Best Laptop PC for Music Production?

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ReddHarlemX said:
Don't care about his previous posts, just that one didn't make any sense to me. Like what percs are there to having A desktop compared to a laptop?
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It is blatantly obvious what perks a desktop has compared to a laptop but yes we can appreciate that a laptop these days will cover much more than what is needed to make beats or do music production.
 
ReddHarlemX said:
Don't care about his previous posts, just that one didn't make any sense to me. Like what percs are there to having A desktop compared to a laptop?
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A desktop allows you to select a more powerful CPU, add more RAM, connect hard drives directly to the MB for streaming audio, add a resource friendly dual head graphics card and 2 screens for an extended desktop as well as use PCI cards that outperform both USB and FireWire....add some properly positioned studio monitors and a few control surfaces and the concept of a laptop's portability offers very little advantage when it comes to production.
 
Well someone could want them both like me. I have custom build PC with enough power and ram to use any plugins, vst etc that i want. But i would like to have an laptop too. I usually find myself to be most creative when i'm travelling or when i sit in a park. I would love to have a nice macbook pro, but i think its more usefull to spend more money on interface, acoustics etc as macbook pro with good hardware costs around 1800 dollars -,-. So does anyone know a good PC for music production around 1000 dollars? I'd like it to have SSD drive and at least 8gb of ram + i5 processor.
 
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I honestly wouldn't spend more than $400 on a laptop. I'm not saying its a bad idea to get one just that the extra $ you'd spend could be spent on other music equipment for a/the home studio. If anyone is actually a traveling artist i can understand dropping a decent amount of money on a good laptop that will run everything smoothly. It would be pretty nice to go out to a beach and make some music but i wouldn't try to complete what i was making at the beach. It'd basically just be used for coming up with ideas to bring back to the lab to mix/master.

Been using a crappy Toshiba laptop for the longest but ill agree with the Macbook Pro for top choices.
 
The short-sightedness in this thread is amazing.

Portability. Some of you seem to not get it. I play shows miles away from my home. I am gone from my studio for days at a time. I don't dj from my laptop, but others do. When I'm alone in a hotel with nothing but my laptop and a set of headphones, I get ideas for songs. If I don't get them into my computer I lose them. My studio is much more expansive than a computer and headphones, however I do not need my entire setup for the jotting down of musical ideas. Ever heard of iMaschine? Its an iphone app for Maschine made for this specific purpose. Just because you guys can't wrap your head around the fact that some producers don't get to spend 12+ hours a day locked away in a studio doesn't make everyone that wants a production capable laptop wrong. Get over yourself.
 
K1Bass said:
Just because you guys can't wrap your head around the fact that some producers don't get to spend 12+ hours a day locked away in a studio doesn't make everyone that wants a production capable laptop wrong. Get over yourself.
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That wasn't the scenario. Nice first post, maybe you should make a new account.
 
:offtopic: What the hell? The man said he wanted a PC laptop, help him find one. Don't water the thread down with opinions about other stuff. Now I don't get any good advice either. OP, if you're still around, you may want to check out the Asus Zenbook series. They're not the most acclaimed machines of all time but they have a few unique features they may appeal to you: Metal chassis, solid state hard drive, and a supposedly awesome sound card. And they're tiny. Might be a great choice, especially for live work or ITB on the go.
 
Haha Snugglepuff the question was answered within the first couple of posts. Then it strayed into the Laptop VS Desktop stuff.
 
some people ( like me ) are not always in the studio. i'm a college student and I already own a Mac Pro at home. A decent laptop for on-the-go would suffice for the time i spend outside of the studio that way if i'm killing time somewhere i can easily do some producing or mixing at will on a laptop that can handle it. Between classes, hanging out with friends at their homes, jam sessions, trips out of town, it's always good to have a means of playing or creating music on the spot. It's 2012 and music production is becoming ever more easily portable..why not utilize it? By the way, I am still searching for a good laptop for music production..hopefully something at least rating 8 out of 10 for it's purpose.
 
I google searched and it brought me to this thread, I was surprised more people aren't more knowledgeable about PC vs. Laptop specs these days. Mac Pro's are good, but very expensive for what your doing. For audio production, you would probably have to get the external interfaces anyway, but having a laptop with similar if not better specs then a PC is very doable.

SSD's are dropping in price, I have one in my desktop and wouldn't ever purchase a spinning hard drive again, put that in a laptop and you have better performance and battery life.

I've seen crazy amounts of decent ram 8+GB which is WAY more than enough, I've been running 4 GB in my desktop for 3 years now and it does plenty.

The new Ivy Bridge core i7's/i5's are beasts no matter which application, and I dont think that the desktop and mobile processors even differ since the new chips are very small. They make video/audio encoding/decoding (very very CPU intense) very easy nowadays.

Video cards aren't really necessary, just nice to have, especially if the GUI of whatever mixing program you use is semi-intense, but from what I hear about the Ivy Bridge's they have decent on board video.

Having an external sound card or interface is somewhat necessary, there's nothing great on the market that they put into laptops these days, either way you'd have to buy it for the desktop or laptop, whichever you chose. Yes having a PC is nice for upgrades, but hardware is VASTLY surpassing software, multi-core processors are getting less power hungry and more powerful and VERY reliable. If you spent around 1000-1500 on a decent laptop with above mentioned hardware, you'd be set for a while. Make sure you get one with a few USB ports for expandability... that's probably the only place I'd say desktop over laptop...even then, USB hubs are options.

Hope I didn't offend anyone, trying to help out OP.
 
drant22 said:
I google searched and it brought me to this thread, I was surprised more people aren't more knowledgeable about PC vs. Laptop specs these days. Mac Pro's are good, but very expensive for what your doing. For audio production, you would probably have to get the external interfaces anyway, but having a laptop with similar if not better specs then a PC is very doable.

SSD's are dropping in price, I have one in my desktop and wouldn't ever purchase a spinning hard drive again, put that in a laptop and you have better performance and battery life.

I've seen crazy amounts of decent ram 8+GB which is WAY more than enough, I've been running 4 GB in my desktop for 3 years now and it does plenty.

The new Ivy Bridge core i7's/i5's are beasts no matter which application, and I dont think that the desktop and mobile processors even differ since the new chips are very small. They make video/audio encoding/decoding (very very CPU intense) very easy nowadays.

Video cards aren't really necessary, just nice to have, especially if the GUI of whatever mixing program you use is semi-intense, but from what I hear about the Ivy Bridge's they have decent on board video.

Having an external sound card or interface is somewhat necessary, there's nothing great on the market that they put into laptops these days, either way you'd have to buy it for the desktop or laptop, whichever you chose. Yes having a PC is nice for upgrades, but hardware is VASTLY surpassing software, multi-core processors are getting less power hungry and more powerful and VERY reliable. If you spent around 1000-1500 on a decent laptop with above mentioned hardware, you'd be set for a while. Make sure you get one with a few USB ports for expandability... that's probably the only place I'd say desktop over laptop...even then, USB hubs are options.

Hope I didn't offend anyone, trying to help out OP.
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Because tower systems don't need to run on battery power and have room enough for better (quieter) cooling systems and additional components you can put a more powerful processor in a desktop, however as the market demands more mobile processors it's going to have a flow on effect that will result in a more level playing field.

External interfaces use middleman bullshit like USB compared to cards that make direct connections to the mother board so there is a performance advantage to using such a card in a tower system.

When it comes to serious sample based instruments you want a lot of RAM or a second hard drive and laptops force a compromise on both accounts when compared to a tower system.

Despite the size of the tower I have tucked away out of sight my desk is actually neater that that of a laptop user because I don't have hard drives and shit hanging off wires everywhere and the actual laptop itself takes up quite a lot of desk space compared to having just a screen, like for the same desk real estate I can put my pad controller right in front of one of my screens whereas you can't put a laptop keyboard in a draw to save space, and once you configure a laptop for serious production work what was the point of shopping for portability?
 
Laptop for Music Production

Hello,

I am about to buy a laptop for music production. I want a laptop, mobile machine for travelling.
I am using East West Quantum Leap Complete Composer Collection and Adobe Premiere CS6 so the most important criterias to me are memory RAM and processor - 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3612QM and 16GB RAM [upgradable to 32 – Ivy Bridge technology]. It should cost in maximum around 2.000,00 -2.500,00 dollars.

Let me ask you for few questions please.

1. Do you have any recommendation tip to this?
2. If you use laptop for music production what model is it? Are you satisfied with it?

I have made a list of several tips:

A] Dell Mobile Precision M4700 16.0GB, DDR3-1866MHz SDRAM, 4 DIMMS 3rd Gen Intel® Core™ i7-3740QM Processor (2.7GHz, 6M cache, Upgradable to Intel® vPro™ technology) 128GB (SATA3) Solid State Mini-card Driv + 750GB 2.5" 7200rpm Hard Drive, 2nd $2,404.00


B] Dell XPS 15 16GB3 DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3612QM processor (6M Cache, up to 3.1 GHz) 512GB SSD $2,299.00


C] Alienware M17X 16GB (4 X 4GB) Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-
3630QM (6MB Cache, up to 3.4GHz w/ Turbo Boost 2.0) 750GB 7,200 RPM + 32GB mSATA Caching SSD $1,899.00


3. What do you think about my tips?

4. What other criteria should be considered [hard drive speed, kind and number of ports]

5. Do you have any experience with laptop-shipping from US to EU? I guess that Alienware [Dell] does not have any subsidiary in Europe.

Thank you for any shared advise.

KR, zo1
 
I've been looking at getting a new laptop myself and I know you can get quadcore laptops for £500 now but what do you guys think of the MSI GE60/70 for music production? It's for gaming but do you think it'll be any more better for music production than something like a Acer Aspire 5755G? thanks

http://soundcloud.com/kroduction
 
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hollandturbine said:
Why the hell are so many people constantly going out of their way to get wimpy portable computers for music production? what's the plan, take your laptop, external hard drive, external audio interface, studio monitors and keyboard to the cafe or park for a spot of light beat making?
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I know for me, I spend a couple months every year on the road, and I try to continue producing even then. Having a portable production computer is a must have for traveling artists/producers.

Having a more powerful desktop would be nice, but its just not an option for some of us.
 
Came here out of frustration with my Core i5 Asus Slate. Here are my thoughts:

Laptop vs Desktop: Laptop wins in most areas because I can't bring my desktop to every jam session and come tumbling down the stairs with it and spending 30 minutes with the wires, table, and bla bla bla. Bringing a full size 88 keyboard is hard enough! Laptop sucks only with the price range, speed and everything else is more than fine.

Laptop performance by category:

Processor: Anything with a fast Core i7 should serve you well when you got multiple instruments sounding off. To put it into perspective..an Intel Core i7 3630QM which can be found in laptops anywhere from $700-$1200 is just a little slower than the desktop i7 2600k which my brother uses for rendering 3D environments, Battlefield 3 with all the bells and whistles enabled and other things.

Soundcard: Sound quality doesn't REALLY matter. Like, really - you're already upsampling from your ASIO driver, your synthesizer is running at an insane bitrate, you have some insane samples coming in at 24bit 96khz and what do you do? You render at 320kb/s or at best CD quality. Anything more is really just for yourself or a few other individuals not the masses. I was shocked as hell when I got some high end shure IEMs and I was still eaking out great quality from a meek 160kb/s MP3 file. Not saying high bitrate or loseless has no place (my library is mostly loseless), I'm just saying most people don't have the hardware or speakers to really get the most out of it. Unless this is the last machine your song is going to grace before being put on CD's - I wouldn't put a lot of water in the soundcard. And like other users have said - you can always get an external one with more than a few line in's and outs for you and your buddies.


RAM: Never had a problem with 4GB ram. Came a bit close at times though. 4GB is considered weak these days though.

USB: The more the merrier! Last thing you want is swaping in and out constantly. Be careful because USB hubs won't enable all devices! My keyboard and mouse will go in fine but a lone usb piano keyboard will get detected and light up but not work. Some devices won't go through a hub. For what it's worth - having only two USB slots is a living hell. I have to choose between MIDI keyboard + external soundcard and Mouse + Keyboard. So be careful if you want to get an UltraBook or something that looks nice but has just a few measly USB ports.

Screen estate: If I had a dime for everytime I had to minimize, and re-open a window because I had no space in my work environment with 1200x800 I'd have $100! I would opt for a 1920x1200 screen.

Harddrive - 1 TB should be fine unless you got a lot of money to throw at every sample/loop pack known to man.

Battery life, GPU, camera, optical drive and the rest are just extras.
 
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this is a great post. i'm in the same boat right now. looking to spend 1,000 on a laptop top produce my music. so far most of these replys are great. thanks a lot guys. i've heard i need 8 gigs of ram and an i7 processor. how good is the HP Pavilion DV7t? someone told me to get an Asir or Toshiba with beats audio. does anyone else have any suggestions? i'll be producing mix tape tracks as well as recording guitar.
 
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hollandturbine said:
Why the hell are so many people constantly going out of their way to get wimpy portable computers for music production? what's the plan, take your laptop, external hard drive, external audio interface, studio monitors and keyboard to the cafe or park for a spot of light beat making?
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Wow- why so angry and angressive? Tour buses dude- can't really take my desktop on a bus with me to do edits to my material now can i?? I'm making an educated guess though that that's not a problem you have, or ever will have to deal with....LOL
 
Groover335 said:
Wow- why so angry and angressive? Tour buses dude- can't really take my desktop on a bus with me to do edits to my material now can i?? I'm making an educated guess though that that's not a problem you have, or ever will have to deal with....LOL
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My point is quite simple, most people who buy laptops for production don't have a legitimate need for portability and I want them to think about what it is costing them.

It's not like there are huge convoys of busses teaming with laptop producers criss crossing the country, or all the venues are booked out because every second person has a laptop, the reality is a lot of people buy laptops and never even move them.
 
i believe that there is no such thing as best laptop for music production...each of us is unique and we have different needs...so decide what's most important to you and build your computer around that!
 
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