Thinking of buying this i7 laptop for recording. Opinions anyone ?

[indigo_dave]

I often rely on the intelligence and experience here before I buy certain things. I try to avoid an "oh {censored}".

 

So, would this Acer Aspire i7 be suitable ? At this point I'd be using it to mix and master my little dittys with between 2-8 tracks. I'm hoping it would be overkill

for now and give me 4 or 5 years of good use before needing to be replaced with

new technology. Here's the link to this laptop:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215409

 

Thanks, Dave

[nice keetee]

 

I often rely on the intelligence and experience here before I buy certain things. I try to avoid an "oh {censored}". So, would this Acer Aspire i7 be suitable ? At this point I'd be using it to mix and master my little dittys with between 2-8 tracks. I'm hoping it would be overkill for now and give me 4 or 5 years of good use before needing to be replaced with new technology. Here's the link to this laptop: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215409 Thanks, Dave

 

 

The 5400rpm drive would be a caution, use externals?

[Phil O'Keefe]

Other than the HDD rotational speed (which might not be an issue if you're only using 8 tracks per song), the battery life spec of four hours is the only thing that I see as a potential concern, but that really depends on how mobile you need to be, and for how long.

 

In terms of RAM, it can take up 16GB, and comes with 8GB installed, which are both good. The CPU is a quad core 2.2GHz i7 - I hope that's fast enough for a while since I just got a MacBook with a similarly spec'ed CPU.

 

With those two caveats in mind, I'd say that looks like a very decent system that should be more than sufficient for what you want to do with it.

[indigo_dave]

I'm planning on using this as a sort of portable desktop. Mostly sitting in one spot - sitting next to my digital piano in my living room. So battery life is not an issue. And I'll probably get an external drive for music and other media that I could take to my desktop in the back of the house.

 

So there don't seem to be any deal breaker issues. I think I may order it today.

 

Thanks for your inputs guys.

 

Dave

[Badside]

Core i7s are quite the powerhouses!

But the price seems a bit high for an Acer with a 2nd gen i7.

 

For 30$ less I got a Toshiba Satelite P850 with a 3rd gen i7 (the latest gen, it's 3620QM I think, it's 2.3GHz), main difference being a slightly less powerful GT630M video card (although with more VRAM) which is a spec that is of no importance for audio recording. (For what it's worth, it still runs GTA IV, a very demanding game). It's got a really nice screen a backlit keyboard

 

Generally speaking, Acer is a cheaper make with lesser materials. Not that it will self-destruct in 6 months, but I feel it should be cheaper.

Toshiba, Asus and Lenovo are the makes I'd be looking at. For me it came down to two almost identical laptops from Toshiba and Lenovo (Lenovo had faster CPU but with half the cache) and the deciding factor was the the Toshiba just felt much better.

 

Remember that this laptop, like all new laptop, has neither a Firewire port or an express card slot, you will need a USB interface (I have an Octacapture)

[Lee Flier]

A few tips for recording with laptops:

 

1) Although I've done many a recording on a 5400 RPM drive, you might try recording on a flash drive. It'll be faster and quieter. I've had good results this way.

 

2) The fan noise is generally louder than you'd like it to be.

 

3) Be sure to disable any power conservation settings. Most laptops by default will dim the screen after a period of inactivity and do various other similar things that have an evil effect on audio. You'll probably have the laptop plugged in anyway, so be sure to adjust the power profile so that nothing is less than 100% while plugged in, at the very least.

 

4) Disable the network drivers and wifi while recording.

 

Don't ask me how I learned these things.

[Badside]

 

2) The fan noise is generally louder than you'd like it to be. 3) Be sure to disable any power conservation settings. Most laptops by default will dim the screen after a period of inactivity and do various other similar things that have an evil effect on audio. You'll probably have the laptop plugged in anyway, so be sure to adjust the power profile so that nothing is less than 100% while plugged in, at the very least.

 

 

ESPECIALLY make sure to disable the setting that turns off hard drives and USB devices. Once had a nice blue screen as I went to start recording a gig... USB hard drive had shut off and Sonar was all confused (it usually just starts back up... but anyway I disabled this setting and all has been good since)

[Lee Flier]

 

So this actually works well? I was wondering that the other day, seeing as I get tired of lugging around bulky external 7200RPM drives (which usually have their own power supply too). I know the problem with flash drives is a limited number of write cycles, but just for tracking and then I'd copy to the media drive on my desktop! USB3.0 flash drives sure seem fast enough (my HDs are USB anyway).

 

 

Yep, I have not had a problem doing this and it's definitely easier to carry around than an external HDD! Craig Anderton apparently does this all the time too, more often than I have ever needed to, and has not had an issue.

 

 

 

ESPECIALLY make sure to disable the setting that turns off hard drives and USB devices. Once had a nice blue screen as I went to start recording a gig... USB hard drive had shut off and Sonar was all confused (it usually just starts back up... but anyway I disabled this setting and all has been good since)

 

 

Yep... I was getting BSODs while recording too until I disabled all that.

[indigo_dave]

Actually I will be recording on an Olympus LS-100 8 track mounted on a table top tripod. I can also plug an XLR mic cable in too. I'm having fun being able to move it around easily. I plan to upload recordings onto the laptop for mixing and also playing along with my recorded ideas. I'm looking forward trying recording in my bathroom and maybe even in my car. Just having fun with some simple intuitive recording.

 

I went ahead and ordered the Acer i7 before reading Badside's comments about the Toshiba. I would have researched that laptop. But I think the difference in processor speed is 2.2 Ghz vs 2.3 Ghz which seems just incremental to me. Anyway it's been ordered.

 

Thanks for the input,

 

Dave

[Badside]

I went ahead and ordered the Acer i7 before reading Badside's comments about the Toshiba. I would have researched that laptop. But I think the difference in processor speed is 2.2 Ghz vs 2.3 Ghz which seems just incremental to me. Anyway it's been ordered.

 

It's not so much the clock speed as the jump from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge, which comes with a die shrink (which helps with power usage, but irrelevant if you're not running on battery) and a better integrated graphics (again, of little concern for audio).

 

That said, 2 years from now, both will be outdated yet our computers will be still running strong!

 

I started doing audio recording with a Celeron 1GHz, THAT was complicated (had to print effects, couldn't run them in real time). But ever since the Core series came out, any computer is good enough for audio.

HD Video Editing is another story