PTravel
Senior Senior Member
Clarification: the Win8 Metro (or Modern or whatever Microsoft is calling it now) GUI is unusable for most serious purposes. The "classic desktop" in Win8 is fine.
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Rod Norman
New member
This is a very tough question to answer. You will get a lot of ideas from people happy with what they have. I will tell you what I have, but the real answer lies in what is on board the laptop. I have an ASUS top of the line. It was $700 USD. Now, what it came with was what made me decide on it. It has an i7 Sandy Bridge, 8GB of RAM and a 500GB Hard Drive. I also bought two 3 TB external drives for storage and backup. It comes with a powerful video card included. The RAM cannot be upgraded, but 8Gigs is enough for recording. Of course I have a monster custom-built tower for studio work, but the laptop is for recording my performances in multitrack on location.Good luck with your search and make more music for the world to enjoy.
Rod Norman
Rod Norman
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Jefrome
New member
Since you're going to use it for recording etc, very important to take a good look at the soundcard that comes with it, or you can use an external (not very useful on the road but still)
PTravel
Senior Senior Member
I don't know anyone who takes a laptop on the road without any other gear. Do you? Next, no laptop is going to have an adequate built-in audio digitizing solution. First, it will never handle more than 2 channels. Second, it can't handle balanced inputs. Third, internal laptop audio is not designed for high-quality recording, either in terms of bit depth, frequency responsive or sampling rate. Decent audio adapters/DACs are small and relatively inexpensive. I can't think of any reason why anyone would care about a laptop's internal audio capabilities. I would think it's CD-burning ability would be of far more importance, given that you might want to burn a quick CD on the spot.
Steenamaroo
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JimmyS1969
MOODerator
Good point.
I often have thought of doing some recording, out of studio. I have yet to test my lappy, in the real world, but I surely would need to bring an external interface, external drive, and a whole bunch of other stuff that is needed. Like mics, cables/stands/ snake....Oh yeah, and my dongle... lol
PTravel
Senior Senior Member
I have a portable kit for when I record at my writing partner's. It consists of my laptop, a Fast Track Ultra, a Korg miniKontrol2 control surface, a GXL2400 mike on a stand, a 1TB USB external drive, 2 pairs of headphones, a headphone cable, a mike cable and a power strip to plug everything in. This is the absolute bare minimum -- I can't imagine doing with anything less. It all goes in a duffle bag (except the laptop) and sits in my car trunk until needed. All we record are my partner's vocals. I was thinking of adding an ambient noise filer to the kit, but those things are darn big and the acoustics are so poor in partner's living room that I don't know that it would make much difference. Also, she needs to be able to see me so I can cue her, and they'd completely block her sight line. Because all I do are my partner's vocals (I do my own at home), I just use Audition 3.0 for our sessions. I do a rough mix to a stereo track for playback and just keep laying down her vocal tracks until I think I have enough to piece together something usable (neither of us are great singers, but this is just a demo of our music, not for performance).
That's why I had to laugh when I read the suggestion that the internal audio on a laptop was important for recording.
Oh, and never leave your "dongle" at home -- you never know when you might need it.
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ecc83
Well-known member
+1^
It has often seemed to me when these questions come up that had I ever needed a location computer recording rig, especially a multitrack affair, I would go for a rack mounted MOBO.
Yes, you have to have an additional screen but as shown above, the amount of M'track paraphenalia you need to lug to a venue is so large that a 17"/21" screen matters little (get a telly and you can watch the cricket twixt takes!) . The rack with attendant interfaces and other gubbinsessesss can be secreted out of harms way and communicated with via a wireless keyboard and mouse (they are NOT like a wireless modem on the MOBO. I have used them on several desktops, never a problem) or you can go as long as you like with usb and repeaters (tho I would use CAT5 and adaptors)
Jus a thought!
Dave.
ollie99
New member
The laptop came today
Pretty awesome so far, not got time to do any proper recording yet.
Windows 8 isn't bad actually. Yes it is obviously designed for people who won't be dong much serious work with their laptop but it is actually pretty cool and as far as I am aware is completely usable for recording. There certainly hasn't been any major things that I have disliked about it yet, nothing that makes me want to go back to windows 7.
So far very happy with it and I have no doubts that it will fulfill my needs
Pretty awesome so far, not got time to do any proper recording yet.
Windows 8 isn't bad actually. Yes it is obviously designed for people who won't be dong much serious work with their laptop but it is actually pretty cool and as far as I am aware is completely usable for recording. There certainly hasn't been any major things that I have disliked about it yet, nothing that makes me want to go back to windows 7.
So far very happy with it and I have no doubts that it will fulfill my needs
JimmyS1969
MOODerator
Keep us posted man!
Steenamaroo
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Great news, Ollie. Nice one.
PTravel
Senior Senior Member
The laptop came today
Pretty awesome so far, not got time to do any proper recording yet.
Windows 8 isn't bad actually. Yes it is obviously designed for people who won't be dong much serious work with their laptop but it is actually pretty cool and as far as I am aware is completely usable for recording. There certainly hasn't been any major things that I have disliked about it yet, nothing that makes me want to go back to windows 7.
So far very happy with it and I have no doubts that it will fulfill my needs
Glad you like it so far. As long as Windows 8 will run your software and supports your drivers (and almost all Win7 drivers will work under Win8), you should be pretty happy with Win8. Though I DESPISE the underlying concept, i.e. "computers are only for social networking -- no one does real work on them," you'll probably find a slight (very slight) performance advantage under Win8 compared to Win7.
Make sure you "decrapify," and immediately install a good anti-virus program (I like Webroot, though Microsoft's free Security Essentials is pretty good, notwithstanding that it missed a virus that my wife managed to allow to infect my machine and that Webroot ultimately caught) before you do anything else, including surfing the internet. I do NOT recommend Norton or whatever bloatware demo was included with your machine. Also, make sure the built-in firewall is turned on.
Now go make some music!
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JMN
New member
I like my Lenovo V570. I miss firewire, but that's okay! I guess I just buy personal computer and that's would be awesome
Bobbsy
Boring Old Git
Mac Book Pros in the UK range from £1000 for a basic 13 inch 2.6GHz machine to £2300 for one with a 15 inch "Retina" display. That's way outside the OP's budget--and, frankly, however much you love yours I'd be hard pressed to justify to myself spending that sort of silly money for a laptop. Just go Windoze and keep your installation clean. Spend the money you save on underage drinking.
ollie99
New member
Hey guys, recorded some guitar today and worked great I also am actually really happy with the song I am doing at the moment, not far from finishing.
I have to admit I am falling in love with my laptop, not literally, but at the moment I just don't want to stop going on it and messing around with the cool features on the metro start screen.
About anti-virus software well for quite a few years now in my household we have been using norton on all the computers and laptops and it seems to have been fine so do I really need to bother changing it? I have a free 60 day use of it then I can just renew it
I also am actually really happy with the song I am doing at the moment, not far from finishing.I have to admit I am falling in love with my laptop, not literally, but at the moment I just don't want to stop going on it and messing around with the cool features on the metro start screen.
About anti-virus software well for quite a few years now in my household we have been using norton on all the computers and laptops and it seems to have been fine so do I really need to bother changing it? I have a free 60 day use of it then I can just renew it
Steenamaroo
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I can't blame you for not reading the whole thread, but that was all established on page one.
I only kept the mac 'debate' going to clear up some false generalisations.
ollie99
New member
Actually the one thing I'm having trouble with is getting the right screen resolution for the second monitor that I use it with when recording??? It's either too big or way too small :/ It was fine with my old laptop so I looked at the resolution that was in when it was connected and my new laptop just doesn't seem to have that certain resolution :/
Any ideas?
Any ideas?
PTravel
Senior Senior Member
You should be able to set the resolution in the Control Panel (though I have no idea how to get to it from Metro). Make sure that you choose, "Extend my display," and set whichever display you want to use as primary. Windows should be able to detect the maximum resolution and should set it to that.
BTW, I liked the song -- is that you doing everything, or do you have a band?
BTW, I liked the song -- is that you doing everything, or do you have a band?
ollie99
New member
Well it's actually very easy to navigate to the control panel because you can just search it in the bar on the right and it comes up straight away.
But yeah it just doesn't seem to work, it's just about manageable for now anyway.
Thanks
I am in a band but everything I have recorded so far has been just me, but in that song the singer from my band is singing. But man my new stuff sounds so much tighter, neat, better recorded and produced before I've even started mixing yet Can't wait till the summer when my exams are over and I can get a good few songs finished 