Syntrillium Backup Forums :: View topic

monopoli · Location: Netherlands

I'm thinking about buying a laptop (somewhere next year probably, I don't have the money now) for musical purposes. I would need good analogue, digital and MIDI in and outs and a soundcard that can record in 24-bit (or more)and run like 8 tracks of CEP without any problems. Does anyone have experience with this or can anyone recommend a certain laptop, preferably not too expensive ?

ozpeter · Location: Australia

Laptop recording threads happen here from time to time - have a search for 'laptop' if you haven't already, to get the benefit of existing advice, while waiting for more specific replies.

- Ozpeter

Graeme · Member Location: Spain

Unless you have an absolute requirement for using a laptop, you'd be much better off with a desk machine.

Laptops are a lot more expensive, at any given level, than their desk equivalent. Virtually anything extra you buy (HDD, RAM, etc,) will also cost you more. They are considerably less versatile - you can't just keep plugging in extra cards - and you are virtually committing yourself to, at least ,an additional external audio/soundcard, since the ones built into laptops are useless for serious audio work. In itself, this means a severely limited range of choice compared to what you can buy for a desk machine.

Furthermore, most people who do/have used laptops for audio have encountered a range of problems which were much harder to sort out. I'm using a laptop for basic sound generation and even this simple application was not without its problems. I would hesitate to use such a machine as a recording device.

monopoli · Location: Netherlands

I have a desk PC which is dedicated to audio, but it would be nice to be able to go out and record bands, and instruments (like drums) in rehearselrooms and such and mix them (and add tracks) at home.
I've thought about harddiskrecorders, but it would be nice to be able to use CEP and burn the files directly onto CD-R, and I would also like to be able to use this laptop as a MIDIsequencer to trigger, for instance my Microkorg.
Does anyone here have any positive experiences with using a laptop for music purposes ?

bonnder · Posted - Thu Jun 26, 2003 8:05 pm

Get an Alesis MasterLink if you can find one (some Guitar Centers still have them - and they pop up on E-bay - cost about $700 new). They are about as portable as a laptop. And you can burn a data file on CD to transfer your music to your desktop PC. Masterlink won't do as a MIDI driver tho.

Craig Jackman · Location: Canada

If you want to do serious mobil recording, I think I'd come down on the self contained HD recorder side (Yamaha, Roland). More and more new ones have CDR drives in them, so you can transfer audio out that way and dump it into a proper audio computer. For what a mid-hi end HD recorder will run you, it'll still be significantly cheaper than buying, settingup, and sorting out a laptop to do the same thing. The self contained thingy's are designed to record. A laptop is designed to be a word processor ... well that's what I use mine for.

jester700 · Posted - Fri Jun 27, 2003 6:50 am

I use a Fostex VF16 recorder. Cheap n' cheerful ($700-ish, only 16/44.1, though), and I don't need to burn to CD. Just save WAVs to SCSI hard drive, pop the drive over to my PC and I'm golden.

bayou1340 · Location: USA

RATHER THAN A LAPTOP...anyone with success using COOL EDIT on a heavy duty Notebook? I'm looking at something with 2-2.8ghz processor, 60gigHD, 1gig ram... a really hefty Dell... or maybe another brand if it can match at least these specs..

Really do need to be able to do production away from the studio. Plan on using an audio mixer for multi-mike jobs.

Suggestions anyone?

Wildduck · Posted - Mon Jul 07, 2003 11:07 pm

FWIW (not much), my experience has been that for simple stereo recording from a mixer, a decent(ish) carefully chosen low end machine from a known laptop manufacturer (eg Acer, IBM) has been much more successful than trying to use a supposed desktop replacement.

I am quite happy using the good laptops that I know and love, but I do have to keep a very close eye on what else is running on them. In the last 18 months, I've had 2 'laptops' that used desktop processors. They ran extremely hot, were heavy and not especially robust and they both had hard drives as slow as the real laptops. The latest one (warranty replacement after a huge battle) has borderline audio performance. I have been unable to find who the real manufacturer is behind the badge. I have never found that any manufacturer has a clue about support for the audio functions of any laptop.

I make no secret of the fact that I like laptops as backup recording devices for broadcast. They are handy, don't cause a hernia and can be easy to set up in the field. In emergency thay will run without mains power.

But you do have to know what you are doing with them.....

bigjon · Location: USA

I have been doing laptop recording for about two years now, 1 stereo track, for church. I have had little or no trouble, and I've been using a HP 400 Mhz with an AMD processor, 64 mb ram, nad a 3 GB hard disk. I record the service on it, then take t home and transfer via ethernet to my desktop machine, where I do all the editing (I have to do some serious noise reduction - the sound card in the laptop is pretty lousy). It then goes on the air as a radio program.

It works for me.

Bigjon

Graeme · Member Location: Spain

the3jsgrve · Location: USA

I've not done any laptop recording myself, but I would certainly hop on it if I had the chance. My choice for a sound card would definitely be the Layla 24bit laptop card. 8 analog ins, 10 outs, MIDI in, out, and through, etc. You pretty much described it in the first post!

Josh

DeluXMan · Location: Canada

The Alesis HD24 is ideal for live recording and the price is right.
But how much different is it to move around a laptop vs a desktop PC.

Maybe the best solution for multi-track is a cary-case for the standard PC form factor(S). I will have to use my desktop PC when i multitrack a band for example, and will probably just strap it in the back seat with seat belts. If there is no AC power i plan to use a basic inverter and the car battery or a spare battery.

jester700 · Posted - Wed Jul 09, 2003 6:25 pm

Polaris · Posted - Fri Jul 11, 2003 4:05 am

The Shuttle Systems (SB61G, etc.), a keyboard, mouse, and LCD would fit in a hardshell Pelican case and still give you full desktop power. That's an idea.