Desktop vs Laptop

T

TheloniusMonk

New member
Just curious, would a USB audio interface perform differently when plugged into a laptop instead of a desktop?

I may need to record a digital piano that is in a different location, but if I'm gonna lose sound quality or get more noise going through a laptop, then I wont bother...

Would appreciate the advice, thanks..
 
Other than perhaps getting a hum from the laptop power supply, I would say the two would be the same caliber.

I used a Tascam US-428 on my Laptop and on my home system with equal quality on both... But of course, depending on what equipment you're using, YMMV....

:)
 
Pros for Desktop:

Cheaper for the same power
Customizable components
Able to build yourself (which is always cheaper and better, and easy)
Upgradable

Pros for Laptop:

Lighter and smaller

IMO, the pros easily point in the favor for Desktops, and for me, portability isn't even much an issue, I have no issue hauling desktops around (been doing it since middle school) so the pros all point in favor of desktops.
 
another issue is alotta laptops come with shit hard drives... so the need for an external drive to record to is usually a problem... if you do get hum as mentioned above simply unplug and run on the batteries for tracking...
 
You need to be recording to a secondary drive if you are working on a desktop OR a laptop.

You should not be recording to the boot drive as any housekeeping tasks can interrupt the smooth transfer of the data stream.

In the old days laptops were the weaker sex, but today it just doesn't matter.... with a secondary (external 7200rpm) data drive and a decent interface they will both do the job.
 
Laptops aren't necessarily weak, its just for the same power, desktops are cheaper. Plus the best desktops are still more powerful than the best laptops.
 
For what it's worth, I've done tons of multitrack recordings on the internal drive of my Macbook Pro without any problems, using both USB and Firewire audio interfaces. I've had some problems though when using external drives, due to the buses being overloaded, especially when using the combination of a Firewire audio interface and a Firewire drive. Some laptops have multiple outputs that still share the same bus. Depending on settings when recording, such as latency and resolution, and combination of various equipment your mileage will vary. But I would definitely try recording on the internal drive of your laptop and inspecting the recorded tracks carefully for dropouts, before investing in an external drive.
 
Toonook said:
I'd definitely recommend using SATA rather than firewire for external drives.
Click to expand...

You'll be hard pressed to find an external SATA interface on most computers and HD cases. In most cases it is actually a SATA drive inside the case connected to either a USB or FireWire adapter.

The only thing I'd say to be careful with the laptop is running the interface (and the external hard drive) on battery power alone. I'd recommend you get an interface that accepts regular mains power as well. To reduce the chances of getting hum, make sure you run both the laptop and the interface from the same power outlet using a surge suppressor or a UPS.
 
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