to get one.

in terms of performance i'm getting better speed with my internal 5400 drive (on a 12" pbook), when i used my last laptop ( a dell inspiron 8200) which had a 4200rpm drive the 7200rpm external firewire was slightly quicker.

Also i suspect in your email you are confusing RAM with Harddrive space. Loosely speaking RAM is for application execution and HD space is for storage.

An external drive is really good for backups. I'd agree that monitors are more essential, or good headphones. You can get nice beyerdynamic headphones for about the same price as a sizable USB 2.0 external HD, if you have a choice I'd opt for the headphones.

One the other hand, I have an external HD because I *didn't* have a choice-- had to run out and buy one because the internal HD on the old laptop was dying. Having experienced that, currency expenditure aside, it was some angst that might've been better spent

And keep in mind, you can save a lot (or get a bigger HD for the same price) by getting a case like this:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 849&depa=0

and buying a regular 3.5" HD instead of the much more expensive 'external hard drives'.

These little case things work well, and you can get 2.5 and 5.25" versions as well if you wanted to replace your main laptop hd and still use the old one OR if you want -- an external DVD burner, for instance, and you'll save BIG, and be able to stay on top of the technology with the drives, because the same technology is usually delayed for proprietary 'external' devices and they're always much more expensive. And with the external cases, you can modularly replace the drive if you need to, instead of buying a whole new external drive.

Can you get a dual layer dvd burner to use externally for $60??? (can you even *get* an external dual layer burner??) with one of these you can.

PLUS, as with the product linked above, you can use USB *or* firewire, so you can easily move it around amongst several different computers no problem.

One word for you - Lacie D2 160gig
(I swear by them for audio / rock solid and I never get drive to busy errors)
- Come with a Firewire 400 / Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 cables etc - a power adapter if using FW400 or USB 2 but on FW800 ports they self power........
I run mine off a FW400 port on my Toshiba P20.

My advice is to go for Reason 3. I started on Reason 1.0/1.1 and it did me no harm.

Also - look at the Wharfedale Diamond Pro 8.1 Active monitors - I use a pair and they aint have bad for the buck at £199 a pair. Sound like twice that - comparable with most mid-range to upper low end monitors.

Controller wise - not sure about the X-Station. Would perhaps suggest going for the M-Audio 02 or Ozone (or Ozonic - built in Audiophile). Look out for M-Audio bundling Reason 3.0 with one of their 25-key controller/audio interfaces and selling the lot cheaper. They usually do.

On the HD front - I use an 80Gb Lacie Netdrive - on USB 2.0.

Does the job for storage and big romplers etc - but not essential for starting out.

Good Luck.

X-Station is the shizzle nizzle

at least that's the word on another forum i visit (harmony central). sorry to say, but m-audio is not known for their good controllers.

And M-Audio *is* known for rice-crispy sound cards. Beware.

have no idea where that comes from - have owned 2 m-audio interfaces (pci AP 2496 and FW AP) and have had nothing but great results. I'm surrounded by folk who also use them and have not heard any negative feedback.

I'd not hesitate to recommend.

Fair enough - their controllers are perhaps open to criticism...but no more than could be levelled at Edirol or Novation anyway.

evidentside wrote:have no idea where that comes from - have owned 2 m-audio interfaces (pci AP 2496 and FW AP) and have had nothing but great results. I'm surrounded by folk who also use them and have not heard any negative feedback.

I'd not hesitate to recommend.

Fair enough - their controllers are perhaps open to criticism...but no more than could be levelled at Edirol or Novation anyway.

I use the Delta 66 + Omni i/o combo myself. Not top of the line, but does the job nicely.

However, I've read lots of negative comments about the midi controllers, especially Oxygen and Keystation. Novation X-Station is reported to have the best keyfeel of all the midi controllers. Ofcourse this is all just hearsay on my part, but it is from people who's opinions I value.

thanks people, that has given me loads to think about, and it's looking like reason + novation then moniters then external hard drive, wish me luck!!