Laptop Processor Questions

T

thehouseofshawn

New member
So...I've narrowed down my equipment to a few things. I know for a fact that I'm going to go for the Firepod by Presonus. There you can see a picture of it and everything, i plan to do a lot of rehearsal recordings (all 8 channels at a time, maybe even MIDI keyboard in it too) and even some project CDs with it that I might go and duplicate at a later time. It has two firewire ports in it (connects via firewire) and I was wondering if I wanted to in the future (have a more static setup) and be able to connect the firewire to another for 16 tracks or 24, ect...
So, I come to finding a laptop. I need something for school, mom and dad said that they would get me a nice laptop for recording and for school, and it comes down to the minimum requirements on the firepod:
Windows
• OS: Microsoft Windows XP
• Computer: Windows compatible computer with FireWire port.
• CPU/Clock: Pentium, Athlon with 900Mhz or higher (1.5GHz)
• Memory(RAM): 256 MB (512MB recommended)

I was considering a Mac, but I probably am not just for easy of transport and using multiple files, ect. So I'm going to go for the Windows. I look at laptops and I see from other posts that an Athlon 64 processor was encouraged. The eMachines that I was recommended had 512 MB of RAM. That kind of worries me for future applications, or would I be so advanced with the processor it wouldn't bother it? Can the RAM in eMachines be upgraded easily? I ask this because for a Pentium 4 with almost 3cpu and Pentium M class which are both recommended by fireport, I can get much larger RAM if needed.
 
shawn - i was a puter engr for eons, but i'll try and keep it simple.
when purchasing a laptop oner has to understand two aspects in this current marketplace.
firstly the amd 64 imho is a superb processor. BUT , then comes the seperate issue that laptop computer manufacturers buy the processor from amd to build into their laptops and do all the other computer architectural building around it. what i'm trying to say is just because the processor is great ,
doesnt necessarily mean the laptop will be. an analogy - you put a wonderfull porsche engine in a junky old wrecker that you paint up.
a rather crude analogy.
now this whole amd 64 laptop market i'm sure will explode with daw users
particularly and probably video people , but its a recent market - so all i'm saying is err on the side of caution.
i cant really tell you how good ANY laptop is - pentium or amd as i'm not in the plant seeing it being built on the production line or in the r and d labs.
if it were me - to cover yourself - do several things.
1.ask presonus which amd 64 laptop their product will work with
and get it in writing. their engineers probably already have amd 64 in house.
i dont know how the internals of a firepod work.
2. ask the laptop vendor if you can return it if it doesnt work.
shauwn this is a fast new exploding market.
however like any new market be carefull. talk to lots of people.
this is not some nintendo game system that works straight out of the box.
when one interfaces different pieces from different manufacturers issues can and do arise.
 
I brought a Fujitsu C2210, P4-M 1.7 Ghz, Firewire, USB 2.0 256 RAM, 40GB HD Use it for live electronica with M-Audio Moble Pre USB. HAd some problems with the drivers (M-Audio), seem to be stable now. My partner makes movies and uses the firewire with DV cam, this laptop has worked surprisingly well in this role. The laptop is well made and built like a tank, it suvives me attaching it to a motorbike and carting around the country. Battery life not that great, can record audio for about 1.5 hours with USB and powering phantom mikes on full charge
hope this helps
 
I wrote an email to Brian Smith, the Engineering Vice President of Presonus to see what his recommendations were, I will post them as soon as I get a response. So far it hasn't been too long, looks like we'll get a real-time estimate of the internet customer service for that company :cool:
 
I'd go for a Pentium M/Centrino laptop because that has already proven itself as a good audio platform and they last a lot longer on a battery charge.
 
christiaan said:
I'd go for a Pentium M/Centrino laptop because that has already proven itself as a good audio platform and they last a lot longer on a battery charge.
Click to expand...

The speed is so much slower though...or is it? Can anyone provide info or a link about processor speeds and comparisons? They're doing around 1.2 or 1.5 while the IV is doing 3. I am confused.
 
i wouldnt go centrino or M if it was me.
if you want lots of tracks/plug ins. as i said amd 64. which stomps on everything for the price except maybe dual amd opterons which are way outside the price curve.
i would pick a high end athlon also over a centrino.
heres a laugh to show how gullible consumers are.
a local electronics retailer had a celeron system priced 200 bucks more than an amd 64 system which blows it away.
 
One problem you will run into is that the hard drives in most laptops are freaking slow. In general, manufacturers will stock their machines with 4200rpm drives. The standard for desktops is 7200rpm.

I have a decently fast notebook with a P4 2.8, 512mb ram, yada yada yada....BUT it has a 4200rpm drive. I have a tough time with projects that have more than 12 or so tracks, simply because the drive isn't fast enough. On playback, I get constant audio dropouts when the stream of data from the drive falls short.

If you're going for a notebook, either make sure it comes with at least a 5400rpm drive (preferably 7200), OR plan on swapping the factory drive out pretty soon, OR plan on getting an external firewire 7200rpm drive.
 
sile2001 said:
If you're going for a notebook, either make sure it comes with at least a 5400rpm drive (preferably 7200), OR plan on swapping the factory drive out pretty soon, OR plan on getting an external firewire 7200rpm drive.
Click to expand...

Yup .... I did both .... swapped out the internal for a 60 gig 7200 RPM (well the original drive died, so it was history anyway) and added a 120 Gig FireWire drive for the audio directory on a HP PIII 700 MHz laptop w/512Megs RAM. Works great for remote location recording. It's a bit slow for editing and DSP, but that all gets done on my main DAW anyway.
 
Laptop Hard Drive speed

sile2001 said:
One problem you will run into is that the hard drives in most laptops are freaking slow. In general, manufacturers will stock their machines with 4200rpm drives. The standard for desktops is 7200rpm.

I have a decently fast notebook with a P4 2.8, 512mb ram, yada yada yada....BUT it has a 4200rpm drive. I have a tough time with projects that have more than 12 or so tracks, simply because the drive isn't fast enough. On playback, I get constant audio dropouts when the stream of data from the drive falls short.

If you're going for a notebook, either make sure it comes with at least a 5400rpm drive (preferably 7200), OR plan on swapping the factory drive out pretty soon, OR plan on getting an external firewire 7200rpm drive.
Click to expand...


I just got a fast laptop for recording (1 GIG RAM, 3.0 GHZ P4) with a partioned hard drive -- but it's only 4200 RPM. Haven't tried recording drums yet (8 tracks) but it sounds like I may have a problem.

Would using an external hard drive for audio files totally solve the speed problem mentioned above? And isn't the speed of the Firewire connection an issue here?

Thanks for your comments --

Keith
 
As far as I know...the speed of the USB will exceed the 4200rpm of your internal hard drive. Firewire is just a faster USB, but I know they make some 'reliable' hard drives (never used one myself) that are USB which would probably solve your problem. However, an upgrade to a new harddrive would also solve the problem and maybe give you some more bang for the buck...or at least that's how it was for this Gateway we have. which we upgraded to 60GB a year or so ago. It depends on the running rate of laptop HD's I guess.
 
I think the cpu would still constrain you before the hard drive would.

Even if you record @ 24/96, playing back 40 tracks of that is less than 12MB/sec. Wouldn't most new modern laptop drives be capable of sustained transfer of at least twice that?

Trouble with laptop architecture is, compared to desktop machines, they pare back the capability of the cpu/mobo to save power and reduce heat generation. So you only get 400Mhz fsb max instead of 800Mhz, PC2100 ram instead of PC3200, no hyperthreading etc.
 
Having practical use of both original and Dothan Centrinos, I find them to be disappointing, speed-wise. Battery life is great, but for track count and plug-ins, I'd totally go A64.

The Compaq A64 books now go to 3700+. Swap out the drive, and there you go.
 
I have heard bad reviews on Compaqs...is this not true in the music realm? If so, that's a lot of bang for buck!
Well...If you read my post a while back about posting the reply to the Presonus question, I STILL have not gotten a response, going to route it to someone else and see what happens, maybe just technical support or a general address...but that's not good impressions of the Presonus company anyways...
However, I have read excellent reviews on the FirePod and honestly think it's the PERFECT tool for what I'm looking for (lots of power, ease of use, professional outcome, and with the computer, a fairyly 'portable' system - meaning it can be safe in my dorm room...for I'm getting it before I'm off to college.)
Well, if anyone has comments of the Compaqs please let me know...the AMD 64's are in them for much better pricing with a good 1G I'm looking for. It's an early Christmas present from my parents, but they are wanting me to narrow them down so that we can track them in the time coming...
 
as ive said many times. the key to this game is to sort out the sound interface first. dont buy a laptop THEN find you have probs with the sound interface. also i wouldnt get usb interfaces as ive said before.
i wouldnt rush into anything. the laptop a64 market is new.
some people i'm sure are going to have problems and others arent.
in the coming months you will see lots of vendors coming into the a64 laptop market.
just search google. for amd 64 laptop. this will show the vendors in the market to you.
if were me i would continue to contact manufacturers of sound interfaces for laptops and get feedback on which a64 laptop is suitable.
 
on a sidenote ...

dont get bitten by the bigger-faster-better bug ...

Do you REALLY need to rec. in 96khz ???? ... if so, for what reason? ... ()


also think of it this way ... people are doing great audio-home recording for quite some years now, and many w/ sub 1gh procesors ...

audio-files (i am talking .wav here) havent really grown in the past years (assuming that 44,1/24bit is still the standard), but processor speed, etc.. has cuatrupled.

Just find a good balanced and proven "middle-of-the-road" comp. and you should do fine. The point is to get good components not the questionable "catalogue" stats of the latest and greatest. (putting the 5 best musicians of the world together doesnt necesarily make the world's best band)

a good place to gather information: www.pcmus.com

best regards
alfred
 
manning1 said:
as ive said many times. the key to this game is to sort out the sound interface first. dont buy a laptop THEN find you have probs with the sound interface. also i wouldnt get usb interfaces as ive said before.
i wouldnt rush into anything. the laptop a64 market is new.
some people i'm sure are going to have problems and others arent.
in the coming months you will see lots of vendors coming into the a64 laptop market.
just search google. for amd 64 laptop. this will show the vendors in the market to you.
if were me i would continue to contact manufacturers of sound interfaces for laptops and get feedback on which a64 laptop is suitable.
Click to expand...

Here's the response I got (I wrote back and asked for specific laptops they used when testing or whatever, and will see what they say...)
Hi Shawn,
Thank you for your questions. I Will answer them in the order
they were asked:

what sort of laptop is recommended?
I would recommend to stay with a Pentium or an AMD based system. I
would
recommend to get the fastest processor with the most RAM and biggest
hard drive possible.


And also, slightly
related, in the future, can you hook up multiple
firepods together?

We have a beta windows driver, the full driver should be available in
the next month for 2 unit support.

Do you know of any laptops that provide a 6-pin
firewire port like the firepod requires?
Either a 6 or 4 pin firewire port will work. If you get a laptop with a
4 pin connector, just use a 4 to 6 pin cable.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Regards,

Mark Williams
International Sales Manager
www.presonus.com
Tel: 225-216-7887 ext. 113
Fax: 225-926-8347
7257 Florida Blvd.
Baton Rouge, La.
70806







-----Original Message-----
From: Shawn Strickland [mailto:houseofshawn@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 11:15 AM
To: bsmith@presonus.com
Subject: A Question I Have On the Firepod

Recently, the Firepod has been brought to my attention
for the perfect recording devices of solo work myself
(I play solo guitar arrangements of jazz) and also of
recording rehearsals and making a nice demo or
whatever of combos and bands I might be in. It
provides the large number of analog inputs for my
need, and is relatively easy (it seems) to be able to
hook up to a laptop for a small recording setup. My
question, for you, being the engineering vice
president; is what sort of laptop is recommended? The
requirements are a little sparse as far as the process
recommended. Athlon puts out many processors
(recording friends have suggested the AMD 64) and
Pentium puts out twice that much...M...4....ect. Now,
Pentium 4's can have much higher speeds, but I figure,
and have been told, that isn't always it. Other than
a nice video card for the display of the laptop and a
large amount of memory (looking into 1g) what kind of
laptop and/or processor do you think works best
seamlessly with the Firepod. And also, slightly
related, in the future, can you hook up multiple
firepods together? I noticed the two firewire ports
in the back of the unit....
Do you know of any laptops that provide a 6-pin
firewire port like the firepod requires? All I see
are 4, and apparently as the page says the newest out
there, but these 4pins are on the newest
computers....but I am aware of the adapters that are
<$10.
I am centered more around a windows-based system for
when I am off to college, it will be more compatible
with the enviornment it is in, but if the firepod
works best with a mac, please let me know. I'm going
for easy and quality of recording overall.
Thank you,

=====
-Shawn
 
What I would look into .......
I'm sure the Firepod will work fine with many of the newer laptops on the market. Though, I would stick with P4 or AMD. Being an Intel user myself, I'd pry go P4.
However, In my test driving of laptops, I'd pay very close attention to the Device Manager. Specifically, viewing resources by connection and interrupt requests (IRQ assignments).
I would look for the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) having a low IRQ (under 15) and not sharing with anything. At least not with the video or the PCMCIA. Sharing with the audio or USB is OK as you can disable these things for DAW use.
Best of all worlds .... FireWire, USB and PCMCIA all having their own IRQ.
It's a toss up between USB and PCMCIA though as those will be your two avenues for an external drive that doesn't interfere with the Firepod. Granted, I'm able to run my FireWire drive on the same controller as my MOTU 828mkII when I use my laptop but I would be more comfortable if it where on a separate controller that had it's own IRQ. Though my laptop has no native FireWire connectivity, so I'm using a PCMCIA card with it.
USB 2.0 would be fine for a second drive also, so long as it's not sharing with the main devices you are dealing with (FireWire and video).
That's what I would be looking at if I was in the market for a new laptop.
Along with the usual things .... Fast processor, fast drive, nice video and a good hunk of RAM.
 
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