Clevo or Compal for Multitrack Audio?

>I need it to be quiet as I often record at home (no booth), at rehearsal studios and I need it to be mobile. I need power too!!!

Hmm I post on both, sorry I think I missed yours there.

Anyways the above statement is a contradictory. Pick two out of the three, but you cant have all three.

In other words, if you want quiet and powerful go with a desktop. If you want quiet and mobile then you can do laptop, you can even do mobile and powerful, but not quiet. I have yet to find any laptop that does all three.

That being said though I would strongly reccomend you go for the quiet and mobile as opposed to the quiet and powerful. Youd be amazed what you can record on a decent laptop that is quiet(Say a Pentium-M with a gig of ram and a decent HD) at times.

If you need more power for mixdown, you would actually be better off getting a cheap desktop than spending the extra money on a powerful laptop, youll save more money that way and get more power usually. Then just transfer your session onto your desktop to work on it.

Between the specific models you mentioned, sorry cant help you. But if you are in the UK dont go through Phil Rees is what I have been told.

>Or even suggest an alternative for Nultitrack audio use (CuBase SX 3)...?

Alternative to SX3? Um how long you got? There is of course their higher end Nuendo(PC), ProTools(PC or Mac), Digital performer(Mac), Logic(Also Mac)... There is an entire list of these things.

Seablade

I record straight digital tracks into cubase sx3 (by digital I mean I don't mic anything) and I get really good sounding results. At 32bit 48khz the results are very impressive.

I actually prefer to go with the more powerful machines with tons of ram. Some of my sessions have several vst instruments going with tons of effects and large soundfonts loaded.

I plan to snag a Sager 9750 when that comes out. It can hold 2 7200rpm 100gb drives, uses an AMD X2 4800 and can take 2gb of memory. I could really go nuts with a machine like that. I would rather 4gb of memory, tho.

-BT

>I plan to snag a Sager 9750 when that comes out. It can hold 2 7200rpm 100gb drives, uses an AMD X2 4800 and can take 2gb of memory. I could really go nuts with a machine like that. I would rather 4gb of memory, tho.

Hope you dont mind a jet doing circles around your place while you are recording I would be willing to bet it will sound about like that.

Seablade

Well it obviously depends partially on how intensive those VSTs run, but in general yes that should be more than enough. The suggestion I would make is to go ahead and use an external drive for your audio files, and only your audio files. In all honesty 10 tracks at a non exuberant sample rate will probably be able to be done on an internal with no problem, but I always reccomend the external 7200 route as good practice.

I am not familiar enough with the actual Pentium M line to be able to make the call on price vs performance though, sorry. I Use AMD and PPC(Mac) myself, though I will obviously have to do some studying up soon as Macs will be running Intel chips.

Seablade

I don't think it'll be nearly that bad. Now if the GPU is going full force there may be some noise, but I think it'll be pretty quiet for audio sessions.

I haven't run a 10 track session is soooo long. I'm usually at 50+ midi/audio tracks before I even add vocals.

Good luck. If you use VST instruments let us know how performance is with the pentiumM. I've only used athlons so far so i'm curious to see how the intel stuff works.

Sager 9750 for audio

The 9750 is loud. It's the same case as the 9890 which is loud... it's not as bad as the previous generation but the noise is still there... just at a lower pitch and less fatiguing. Mics will pick up the noise so plan on recording outside of the room. Also, plan on using louder monitors or isolation headphones for doing critical work.

See the thread about the 9750 here for issues concerning Cubase SX and some plugins (Native Instruments, MOTU, etc.)
http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=125740