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anonymous 9 December 2001

I am looking to upgrade my computer, and have been thinking about getting a laptop to replace my aging desktop. Anyone have any experience with recording on laptops? I am looking to be able to record 10 or more tracks simultaneous, but I'm not too worried about loading up on plugins or virtual instruments. Also, I am probably going to stick w/ PC. Will a 1 gig P3 be able to hold up?

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Opus2000 Sun, 12/09/2001 - 19:23

Absolutely...a PIII 1Gig will do you plenty fine!! The only issues with laptops are with IRQ's..not as easy to resolve IRQ issues with laptops as with desktops.
Another issue that tends to come up alot is using the charger when recording..sometimes it can add a wierd buzz or cause skips and drop outs.
I personally dont record on laptops but there are some people here who do and hopefully will chime in on their success with it. Otherwise what brand are you going for? I reccomend Sony Vaio's
Good luck
Opus

Jon Best Tue, 12/11/2001 - 15:34

Dell Inspiron seems to be a favorite- Mytek put together a Samplitude/Nuendo demo laptop, and were pretty impressed with the results. I'd get the Inspiron 8100 with a 1 gig+ PIII, the 15" screen, an RME Hammerfall PC card interface, and a big 7200 rpm firewire drive and firewire Cd burner.

Matter of fact, I may do that myself in the next couple of weeks. Can't decide between the portability of the above setup, or the power of a dual Athlon.

Doublehelix Mon, 12/17/2001 - 07:38

I used an IBM T20 laptop for a long time with Cakewalk, and then Cubase/32...no problems. It was a PIII 750, and ran fine up to about 24 tracks or so w/ a few plug-ins. The biggest limitation was the hard drive speed...

There are many more choices now for audio i/o than when I first set mine up, mostly via PCMCIA and USB, so there are numerous choices for i/o. I used the TASCAM US-428 that also acts as a control surface...very cool, and works quite well. In fact, now that I have switched over to a tower system, I still use 428 as a control surface.

Good Luck!

DH

anonymous Mon, 12/17/2001 - 22:18

thanks for your input- it looks like I'm going to go with a Vaio 1 gig p3- I figure the bus speed of 133 mhz, and L2 Cache of 512 of the dell inspiron 8100 isn't worth the extra four or five hundred bucks. Also, I am going to get a firewire hard drive- lacie makes a 60 gig, 7200 RPM one for about $280. As far as audio i/o, I was thinking motu 828- I like the firewire ease of connection, and it seems to work well for a lot of people. The hammerfall looks good, but the digifaces 3 adats is more than I need, and the multiface offers the same i/os as the 828, but is more expensive. And the pcmia sounds like there is more potential for conflicts. Any thoughts on this issue?

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