9400 X1400 card - ok for music sequencer?

I don't know much about sound mixing or anything, but I do know, base on my 9400 experience with 7800 go ( own one), the onboard sound card does not give much options whne trying to adjust sound, base on factory drivers and software. If you can wait, I would buy a creative "express slot" sound card. I believe there is an external card you can use from creative, but I am not very clear on which one it is. Good luck

This computer would totally rock for that purpose. Go dual core and 2 GB of RAM. That said I would get WUXGA. WUXGA for the screen real estate. And if you can wait the 7900 go (or 7800go if it is back) would be good too. Probably 100-150 more than the X1400. It is a HUGE upgrade and would allow for some nice gaming framerates for future use.

video card shouldn't influence it at all. But yeah, I'd watch out for the crappy on-board sound card. I was installed Cakewalk Sonar on my 9300 (to use the awesome screen resolution) but it wouldn't work with my sound card, so I had to give it up. Saying that, Adobe Audition works fine...

Any decent external sound card (turtle beach/m-audio/creative) should run fine

If it's for music, you probably don't need to be concerned about video
performance.

For playing back multiple music tracks, you may want to opt for the
largest hard drive you can afford, running at 7200rpm. That will play
a big part in how many tracks you can play in parallel. Seagate makes
a 100g 7200rpm drive that doesn't use that much power (it will drain
your battery a bit faster...look at power specs). Seagate usually
has a 5 year warranty (check when you buy).

If you need to run tons of plugins (DirectX reverbs, etc) then processor
power can be important.

You may not really need 2GB of ram, but it wouldn't hurt. XP will use
available ram for stuff like drive caching, but cache becomes less effective
when you're moving large streams of data like music files.

For sound modules: If you want to stay portable, M-Audio makes the
FastTrack Pro which has decent (not superlative) sound in/out. One
real advantage is that it can run from USB power and can in turn
power up condenser mics that need phantom. Firewire looks good on
paper, but the 4-pin mini-Firewires on laptops do not carry power, so
you'd need to be near an outlet.

Check J&R in NYC for the FastTrack Pro. www.jr.com.
I believe they have them for around $180...the best price I've
seen. Sound quality is probably better than most internal or card-
based audio, but of course not as good as high-end rack-mount audio
converters like Apogee, RME (Nuendo), etc. But then again, we're
talking about a laptop. You could spend $2000 on rack-mount stuff.

Be aware if you're using it for music that the E1705/9400 does not have a PCMCIA slot, it has the newer ExpressCard slot. This does not have any sound cards available for it (yet).

It's pretty common knowledge now, but some people bought them at first expecing to be able to put the PCMCIA Audigy into them, which you cannot.

the x1400 is inferior to the 78/7900s ONLY in 3d.

That's the short of it.

in 3d it is nowhere near as fast, but for anything else, it's probably better, since it will use less power (get less hot and give better battery life).

Being an audio guy myself, I can say that the x1400 will be more than enough for your needs. The only thing that would be "bad" for audio work would be integrated graphics, which isn't an issue if you're getting the x1400. As others have said, far more important would be to get a dual core processor, a fast hard drive, and plenty of RAM.

HOWEVER: Something to consider is that eventually BionicFX supposedly will release VST DSP plugins that use your NVIDIA GPU, which obviously wouldn't work with an ATI card at this time.

One more note: it sounds as though you haven't decided on an outboard sound card yet. I'm an M-Audio fan, myself, and recommend the Firewire 410. In the meantime, though, you could try ASIO4aLL, which should allow you to do low-latency audio until you decide. I haven't tried it on my E1705 yet, but I have yet to encounter an audio device it hasn't worked on.

The graphics card is not a problem with your query, but the screen may be, opt for the higher resolution with Truelife. I do alot of graphics work on my laptop and I had the 1440x900 in my i9300 and the resolution was not good enough for multiple windows, or fine images (Although the screen itself was very nice color and contrast).

Other than that get as much ram as possible (Can only help with conversions and processes), get the 2Ghz duo, and fat drive, if you can get as large a 7200rpm drive you can. The CPU in these rigs are smokin fast....

-E

being music sequencer and a lappy's graphic card "it has nothing to do with it" !!!!!

I've already mentioned this, but your laptop's 4-pin Firewire connect
will not power up an external device. That's the only reason that
I opted for USB; you could take a couple Neumann KM84's/184's or
other small diaphragm condenser and get great stereo XY recordings
on location. No wall socket required.

PS: If you are going Firewire, you could also look at the Presonus
Firebox. Lots of pro audio guys like it. I almost opted for that
except for the remote power issue.

You could do google searches on newsgroup: rec.audio.pro

I use my 9440 with Ableton/Cubase/Reason/Fl Studio and I've got the integrated Intel graphics with WXGA+ (1440x900) screen - all 2D apps run absolutely fine. Because all the music production applications are 2D, a fast 3D graphics card just isn't required.
I had to get myself an external soundcard too - got a Terratec Phase 26 USB because it has phono preamp functionality I need. Unfortunately I can't get the damn phono input working properly - no matter what I do I can't seem to adjust the recoridng volume to avoid clipping .


Binny.