Audio Production Laptop

Evenin,

Currently I am in the market and starting research on getting a new Sound Laptop for my use. I am a theater Sound Designer, but also do some mastering and recording. Speaker Sound quality is somewhat important to me because I need to be able to listen to cues about anywhere, with more than myself listening(ie Myself and the Director) and have them sound good. I am currently looking at the Alienware Ozma-M laptop, or the Prostar 4764. I know Sager has been tossed around a lot, however I think(Key word is Think, I believe they are both Clevo Laptops) the prostar is the same as sager and I prefer Prostar(Personal Preference). Money is little object, obviously since I am considering Alienware, however I do prefer AMD 64 processors which is the one thing holding me back from the Ozma-M currently.

I also tend to run Linux for EVERYTHING else except my audio editing and sometimes AutoCad Drafting of sets. As a result I am looking at running Linux and then Running Windows XP Pro SP2 under VMWare in Linux set up to launch specificly those programs. Gaming isnt a big concern for me but I wont complain about it either.

I do have some nice AT headphones and I am looking at picking up another pair of Sennheisers, so that is pretty well covered, and eventually I want to be able to record directly from a Mackie Onyx board I will be getting in about a year(The 1640 I think it is, 16 channel 4 bus) as well as runnning playback off of my laptop. I am very curious to hear other people's opinions on this or recomendations on where to go to look for more info. Thanks

Seablade

Well in as far as recording, the nice thing(And one of the largest reasons I am getting) the Mackie Onyx small format mixer is that it has the option of a direct firewire interface built into it, allowing recording of each channel individually for remixing later as well as two outputs direct to the board.

Fans are definitly a matter of interest to me. I thought I had heard the opposite in as far as which chip was better for power saving, though I could be wrong. Power isnt a huge importance to me though I do like the battery to last at least 2 hours. Thermal is a bit important to me and again I though I heard AMD was worse, so a well designed cooling system makes a huge difference, my current laptop is an HP with one cooling fan in one corner and nothing else and overheats and shuts itself off way to often for my taste, especially when the throtolling for pwoersaving is turned off(Like when I have it plugged in)


In as far as recording hardware though not so much, as I said most of my hardware tends to be along the pro lines anyways, though at least a semi decent sound card able to put out not great but decent sound through its speakers is somewhat important. This is in part why I was considering the ProStar computer due to the added subwoofer in it, while it dont really do crud for a subwoofer, it may add enough depth in the mids to mid lows to make a difference in the listening(Input on this please?. Of course Alienware advertises the speakers in the Ozma as being "Enhanced" which I am curious as what they mean by enhanced(More input if any is out there?. If I do any audio editing though it will be through my headphones, not the speakers so I mainly need them for listening sessions, either with an assistant designer or director, or maybe even more important, interview where I need to show off my portfolio(Though I may just bring speakers for those cases

I would definitly not be recording anything to use for more than personal use through the built in soundcard so that is no issue for me. I have a small studio set up for anything I would use in a show, and mainly recording onto the laptop would be of shows to be mastered later for archiving.

Thanks again
Seablade

Ahh I think you misunderstood what I meant, I was meaning I thought I had heard that AMD chips in general were a bit worse for power saving than pentium chips in general, however I did a lot of research along other courses yesterday and think I may have heard wrong now, the PowerNow technology impressed at least a few people apparently from what I have read.

I also looked at the AMD based Voodoo laptop yesterday and it seems worth a look at the very least to me, comparitive to the Alienware with the features I would like, though I am still looking and hanging on to the hope that with the ODM for alienware now putting out a AMD based board and rumors of the AMD laptops coming from there that they may release an AMD based Ozma on the alienware end which has a very strong possibility of selling me on it right there.

Seablade