Audio production notebook for student

I also make music.

Get a lot of RAM. Very important when composing music with a computer. I just ordered an ASUS M6BNE from geared2play.com and I put 1024mb in it. That should be sufficient for a while. I'll let you know how it is after I get it if you haven't come up with something by then.

I'd recommend at least an 80gb HDD. When working with sound, you tend to eat up space very quickly. The 5400rpm drives are just fine. I've never noticed a difference, really.

You'll see a wide range of different opinions on laptop displays. Personally, I went with the WXGA because the real estate will come in handy when working with multiple audio programs.

If you haven't already, you should check out the forums over at em411.com. They have a section dedicated to electronic music production which includes hardware/computers and software. There doesn't seem to be much discussion on the creation of music with notebooks here -- not even in the proper category.

What kind of stuff are you into?

I strongly recommend against using a notebook for Audio editing. There are problems with optical drive compatibility with certain software and laptops are NOISY (not just sound but electrically).

I would invest in a silent desktop with passive cooling...maybe the reserator (Zalman) for cooling and Seagate Hard Drives (the quietest 7200 rpm HDDs out there).

Keeping all your bits intact should be your priority when you are dealing with high fidelity audio

No, the above mentioned 80g harddrive is not enough. If you are going to be doing lots of multitracking. Your best bet for recording is a Apple G5. They are silent beyond belief, both electrically and audibly. If you got the money, go for the dual 2.5ghz, throw 4g ram in there, maybe a 20" studio display. Then get a digitech 002, with protools. That IS the way to go. If you are on a budget, I'd still advise setting an older G4 and getting atleast an MBox with protools. If you are going into music, you WILL use protools a college, and you WILL work on macs. GL

What gsferrari said against using a notebook, he is very right. The most silent notebook I've heard is my 1.5ghz 17" powerbook. If you can afford a high end powerbook and max out the ram, it can be great for even recording with little noise, however a desktop solution is the best way to go. Be sure to get a good monitor too, you don't want too many 18k humps in your mix, ugh. Be weary of electrical noise, you won't hear it, but there is the 40 cycle hum of electricy, and many other things.

The guy said he is going to do some music production for his band. I don't think that he needs the end of all laptop/desktop.

The most important thing here is the quality of the sound card / sound sub-system on the laptop, and secondly, the fan noise. Therefore, I'd pick a silent Pentium M notebook, if you are going for a PC. I can recommend HP nw series business notebooks. HP nw8240 is a fine notebook for $2199. nw8000 goes for 1900-2400 euros in Europe. With luck you may find a good inexpensive notebook, but I'd not buy any cheap ones without first confirming the quality of their audio subsystems and the loudness of the fan noise during recording.

Apple Powerbook is a good choice, too, since it is fanless.

I would assume he'd be using some type of external USB or Firewire based sound solution on a notebook. They aren't that expensive and they'll allow many more interface options. That should eliminate most of the noise issues. Fans and such shouldn't be an issue at all. Assuming he's mic'ing everything properly or creating the sounds digitallys(again, synthesis should be done via an external sound unit), noise just won't be a big issue.

If you're worried about "optical drive compatibility", that'll potentially be a problem unless you do a custom build. You can always get an external drive if necessary to burn to. Or if you're referring to the issues some people have with burning off DVD's, when the hard drive and DVD+/-R are on the same bus, just get a laptop that offers a SATA hard drive instead.

I've been out of the laptop arena for a long time. However, about 6 years ago, my friend was using an old PII laptop with no real issues to do some pretty solid recording. he had a PCMCIA SCSI card in it and also had an external sound card(can't remember the type). It did really well. Unless he's going hardcore, most laptops will be fine. I do think an Apple would be preferable, but not required.

gsferrari is of course right when you are talking about serious production, but for most home studio type stuff a notebook with a good firewire or usb interface can work fine.

Number one thing though I would look at, Cooling system.

Is it going to be annoyingly loud, or otherwise incompetant and not able to cool your notebook? I recently got burned by this in my last notebook, got a powerbook now and love it really.

Anyways, go with a 7200 RPM drive if you will be doing multitrack work, either external or internal, many people prefer to work on an external drive for their audio though, I am sure there are reasons but it does come down a lot to personal preference. From the sounds of it you wont be doing a lot of tracks simultaneously so a single external drive should do it for you on a fast interface/bus(Important factor many people forget about) If you can get a firewire 800 drive and use firewire 400 or USB for your interface. Try to keep both devices on their own bus on your computer, can be REALLY tough to do if you arent careful in a laptop, but it will help prevent dropouts and such.

Hitachi also makes a nice quiet 7200 RPM drive just for the record. I would definitly get either them or seagate though myself, not only for the noise but also for the quality. I would try to keep your audio on a seperate partition at the very least, but preferably on a seperate HD from everything else so your OS isnt trying to cache memory on it, or load your antivirus program in the middle of a recording session from it(Another topic of evil right there in itself, you never want your AV running in recording really)

Again check your cooling system

Go with the Pentium M or the Turion(AMD 64) chips. You dont gain much over the M going to the P4 from what I have heard, and it greatly increases the load on the cooling system, thus inducing noise from your fans etc.

By the way music majors quite often dont deal with recording at all, it all depends on the college you go to and there are plenty of options out there to choose from. Personally I wouldnt be using PT at all myself except I gotta do video and was already halfway done with a project in it from something else and really dont wanna redo it all PT M-Box or M-Powered setup is a good choice though for something that you can be relatively certain wont get dropped quickly and will be reasonably well supported. Personally from the sounds of it though I would get an M-Audio interface, and wait on the protools until you are sure you want to spend the money on it, then get the M-Powered version they just released. That is essentially what I did on my newer laptop(Powerbook G4).

Have fun.

Seablade

The ZALMAN Reserator looks interesting if you want a quiet desktop. They also have completely passive cooled desktop solutions which could be perfect for A/V professionals.
More for Audio than anything else because bit corruption is a HUGE problem in laptops and noisy gaming desktops.

Keep things cool, remove as many sources of EMF that you can (fans etc.) and you will thank yourself.

Also - you dont need a 6800 utra to do video and audio editing

Actually Zalman released a completly silent case not to long ago for audio work Only 1200 dollars Not a bad case though, seems they did a good job building it.

But yea the resorator is a more affordable solution that I was looking at for a completly silent PC(No moving parts at all) that seemed worth it, I have heard pretty good things about it.

Seablade

>ok, total idiot question: having the drive and the interface on seperate buses is a software thing, not a hardware thing, right? or do i have to look for something special when i'm shopping around.


Nope it is hardware. And it is not a stupid question. Unfortunatly it can be very difficult to tell if they are on the same bus or not at times. It can be somewhat of a lucky guess for notebooks especially.

In as far as the graphics are concerned, I Have no clue, someone else can field that one, but I would imagine it would depend entierly on the graphics chip not nessecarily on wether it is integrated or seperate. But that is my guess.

Seablade

i'd personally get a powerbook if i ever wanted a portable music recording studio b/c there's a lot of mac-only software for sound/music that just blows away other stuff on the pc (i.e. Digital Performer, Logic Pro, etc) and almost every audio related software on the pc is available on the mac (i.e. sibelius or finale if you do composing) except for stupid Sony Sound Forge

of course a mac desktop would be more ideal for working with media editing in general

though i game a lot so im a pc-boy in the meantime

sub-$2000 is fine - basically you cant go wrong with whatever you choose powerbook or z71v

Just because you dont use it or know its there doesnt mean its not good Personally I prefer a free peice of software availiable on linux for my straight audio work and is very comparable to PT called Ardour. Rezound for single file editing for loops, I have yet to find anything on any platform comparable to its ingenuity and ease at creating looping sounds, and it is still in pre-beta stages Heck even found a use for a mainly Midi sequencer with some limited audio capability named Rosegarden in live performance use, that I would rather use that than Live or PT or anything to that effect.

Admitedly though I use PT for any audio synced to video right now, just not straight audio work.

So really you cant say that any peice of software blows away everything else when a lot of time it will come down to personal preference and what you are using it for.

Seablade

All that being said a powerbook is a good quality laptop, just overpriced.

what I think you're refering to is jitter caused by the radiations inside the box right? I believe the important thing is to have the AD converters outside the box where they can be electrically shielded.

don't understand what you mean with optical drive compatibility. Never had problems.

water cooling is definitely NOT required for an audio system. people usually confuse gaming rigs with DAWs. They require very different approaches.

the noisy components are in fact important if you're doing live instruments recordings. If you don't a band yet and are just starting go slow. get an easy software package that you like and learn it. reason may be a good start. Or maybe Live4 or traktion and some plug-ins.

Check www.kvraudio.com for more info on that

how can you say that the number of mac only stuff is way more the PC only???

also, can you comment on the stability of the mac versions??

native instruments, steinberg and ableton come to mind...

I've been working with a Sager NP3790. Very stable. Pentium-Ms are very good for audio work. There are people that prefer other of course. Macs are overpriced computers that I'd recommend if you don't have a troubleshooting-prone mind. If installing drivers and solve everyday windows problems seems like trouble to you get a mac. It'll be the best thing you'll ever do. Otherwise you'll be wasting your money. definatly not my choice for a VST based DAW. Strictly for audio recording, and if I had extra bucks to spend...you'd might get me, but not in this situation. Win XP is a very good and stable system.

I have a mac so don't come with the "you don't get it" thing. It's just a design based hype.

For HDs it depends the kind of work you want to do. Notebooks are not very good and IDE transfers so there's a bottleneck in there that goes beyond the HDs. Even though I was with a 7200rpm 60Gb HD I could record 8 (mono) tracks simultaneously with 8 other playing and 70%cpu at 512k buffer size. No chokes. couldn'record more than that though. with a desktop system you can go beyond that but I think today's laptops are very capable.