Laptop users - advice?

[Drusillus]

Hey guys,

Now that I have my new Fantom-S my thoughts are turning now to getting a laptop to accompany it, for doing external sample editing (transfer via USB), using the FS Librarian and Editor (both over MIDI), and for doing audio recording.

I guess I would be looking at a laptop + an external MIDI/Audio interface, can you guys offer any recommendations on both? In addition to the functionality I mentioned above, I'd want something that is dead easy to set up, I hate having to fight with drivers/ports/technology in general when it's coming between me and the music. I'd likely be using Cubase SX as the audio recording program, so an audio interface that is well known to work with Cubase would be a factor.

[Deceit]

I bought a M-Audio Audiophile USB, which is pretty cheap and very easy to plug in and use. It has 2 ins (one L/one R balanced or unbalanced) (you can use them as mono as well and if you want to plug more instruments at a time, get a mixer man :D) - you can get better information on the related sites! It's probably the cheapest for its capabilities, and M-Audio cards are ALWAYS interfaces you can trust on blindfolded. Quality is cd-like. I suggest you anyway to buy a mixer, if you ever plan to record a band or more than one keyboard or you want to record individual outs (do you have them on Fantom-S?).
As for the laptop, you have to care about three things, which are in order:
1. CPU (more than 1 GHz for sure!)
2. RAM (512 mb at least)
3. HD (40 gb would be enough to record, store, load samples)
And remember, don't overload your laptop. If it is your DAW (digital audio workstation), then install only the essential. Reduce your Windows XP *pro, thanks* load to the minimum - no msn, no internet report, no games, crap and such stuff.
Good luck and take care,
Deceit.

[Ael]

Yea, get the M-Audio thing he was talking about...as for a PC...it doesn't matter what you have on it, to be honest...I mean, granted if you shove 30GB of stuff on a 40GB hard drive it will run slow, but in the long run, the difference between XP Pro (full) and the "minimum" won't hold you back from recording...trust me, I know...I used to do video editing and photoshop things like that and it didn't matter how much XP was installed...I just needed a few things:

1) Your memory for any type of editing is essential - I have a gig of ram on my laptop, and it doesn't slow down one bit. You can go to http://www.crucial.com/ for ram, it's pretty cheap there compared to getting it upgraded on ur laptop for a site.

2) Your hard drive space...40GB is cool, but now laptops have much bigger drives, take advantage of this and get a 60GB drive, they're not as expensive as they used to

3) Think of the type of media drive you want, have a burner on there to burn your files.

4) Make sure you have a decent sound card that is supported by whatever software you use (don't get a crap generic soundcard, look for a laptop with a pretty decent brand sound card).


5) Your CPU power shouldn't be hard to get over 1.0ghz, mine is a Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz), which is like having a 3.4GHz Pentium 4...then again I was recording stuff on my PIII 700MHz laptop...and things didn't die then...you wanna get a laptop with a Pentium M processor in it at about 1.8/2.0GHz to run comfortably so you dont have to worry about it dying on you in a few years.

I think that's all I can offer as help...don't load tons of stuff on it like Deceit said, but in terms of installing XP Pro, just do full install, it won't matter in the long run...just then make sure you update it and then just install your sound software packages and you should be in good shape.

[MoonDark]

I have always loved mac, but they are expensive... any G4 powerbook should fill your needs anyway...

[Drusillus]

Hey guys, thanks for your comments.

Ael, when you say that I should look for a decent sound card, how important is that really going to be? If I have a USB Audio interface, incoming audio is going to be coming through that, so all the on-board sound card will be doing is WAV playback. If I'm not sending a signal into it (i.e. don't have to worry about latency, etc) does the internal soundcard matter that much?

[Georges]

As for the laptop, you have to care about three things, which are in order:
1. CPU (more than 1 GHz for sure!)
2. RAM (512 mb at least)
3. HD (40 gb would be enough to record, store, load samples)


Consider to double the specs for CPU, for laptop CPUs are always slower than their desktop counterparts (in order to save energy and to avoid overheating). So I'd go at least for 2 GHz, but I guess you won't get below anymore anyways these days ...

[Ael]

I haven't even see a laptop much below 2.4ghz these days...