Members E-money Posted December 28, 2012 Members Share Posted December 28, 2012 I'm thinking of ditching my AMD Athlon XP 1800 1.49 Ghz with 1GB ram desktop in favor of something with some more power. I can squeeze around 40 tracks with a handful of reverbs, delays, and compressors out of this PC, and it's served me well for 9 years. I'd like to possibly go to a laptop running Reaper with a 4 in 4 out USB interface. Any comments or suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rabid Posted December 28, 2012 Members Share Posted December 28, 2012 I just picked up an ADK laptop and am quite happy though I've not yet had the chance to push it to the limits. With a quad processor, Sandy/Ivy bridge, 32 GB memory and a 500GB SSD it handles quite a load. I'm waiting for Ableton Live to release the 64bit upgrade before I really push it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members E-money Posted December 28, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 28, 2012 Originally Posted by Rabid I just picked up an ADK laptop and am quite happy though I've not yet had the chance to push it to the limits. With a quad processor, Sandy/Ivy bridge, 32 GB memory and a 500GB SSD it handles quite a load. I'm waiting for Ableton Live to release the 64bit upgrade before I really push it. If I may ask, how much did that set you back $$$? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rabid Posted December 28, 2012 Members Share Posted December 28, 2012 About 20 percent less than the closest MacBookPro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted December 28, 2012 CMS Author Share Posted December 28, 2012 The question isn't whether laptops are up to the recording task - of course they are. There isn't one made today that doesn't have sufficient processing power, sufficient memory (or space to install it) and an adequately fast internal hard drive. The question to ask is whether the audio interface that you have or are contemplating buying will be happy with the laptop you're considering. Apparently some USB audio interfaces are unhappy with some laptops that have only USB3 ports (net suspect is incompatibility between certain ASIO driver sets and the Ivy Bridge chipset). And of course there are no more Firewire ports or card slots for an expansion card. Most DAW programs and drivers that worked under Windows 7 will work under Windows 8 (which is what you'll get with a new Windows computer unless you get it from a custom builder) but check first. You can't be sure until you try it, and if it doesn't work, the time to fix it is indeterminate. Best to stick with an old computer, either the one you have now or one that's one or two years old. Saves money, too, and they're still "up to the recording task." This is not the best time to buy a new computer if you intend to use it for audio work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted December 28, 2012 Members Share Posted December 28, 2012 Spring for as much RAM as possible, and use an external 7200 RPM drive for your recording through fast pipes (e.g., FW800 or USB 3.0). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members electrochrisso Posted December 29, 2012 Members Share Posted December 29, 2012 I run Reaper with my 1.5ghz intel atom quad core, 1gig ram netbook, and it works fine, cant say that I have booked up 40 tracks, 10 max, but I am using a hand full of vsti and vst effects at the same time though, unfortunately Cubase cracks up under this sort of strain, not tried how other software will go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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