Ableton Forum

Hello,

Can anyone suggest a good lap top for making music on the go.
I am looking at a few possibilities. Either an Acer, Dell, Sony Viao, Toshiba and Alienware. But which is best?
Plus is a 5400RPM drive good enough and which is better, a USB interface or firewire?
USB is supposed to be faster, that much I know. I already own a Tascam US-122 which is quite good but the best I can get out of it is 13ms Latency which is acceptable but I'd like a bit better in terms of latency.
Can anyone also recommend a good 2 octave keyboard. USB powered.
Would a lap top have enough power to run an audio interface and keyboard?

Finally where do you buy Alienware? I live in Holland.

Thanks in advance for your response(s)

i got a toshiba 2.4 ghz (actualy desktop processor, not mobile) and I love it. very affordable to.

Processor size depends on how much you wanna do at once. I 've never maxed my out in audio so.... maybe top of the line 70ghz is not necessary.

as for audio interface, most laptops will come with both firewire and usb, so dont fear, and if not there are a ton of cheap pcmcia cards that can accommodate.

may want to upgrade your soundcard if you need less latency and more track counts, or if you feel a need for more multi track recording.

check out compusa.com, costco.com, bestbuy.com, and circuitcity.com for possible blowout deals on lappies and good luck.

http://www.alienware.com/system_pages/area-51m.aspx

http://www.alienware.com/

http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/ads/promos/alienware/

http://www.pcmus.com/AudioTips.htm


http://www.google.com/

hope this helps

i used to have a "desknote a-928" that rocked with Ableton.
very affordable non-brand name PC laptops.. Sis chipsets, high clock speeds, good prices. I gigged with it for 2 years using Live 1 and Live 2, and it held up pretty well.
check the laptops at www.internetishop.com

Austen Powers wrote:Hello,

Can anyone suggest a good lap top for making music on the go.
I am looking at a few possibilities. Either an Acer, Dell, Sony Viao, Toshiba and Alienware. But which is best?
Plus is a 5400RPM drive good enough and which is better, a USB interface or firewire?
USB is supposed to be faster, that much I know. I already own a Tascam US-122 which is quite good but the best I can get out of it is 13ms Latency which is acceptable but I'd like a bit better in terms of latency.
Can anyone also recommend a good 2 octave keyboard. USB powered.
Would a lap top have enough power to run an audio interface and keyboard?

Finally where do you buy Alienware? I live in Holland.

Thanks in advance for your response(s)

OK, here goes. Firewire is MUCH faster than USB. USB 2 is faster than firewire, but only a little bit.

Your US-122 is not USB 2. It is original USB. If you find a USB 2 audio interface, let me know, I don't know of any.

If you want a fast, low latency audio interface for a Laptop, check out the M-Audio Firewire 410. If you require high quality mic pre-amps, (to record mircophones directly) go with either a MOTU 828 (firewire as well) or a RME multiface, with PCMCIA connection. The RME will cost you more money though.

If you buy an alienware computer, you are paying a lot for graphics. Music applications don't need that kind of graphics. I would suggest that for the same price you check out:

http://64.49.248.202/index.asp?PageActi ... Category=3

They have laptops for the same price (in fact lower) that are tricked out for audio. Also, two of them (models 8889 and 5680) have multiple hard drives. That means one for audio data, and one for your system drive. This will add more to the performance of your machine for less money than any other factor in my opinion. You can have a ripping fast processor, but with a slower hard drive, you're going to wait and wait for data.

For a two octave controller, I can't say enough about the ReMote 25. Don't get the audio version, get the midi only version, it's better for Live.

It has:
8 sliders for 8 tracks (volume?)
16 knobs (8 are full rotation) for high and low EQ on each of 8 tracks
24 buttons (8 for track "Play", 8 for "mute" and 8 for "effects bypass").
2 octaves (for synths and such, or triggering clips)
1 XY pad (great for the auto filter or VST effects) - like Korg Kaoss pad.
1 joystick

It's expensive, but one of the best two octave controllers for Live I have seen...

Alternatively, if you just want the keyboard, and don't care about the other features, the M-Audio Oxygen8 is cheap...

Just my opinions though, take this advice as just that - my opinions.

L8er
Montrealbreaks

montrealbreaks wrote: If you find a USB 2 audio interface, let me know, I don't know of any.

there is one, I think it's edirol it's 10/10 i/o 24/96 but personally I haven't found usb 2 to be as reliable as firewire and with fw being around alot longer I'd say the interfaces have had more ironing out time to get good

No question whether, but how much faster "2" is than "1", which is now being discussed.without any more speed in my usb functions, what should I care, for now with other criteriain focus, this isblurred out of problem status, but anyway...(generallyalways)I am just yearning for improvements, much of which I am though, as yet, still unaware of,those ones which are my best prospects........
It must be that the best tweaks are those I will understand only the moment I manage to make them "so". (as jlp sez)
In what way/s, better would my interface(usb1) be if it could be made to support the added speed of usb2?..I mean is this spot commonly in todays systems, a bottleneck? I am really wondering if it is on my own system to be quite honest. super-provocative.. I now must know... good one.

that was the most confusing post ive ever read....lol

ok usb 2 or firewire will give much less latency, and much higher bandwidth for multi track recording. simple as that.

in specs usb2 is 480mb a sec
usb1 is 12mb a sec
firewire is 400mb sec

also not to be an @$$ but there are TONS of posts on this forum about which laptop to get etc....search man, search!

Btw on bottlenecks : what's more important , higher front side bus [ 400 vs 800 ] or greater second level cache [ 512kb vs 1mb ]?

Mostly you see the combo of lower FSB and a higher cache : 400 fsb & 1 mb 2nd L Cache or higher FSB and lower cache : 800 fsb & 512 kb L cache.

My personal guess the wider FSB pipe is more important overall, as I understand the L2 cache works as a kind of caching waitingroom for instructions to be executed .... or am I completely wrong here?

Austen Powers wrote:...and which is better, a USB interface or firewire? USB is supposed to be faster, that much I know...

USB (1 and 1.1) are definitely much more processor intensive and much higher latency for audio, because the processor needs to compress the data just to be able to pass the bandwidth requirements. If you use a usb mouse or usb midi, this can also chew into your bandwidth and cause clicking/popping issues.

USB 2 is still pretty processor hungry, but it is much more on par with Firewire...

My feeling is, and don't take this for fact... firewire is less processor intensive than usb 2.0, but usb 2.0 has a little bit more bandwidth (but I believe, can have higher latency issues than firewire still, depending on packet sizes)....

You'll be most likely better off going for firewire today, but usb 2.0 does seem to be shapping up... best choice is probably to go dedicated complete solution like the RME Hammerfell... but that's even more buckage.

good topic..I'm just in time

I'm getting ready to purchase an interface for my laptop and you guys have provided a lot of good info in this post, so....should I go for the firewire M-Audio 410 or for half the cost go for the USB M-Audio quattro?...or, any other suggestions?

As far as recording and editting audio I will continue to use a desktop DAW with an Aardvark card.....this laptop setup will be for live stuff and gigs so I need good quality audio out, audio routing options, and reliability (ouch..that dreaded freeze-up/crash)

I'll chip in again on this thread as well ... the FW410 is it good bang for the buck, good introduction for higher end audio ?

What is real world latency experience ?
How good is the multi client ASIO support ?
Mature drivers ?


I'm also looking at the Edirol Fa101 and [ to lesser extend] the EGoSys Quatafire, but don't know if these units have hit the shelves yet.

I know that Motu & RME are better but I don't have the money for these units . So I'aiming a class lower ...

I think I've heard bad things about the Quattro. Think they were on this forum too...

What do you need from your laptop audio interface? 24-bit, 96KHz? How many inputs and outputs? Analogue only? Would something like the Indigo I/O do you? (What's the bandwidth of PCMCIA? Surely even faster than Firewire/USB2?)