Black Friday, laptops and Audacity

[dantheman]

Hi,

Pretty new to home recording. I've tried it off and on throughout the years without much luck. Finally gave up on trying to record on my 4/5 year old Compaq with the conclusion that it just doesn't have the power.

SO I'm probably going to get a laptop soon, possibly really soon if some of these Black Friday sales offer up a few steals.

Anyway, I'd like to use Audacity which has the following system requirements:
Windows version Recommended RAM/ processor speed Minimum RAM/processor speed
Windows 98, ME 128 MB / 500 MHz 64 MB / 300 MHz
Windows 2000, XP 512 MB/1 GHz 128 MB/300 MHz
Windows Vista Home Basic 2 GB / 1 GHz 512 MB / 1 GHz
Windows Vista Home Premium/
Business/Ultimate 4 GB / 2 GHz 1 GB / 1 GHz

Not sure where Windows 7 will fit in, when they get around to tweaking it for that.
But my question is this:
Can anyone tell me how powerful a laptop I will need to record? Most of the time it will just be me, 1 track, maybe 2. Occassionally I' might try 3 or 4 tracks but that's about it. And lost of mixing, etc.

Am I really going to need a laptop with 3-4GB? Any people with experience on their laptops running Audacity. Sorry...new to laptops and Audacity.

Thanks,
Dan

 

[Erockrazor]

Pretty much any modern laptop should have no trouble with audacity and 4 tracks. Maybe if you had 5 plug ins on each track you might start having more issues. But generally, with that kind of session you will be fine on any modern laptop. 3-4 gigs is generous for that application.

I had a laptop running Reaper (another free recording platform) and I would work with up to around 20 tracks with plug ins on most. My laptop had a little less than 1 gb ram, and a 1.6 AMD turion processor.

Using plugins and samples are most demanding. Just running and recording audio isn't very demanding with todays standards.

 

[The Cancers]

What's your interface? Is it gonna be the computer's soundcard, or do you have an external one you wanna use? Is it USB or Firewire? When you say 1 or 2 tracks, do you mean you'll be recording 1 or 2 tracks at a time, or ultimately only having one or two tracks recorded that you're mixing together?
I think you can probably record either of those ways with the cheapest laptop you can find and a decent USB interface (I'm talking, like, $100 for the interface and a huge improvement over recording directly into the little hole on the laptop with a picture of a microphone on it).
I got away with recording up to four tracks at a time on a vista laptop I got two or three years ago with a 100 dollar USB interface.
The cheapest laptop you can find at black friday sales this year will likely be more powerful and run better than mine.
SO,
as long as your future recording plans don't involve 48 track layered full band recordings with hundreds of VST effects going all at once, I doubt you're ever gonna need more than 2 gigs of ram.

Side note, Audacity is a really good free waveform editor, but there are easier to use free and or cheap DAW programs for recording and mixing out there. Give Reaper a look, it's free to try the full version, and you can actually set it up to open Audacity as your Waveform editor when you want to go in and fiddle about with the bits and pieces.

 

[dantheman]

Great! Thanks a ton, that's exactly what I was hoping to hear
All of the great laptop deals I've looked at so far max out at the 2GB range. Once you jump to 3 or 4 it gets ridiculous.

In particular, I was looking at this deal:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/prod...4&sourceid=27147828712610948909#ProductDetail

What do you guys think? Good enough for basic recording. That's pretty much all I want the laptop for.

Also, at the risk of opening up a huge can of worms, how does Reaper compare to Audacity. I looked at their website...it looks like its free but you have to pay for a license. What's the deal with Reaper.
Simplicity is my main goal at the moment...

 

[dantheman]

Thanks!

As for recording, most of the time I basically just want to record and fiddle with my own ideas...1 to 2 tracks mixed.
Maybe occassionally record my friends and I jamming. 2/3 tracks. Maybe mixing as many as 5 or 6 at some point. That's about all I ever really see doing. I have friends with more powerful setups if I ever want to seriously lay something down.
I just need something for myself and something for occassionally recording not-so-serious jams with people.

Probably looking at getting some kind of interface (that's another whole topic of education for me). I've got a m-audio Delta 44 and audiobuddy that I was using in my failed attempt at PC recording. I know the 44 is no good for the laptop, but if I could still use the audiobuddy in some capacity...

 

[The Cancers]

Yeah, as long as you're not planning on recording more than a couple tracks at a time, there are just a ton of cheap USB interfaces that'd suit your needs fine. Several of them (I'm not gonna look any up, but you can find them easily) have an input section along the lines of 2 xlr, 2 ts, where you could definitely use the audiobuddy to be able to record four microphones simultaneously. And, if you really aren't planning on doing much mixing, audacity will probably work for you, especially if you've already used it a good bit. Reaper just a really neat, really functional DAW that, yes it is the right thing to do to pay for the license (which is well under a hundred dollars since you aren't using it commercially), but that is free to try and is unmonitored / on the honor system (it won't stop working if you don't pay for it after the first thirty days).
Good luck, have fun.

 

[UltimateOutside]

Am I really going to need a laptop with 3-4GB? Any people with experience on their laptops running Audacity. Sorry...new to laptops and Audacity.

If you're only ever going to use Audacity, you'll probably be fine with 2GB RAM. If you start working with real DAWs like Reaper, Cubase, Ableton Live, you'll want to have as much RAM as your computer can hold. (And a 64-bit OS if you have more than 4GB.)

 

[Jeff_D]

I record 16 tracks simultaneous through a pair of Delta 1010lt cards using Reaper on a 5 year old AMD 2600 w/ a gig of ram. It really doesnt take that much to record audio by todays computer equipment standards.

With that said, ram is cheap, so max it out. Hard drive space is also cheap, so buy two and back your files up regularly! It'd also suggest if you go with a desktop to get something with a separate video card (onboard video uses processor and resources). Also, consider what type of interface you are planning on and make sure you computer has the right stuff to make the connection... for instance, some firewire interfaces are picky (or were picky) about the firewire chipset.

 

[The Cancers]

I think the general rule with your firewire chipset is to go with Texas Instruments. The computer I built recently, I already had all the parts picked out, but had to dig through the specs on the motherboard's website to make sure it's Firewire chip was TI. It was, and I haven't had a single problem, so, you know, my $.02

 

[gecko zzed]

If you're only ever going to use Audacity, you'll probably be fine with 2GB RAM. If you start working with real DAWs like Reaper, Cubase, Ableton Live, you'll want to have as much RAM as your computer can hold. (And a 64-bit OS if you have more than 4GB.)

I'm not sure I agree with this. I have used both Logic and Reaper without pain and just 1gb of ram. Certainly, more ram helps, but it is not necessary.

 

[UltimateOutside]

I'm not sure I agree with this. I have used both Logic and Reaper without pain and just 1gb of ram. Certainly, more ram helps, but it is not necessary.

LOL, well I want to know what VSTs you guys are using. I have to budget VST use simply because my computer can't accept more than 2GB.

Would be different if I only used external instruments/effects.

 

[dantheman]

Thanks for all the help everyone!
I think I've decided to exercise some patience. I could afford the above mentioned laptop right now, but I've been looking and there are some deals out there here and there for laptops with 500gb hd's and 4gb ram for like $250 more.

I think I'm just gonna save and go for one of those in the Spring. I'd love the instant gratification of having that laptop right now, but if I just save for several months at least I can buy one that's not already obsolete and maybe can give me several years of future use.

It was really frustrating attempting to record, and fail, on my desktop...I want to make sure to get it right with my laptop

 

[buryher17]

Hi,

Pretty new to home recording. I've tried it off and on throughout the years without much luck. Finally gave up on trying to record on my 4/5 year old Compaq with the conclusion that it just doesn't have the power.

SO I'm probably going to get a laptop soon, possibly really soon if some of these Black Friday sales offer up a few steals.

Anyway, I'd like to use Audacity which has the following system requirements:
Windows version Recommended RAM/ processor speed Minimum RAM/processor speed
Windows 98, ME 128 MB / 500 MHz 64 MB / 300 MHz
Windows 2000, XP 512 MB/1 GHz 128 MB/300 MHz
Windows Vista Home Basic 2 GB / 1 GHz 512 MB / 1 GHz
Windows Vista Home Premium/
Business/Ultimate 4 GB / 2 GHz 1 GB / 1 GHz

Not sure where Windows 7 will fit in, when they get around to tweaking it for that.
But my question is this:
Can anyone tell me how powerful a laptop I will need to record? Most of the time it will just be me, 1 track, maybe 2. Occassionally I' might try 3 or 4 tracks but that's about it. And lost of mixing, etc.

Am I really going to need a laptop with 3-4GB? Any people with experience on their laptops running Audacity. Sorry...new to laptops and Audacity.

Thanks,
Dan

In my experience I usually take whatever a desktop needed and multiply it by 1.5. For example if you think you need only 1 gig of RAM for a desktop for a 1-2 track, then shoot for around 2 on a laptop. I think 2 gigs should be sufficient for only a couple lines. When you start recording 4+ it'll really need 3-4 gigs minimum.

Also keep in mind VISTA SUCKS! It runs about 2,000 programs at once usaully using about 1gig of ram just to keep it running.

If I were to make a good suggestion, get one with 200+ gig memory, 2 gig ram, good processor (maybe 2 or higher). Your processor is the most expensive thing to replace and will make the biggest difference

 

[TeyshaBlue]

In my experience I usually take whatever a desktop needed and multiply it by 1.5. For example if you think you need only 1 gig of RAM for a desktop for a 1-2 track, then shoot for around 2 on a laptop. I think 2 gigs should be sufficient for only a couple lines. When you start recording 4+ it'll really need 3-4 gigs minimum.

Also keep in mind VISTA SUCKS! It runs about 2,000 programs at once usaully using about 1gig of ram just to keep it running.

If I were to make a good suggestion, get one with 200+ gig memory, 2 gig ram, good processor (maybe 2 or higher). Your processor is the most expensive thing to replace and will make the biggest difference

There's some hits and misses with this bit of advice. You can quite easily juggle multiple tracks of audio on 1 or 2 gigs. I did it for over a year on 1 gig with Sonar 6...many projects with 16+ tracks. More memory doesn't increase your recording capability...it will help processing in the sense that the comp will not be writing to the hard drive as often whilst tracking and mixing.

Vista does indeed suck. I'm using it now, and I cannot stand it. That being said, I did optimize that resource hogger to the point that it only (only) uses 740 mb.

Agreed in the processor...spend your money there with a capable mobo to support it and ram. In addition to handling more duties (multiple plugins, soft synths, etc....) with a smaller CPU hit, your mixdowns will go much, much quicker.

 

[dantheman]

Hi, if this thread isn't completely forgotten I'm going to attempt to resurrect this with another question.

So it looks like I'll probably be getting a Dell Inspiron 17 or maybe Studio 17.
I need to understand how these soundcards will work with recording. As I mentioned above, mostly 1 or 2 channels, but occassional 4+.

I tried to look into this on my own, but the vagueness of Dells soundcard description is making it tough. (I looked on CSB's website and can't seem to find a card that exactly matches these names)

It looks like I'll have an option of 2 sound cards:
*Soundblaster X-Fi Hi Def Audio (the only option with the Studio)
*ExpressCard Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Sound Card

Bottom line is, will these work for home recording??

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks!!

 

[Jeff_D]

If you are buying a stock computer from Dell, Gateway or anyone else, just figure on ditching the sound card it comes with and figure you'll need to purchase and install your own soundcard, or purchase an external interface. No soundcard you get from Dell is going to be worth a crap for recording (unless they've started selling recording specific gear).

 

[dantheman]

Thanks!
So (having never owned a laptop) I understand that you cannot physically change the sound card the comes with your laptop, in most cases?

If this is true than what kind of soundcards would I be looking for? I'm guessing there are some types that plug in/bypass the stock card?

Thanks again.

 

[TeyshaBlue]

Thanks!
So (having never owned a laptop) I understand that you cannot physically change the sound card the comes with your laptop, in most cases?

If this is true than what kind of soundcards would I be looking for? I'm guessing there are some types that plug in/bypass the stock card?

Thanks again.

Any external interface, be it PCI, USB or Firewire, becomes the computer's sound card. All you need to do it pick one that suits your needs, then disable the onboard soundcard on the lappy.

 

[dantheman]

Thanks!

Ok, so I checked with Dell and the Studio 17 has an IEEE 1394a connector, which (if my research is right) is a firewire connection, right?

Generally, is there any preference between PCI, USB or firewire? I've read that, for the most part, firewire should be used with TI chipsets...which Dell does not use in their laptops.

I'm kind of leaning towards the Inspiron 17, but if firewire is so much better then I'd have no problem going with the Studio...once I research the differences in the processors.
Recording will be the primary function of this laptop.