Laptop for music recording

A

amt7565

New member
Advise needed:

Anyone here use a laptop for quality recording? Please share your experience. I want to get a new PC and thinking about a laptop for recording. I like to know-

- The laptop brand you are using (with some basic specs)
- Audio interface you use
- Music Software you use
- Any other info-

Thanks.
AMT
 
I'm definitely interested in seeing which laptops are you guys using, along with which software.

Sorry I can't contribute as I don't have a laptop (yet :P).
 
Me too, my friend is getting a laptop so he can start recording, I may even ditch my PC and get a laptop for portability reasons.

Any suggestions? The downside of laptops is they aren't really customizeable, and most I've seen don't come with firewire, but I think some come with USB 2.0... I have no clue.

Can someone give some advice?
 
I use a Dell Insprion 8600 (2.0GHz Centrino). I've used it with a Firepod, FireFace, Tascam FW1804, Behringer FCA-202, and a Firebox.

The only interface I ever had any issues with was the Tascam, and they were sync issues that seemed to be an issue with the driver and software communicating with the hardware properly. This laptop has done everything I've ever needed it to do, and have never felt held back. I've even used it to play soft synths live with a keyboard controller.
 
If your gonna get a laptop now for recording, make sure its has a duo core processor obviously, all laptops nowadays have firewire, just make sure your looking at the right connector, you wont find the regular 6 pin firewire connector on most laptops it will be marked something like ilink or ie8388 some shit like that I gave my laptop to my brother, make sure you have atleast a gig or ram and you should be set, biggest draw back besides not really being able to upgrade is hard drive speed, sure 5400 rpm will work but your load times are always getting be longer than on your desktop.
 
I have two laptops I use for recording. An old Powerbook 15" 867mhz which I use for sketching songs with Reaper or Garageband '08 and an eMachines E720 17" laptop with a dual core 2ghz Pentium (T4200). The latter serves me well as a mobile rig, with an Alesis Multimix 4 USB mixer and a Behringer C1 condenser. Sure it's no match for my desktop iMac based studio, but using Reaper and Cakewalk Music Creator 5 I've produced some pretty good recordings 'on the road' with it.

Here's one using Reaper:
macjams.com/song/58566

and one using Music Creator 5:
macjams.com/song/60792

2 Gb of RAM seems to manage quite well with 8 -14 tracks and some thoughtfully bussed VST plugins.

Paddy
 
jackkstephon said:
I tried plugging my friends guitar into the microphone jack on the front of my HP dv9700t laptop to do a direct line-in recording session using recording software Cool Edit Pro 2. upon recording the sound came out all muddy and watery sounding. i tried changing settings for 20 minutes to get it to sound clean but no success.
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The audio hardware built into computers is pretty universally crap. Triply so for an ultra-high impedance source like a guitar pickup. Get yourself a decent audio interface with at least one instrument pre built-in and things will work a lot better.

BTW, what's with digging up all the 5-year-old threads?
 
Just be aware that most new laptops do not have Firewire except Macs. Bought a new Dell (Inspirion 17R,i5 2.6Ghz,6 gigs Ram, 750 gig harddrive)thinking I was going to use it with my new Presonus StudioLive 16.4.2 and that it would be more than adequate but without firewire it's pretty useless for my needs. The Dell tech guys even sent me a USB/Firewire hub and assured me this would work but the Dell does not recognize any firewire hardware.Will be getting my new Mac Pro today so hopefully that will do the job.
Good Luck
 
Cyparo said:
The Dell tech guys even sent me a USB/Firewire hub and assured me this would work but the Dell does not recognize any firewire hardware.Will be getting my new Mac Pro today so hopefully that will do the job.
Good Luck
Click to expand...

What's a usb/firewire hub ? Never heard of it and I can't imagine it would work to convert a firewire protocol to a usb.
 
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