Ableton Forum

Hi!
I am currently using Ableton Live 11 on a Windows 10 notebook from 2018.

I would like to update to Ableton Live 12 and buy a new Windows 11 notebook. My budget is around 2,000 EUR for the new notebook.

What are the hardware recommendations for the new notebook?
- Intel or AMD
- CPU type recommendations
- number of cores and threads
- base clock
- max clock
- minimum RAM
- How to know if the system is running quietly?

What else is important?

Thank you!

Kind regards,

Chris

Everything you listed totally depends on the needs, I'd say. Minimum ram is 16, but again, depends, 32 makes more sense. Same for CPU, if you need low noise, take a look at low-power ones (<65w), check the benchmarks for specific CPUs you consider. Display quality and max brightness is a thing to consider, since you cannot replace it. Make sure it has fast disk of enough size, it's unlikely it has spare space for another one

This topic has already been discussed many times here in the forum.

In principle, yes, you need a lot of single-core power and multiple times. You can never have enough RAM. An SSD or several of them is a must. And if you're buying new, you shouldn't skimp on storage space either.
But if you only go by this, you will fail, unless you are lucky enough to be clueless.

The 3 key words are latency, latency and latency.

Here is a website with a latency ranking: https://www.notebookcheck.net/DPC-Laten ... 376.0.html

Most of these boxes are useless junk for audio. There is a website from Schenker/XMG that lists which laptops are suitable for audio processing. I think I read that an XMG EVO is suitable.

All the power saving nonsense in the Windows area of laptops is bad for audio processing. You have to search, but you can also find. Good luck!

With a budget of €2000,= I would go Apple. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but with Apple you have the best chance of getting a good enough laptop for audio.

Then on the other hand: because of the problems with Win11 anyway, and not being an Apple fanboy, I switched to an Akai Force.