Choosing a Laptop for Music Making

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chater-La
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Craigslist San Diego

these tips are so good and helpful to chose a good laptop.your friend is write very well.
 
Kind of a late reply as I was away from the forums...

I had (still kind of have) a 17inch HP Pavilion with i7, 6GB ram, 7200 rpm HDD (the laptop also has another HDD slot) and beats audio..

These are all nice but the thing is that as sadly figured out the HP is a junk, the beats audio jacks are just plain noisy, the sound card driver clashes with wireless driver (I also use an external sound card but the other internal one is simply unreliable).. fan overheats, HDD crashes...

In addition, the HP people does not know how to repair it as mine has been to 3 consecutive repairs and right now it is with HP for its 4th repair... So for the last 2 months I did not have my laptop, thus my DAW... And of course customer service is also as useless as the repair service.

So my advice is stay away from HP, go buy another laptop... If you do not agree read this: Since my laptop was going to repairs and I needed a laptop my wife bought a simple HP laptop (G42). And the laptop's special ability is freezing randomly and there is no solution to it. I had to do 4 very short (3 minutes) live shows with that computer and it froze during 2 of them...

may your laptops live long..
 
There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration. Thanks for share such a nice post.
 
I just ordered a Lenovo Thinkpad T520. 15" screen, i7 quad core, 8 gig ram, 500 gb HDD 7200 rpm for $1500 after tax. Ive heard very good things about them so I got my expectations set fairly high.
 
The problem with a thread like this is, that as time passes, what was adequate a year ago is mostly useless information now. Unless you're willing and able to seek out old versions of software, the demands that the current versions of software put on the machine keep increasing. You really need to look at the various software packages, find what looks appealing, and join their forum to see what works for those people. A lot of work, but then most things that are worth it usually are.
 
geraci89 said:
I just ordered a Lenovo Thinkpad T520. 15" screen, i7 quad core, 8 gig ram, 500 gb HDD 7200 rpm for $1500 after tax. Ive heard very good things about them so I got my expectations set fairly high.
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I've been pondering over a new laptop for a while and have pretty much come to the conclusion to buy a Lenovo T520 or W520. How do you like yours?
 
I have a laptop, only because i use it for gigs and recording at other peoples houses etc.

Most laptops will come with a horrid soundcard which claim to be High Definition.

They claim to be...

So, besides soundcard, which you can get later you want to have some processing power and ram.

Ram you can upgrade later, so mainly look for CPU.

If you're doing some gaming etc. you might want to look at a basic GPU as well
 
ApplesPro are great but u can have regular notebook, and buy high quality DSP sound card.
 
Laptop recording rig

Hey guys, I've had custom built PC,s for a long time but I no longer have the time to sit and record any more so I'm selling al my instruments and amps and would really love a decent laptop for recording. MBP is way out of my price range. I know an i5 or i7 is the way to go but I only need to run 2 things, reaper or cubase and Evolve. I put my AW1600 on CL hoping for trade for a laptop but I don't even recognize most of these new brands. I don't like Sony or dell but there is a lot of decent looking Acer machines. Are these new machines capable of running these 2 programs?
 
I've got a Dell E6510 with an i5 that handles Cubase and Ableton real well. Picked it up for $200 from a repair man! Almost like an estate sale.
 
ApplesPro are great but u can have regular notebook, and buy high quality DSP sound card!
 
Good Reference and Great benchmarking facts. I still don't have any plans changing my MacBook
 
I don’t think you’d ever be disappointed with a MacBook Pro, and at that price you’d hope that you never would be. Are there alternatives? I believe so yes. I believe the laptop you get free when signing up to Tesco (popular supermarket chain in the UK) broadband is capable of making music, however, if you want to do things a bit more properly and can aim for a quality laptop then they can be completely capable of doing the job just as well. I will choose Macbook.
 
Fruity Loops said:
My Macbook Pro, RME Fireface 400 and have made me lot's of money in music. Laptops are very powerful and much more useful than a desktop. If you are a mobile musician that is. And these days most of us have to be.
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This. The MBP is such a powerful tool for mobile recording... It's the only laptop I recommend using.
 
I guess laptop would be the best option to make music because of the portability we would not have to dedicate ourselves to one place and can roam here and there because this thing needs creativity.
 
I recorded my last album on a 6 year-old Macbook. It performed flawlessly, although I was only recording 4 tracks at a time...
 
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