Laptop advice - designed for music production

Computer Forum New Build / Upgrade Advice
1

Hi guys and girls,
I’m brand-new, so I’ll say hello before I start and I look forward to being an active member of the site.

My dillema is this - I’m after buying a laptop so that I can run VST instruments/soft synths in a live band. I’ve already purchased the software and I shall shortly be purchasing a midi controller etc. But the laptop is causing me a lot of confusion.

Confusion point 1. There seems to be all these new processors Pentium-M, Centrino, Celleron, (gone are the good ol days when it was a Pentium or a 486 lol) but they seem to be all running around 1.7Ghz? Surely this can’t be right I thought the average processor speeds were around 2-3Ghz nowadays? Or is this different for laptops?

Confusion point 2. On board sound. This could be a major factor in my laptop purchasing. Is the on board sound going to be good enough to keep up with the music software, as you’ll appreciate, latency problems on stage is not going to sound good? Will it be I have to buy an external usb/firewire soundcard? If so any recommendations for around £100 or less?

Confusion point 3. The minimum spec for the software is Pentium III 800Mhz, 128Mb Ram. Will the Pentium-M 1.7Ghz with 512mb ram be ok or should I go for the 1Gb RAM option? Also I notice the standard hard drive’s for the laptop models seem to be 60Gb 5200rpm (i think), is this going to be ok? The last drive I bought was 7200rpm?

General point. I’m not a wealthy musician lol. So I’m aiming to spend around £600 on the laptop itself (not including the soundcard if it has to be external) as the midi controller is £300 alone.

Any help is very much appreciated.

080780

2

Hello and welcome to the forums.

Okay, let’s start: :wink:

[QUOTE=080780]
Confusion point 1. There seems to be all these new processors Pentium-M, Centrino, Celleron, (gone are the good ol days when it was a Pentium or a 486 lol) but they seem to be all running around 1.7Ghz? Surely this can’t be right I thought the average processor speeds were around 2-3Ghz nowadays? Or is this different for laptops?
[/QUOTE]

Laptops are generally a step behind desktop PCs for raw pace. A Pentium class processor will be powerful enough for VST synths. So a laptop with a 1.7GHz CPU will be fine. Celeron processors won’t cut it i’m afraid.

[QUOTE=080780]
Confusion point 2. On board sound. This could be a major factor in my laptop purchasing. Is the on board sound going to be good enough to keep up with the music software, as you’ll appreciate, latency problems on stage is not going to sound good? Will it be I have to buy an external usb/firewire soundcard? If so any recommendations for around £100 or less?
[/QUOTE]

On-board sound chips will not cut it. They aren’t good enough for performance/studio use. Their target market is surround sound for computer games/DVDs.
A lot of VST synths (and music production suites such as Cubase) require ASIO drivers. Onboard sound chips don’t use them natively. There is a workaround though, ASIO4ALL works with a lot of sound cards, providing ASIO ready drivers.

Personally I recommend you buy an external USB/Firewire/PCMCIA sound card

[QUOTE=080780]
Confusion point 3. The minimum spec for the software is Pentium III 800Mhz, 128Mb Ram. Will the Pentium-M 1.7Ghz with 512mb ram be ok or should I go for the 1Gb RAM option? Also I notice the standard hard drive’s for the laptop models seem to be 60Gb 5200rpm (i think), is this going to be ok? The last drive I bought was 7200rpm?
[/QUOTE]

It depends on how many VST instruments you plan to have open/running at the same time. An 800MHz Pentium will be enough for a medium-weight VST to run. Add another VST instrument or a heavy-weight synth like the Moog Modular V, and your 800MHz CPU will buckle.
If I were in your shoes, i’d buy the Pentium M 1.7 GHz with 1GB RAM. You could run several VSTs at the same time. Cubase would run well too, if you decided to go down that route in the future.

The specification of hard drive doesn’t really figure when playing VSTs. Hard drive activity is minimal during this time.
However, 5,400 is an old standard, and I’m suprised companies are still offering it. If you were using Cubase, then I’d definately recommend going for the 7,200. 5,400RPM will work fine for VSTs

[QUOTE=080780]
General point. I’m not a wealthy musician lol. So I’m aiming to spend around £600 on the laptop itself (not including the soundcard if it has to be external) as the midi controller is £300 alone.
[/QUOTE]

I’ve seen several USB keyboards that have a sound chip built it! The sound card works through the USB port alongside the keyboard. M-Audio manufacture a few of these designs