Choosing a Laptop for Music Making

**Squizzle** · 05-03-2011

I would say to get something with enough Ram and processing power, but invest in a good interface and microphone and you can get good results, Mac or a PC laptop jsut make sure its fast enough. pretty simple.

**dgatwood** · 05-07-2011

Originally Posted by humjaba

Nice article, but this is a very incorrect statement. Having more cores helps for programs that are multi-threaded - essentially allowing them to work on more than one thing at a time. However, if the program isn't written in such a way that it can take advantage of this, then having more cores makes no difference. Now I have no idea to what extent those programs are multi-threaded, but having twice the cores does by no means imply twice the performance.

As a general rule, modern audio software handles multiple cores very well. It's a trivially parallelizable task; in an extreme case, you could literally run each channel on a separate core, and no thread would ever depend on sharing data with any other thread until the very last step where the channels are mixed down for output.

So for audio recording purposes, if the speedup from adding multiple cores is significantly less than multiplying the clock speed times the number of cores, that usually indicates a bus speed bottleneck.

**chrisharris** · 05-10-2011

I love how the dude's firewire interface crashed everything he plugged it into, lol.

I gave up on firewire awhile back. USB2 seems to work well, and I'm sure my next lappy with have USB3. I hereby predict that firewire interfaces will soon go the way of 8-Track tape decks.

**MusicWorks** · 06-05-2011

Interesting thread!

Thanks for the info!

**Treeline** · 08-07-2011

I can tell you I'm getting sick of putting up with the Bill Gates syndrome and am about ready to put a bullet through my PC laptop and the studio CPU. I think an Apple is in my future... after the megabucks cashes in for me.

**subaqueous** · 08-21-2011

I just got the HP Elite book and have been loving it. It is a solid machine.

**DenverDrummer** · 08-22-2011

I just got a Samsung RF711 and it's great for music production. Core i7, 8GB RAM, room for a second internal drive, two USB 3.0, ports and two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI out for an external monitor, and a 17" high def screen. Best part is this puppy is around $1000 street price.

Two advantages to recording on a laptop, as opposed to a desktop.

1.) Mobility! this is a huge deal for me. The drums are in the basement, but most of my other equipment is in my office. I need to record in two different places. Plus I can take my rig over to my brother's house to record his band if need be.

2.) Practically Noise Free! Fan noise sucks on most all desktop units. They are designed to suck alot of air through. Laptops have fans, but most of their cooling is from passive dissipation to the laptop case. So no worries about getting your powersuppy fan noise picking up in your mics. Now if you have a true booth setup, this may not be an issue for you. For those of us who have to improvise, this is HUGE!

**Andrewion** · 08-26-2011

I would suggest "Toshiba Satellite P100-ST9762". Check out its features. Really good for music making

or else there are various other models in Toshiba. They offer good discounts too. Just check out!

**dgatwood** · 08-30-2011

Originally Posted by DenverDrummer

2.) Practically Noise Free! Fan noise sucks on most all desktop units. They are designed to suck alot of air through. Laptops have fans, but most of their cooling is from passive dissipation to the laptop case. So no worries about getting your powersuppy fan noise picking up in your mics.

Maybe you're using the wrong desktops. My experience has been exactly the opposite. When laptop fans are running at full speed, you can hear them easily from across the room, and you're pretty much stuck with the fans that come with them. By contrast, desktop machines can be made whisper quiet by changing out the power supply (if needed) and the CPU and GPU fans. It's fairly easy to do, in fact, and takes under an hour for a complete swap.

**iLLosophy** · 09-03-2011

Hello all. New to homerecording.com. Old music/hiphop beat maker looking to resurrect my hobby with video and youtube. Anyway, I'm looking for a laptop with decent sound already built in. My last computer was a toshiba satellite, and I wasn't too thrilled with it's sound card because it wouldn't allow you to 1) hear yourself on the mic and 2) record "what you hear" or "stereo mix". Anyway, I was wondering if anyone on the board uses HP's Beats Audio, and do you think it would work well with Sonar or Ableton Live /w Reason