Will My laptop be able to handle it!!!!

D

Dreday

New member
I recently bought a laptop for music production, I'm uncertain if the laptop i have will be capable of handling the many programs and software and production that will be used. I have a list of all the programs at the bottom with links, can you please assure me that i made the right decision. I'm not the biggest computer nerd so please help me out!

- Toshiba Satellite C55 4gb memory 500 gb harddrive

Toshiba Satellite C55-A5300 Laptop

- FL studio producers edition
- refx Nexus
- sylenth 1
[h=3]- ominisphere[/h]
 
Dreday said:
I recently bought a laptop for music production, I'm uncertain if the laptop i have will be capable of handling the many programs and software and production that will be used. I have a list of all the programs at the bottom with links, can you please assure me that i made the right decision. I'm not the biggest computer nerd so please help me out!

- Toshiba Satellite C55 4gb memory 500 gb harddrive

Toshiba Satellite C55-A5300 Laptop

- FL studio producers edition
- refx Nexus
- sylenth 1
- ominisphere
Click to expand...

It really depends on the size of your projects. What are you going to work with mainly? Do you want to record instruments or vocals? Or only using samples and VST plugins? I have an old Lenovo T61 with Live 9 and it can handle a few instances of Nexus and Sylenth pretty well in projects with 16-20 tracks, although not all of my tracks are instrument tracks. I've never tried Omnisphere but it is said to be quite CPU and RAM hungry. But when you fell your system is getting clogged up, you can freeze vst tracks into audio, which use much less CPU power.
 
picur85 said:
It really depends on the size of your projects. What are you going to work with mainly? Do you want to record instruments or vocals? Or only using samples and VST plugins? I have an old Lenovo T61 with Live 9 and it can handle a few instances of Nexus and Sylenth pretty well in projects with 16-20 tracks, although not all of my tracks are instrument tracks. I've never tried Omnisphere but it is said to be quite CPU and RAM hungry. But when you fell your system is getting clogged up, you can freeze vst tracks into audio, which use much less CPU power.
Click to expand...

no intstruments or vocals,

just samples and vsts.
 
This laptop is good but I don't really think it's processor can handle a full on music production with a ton of tracks. This laptop is more of an everyday, surf the internet and check emails kind of laptop. If its all you can afford though try to stick with it for now. You will at least be able to learn on it and make some small projects on it. You will probably definitely need an upgrade in the near future if you get serious about music production and find your projects start ending up with a tons of tracks, virtual instuments, and plugins. It will be able to run the programs you've listed I'm sure, but how many instances I'm unsure. You will just have to find out for yourself. Good luck!
 
with those programs, when i upgrade what should i look for in my next computer. (ram, memory) and with a budget of 500-600
 
I wouldn't recommend this laptop for audio.

It's a dual core 1.8GHz Celeron, with a 5,400rpm HD and 4GB of RAM.

Consider that Windows 7 is ram heavy itself and I uses like 2GB of RAM already. So... one large Omnisphere patch would knock out your RAM right there. And if it didn't... I'm sure the 2nd patch would finish it off :). That just means that you wouldn't be able to load a ton of patches. I think 6GB of RAM is the bare bare minimum you'd want... but 8GB is the lowest I'd ever recommend for current audio production w/ Omnisphere and VSTs like that.

The processor would handle a couple of VSTs... but nothing significant. I'd imagine being able to load an Omnisphere instance, a Nexus, a Sylenth, maybe a few stock plugins and that's it. Just a ball park guess. When I was on a 1.8ghz Single Core Celeron.. I could load approx 4-5 VST instruments of that caliber, and maybe an Amplitube if I was lucky. So... this computer would do a little better but not by much. I'm surprised they still even sell 1.8ghz Celeron's honestly, given all the advancements. I think they're just trying to make money on people who need a cheap computer that will be excellent for web surfing, music playback (not production), and MS Office use.

If you want a laptop to produce, look for at bare minimum a laptop with a decent clocked i5, 7200rpm HD (or swap it yourself with an SSD), and 8GB of ram. That should be something you can work on. I haven't price checked but I'd assume you could find one for around the $600+ mark. Load up Windows 8.1 on it. It's a lighter OS and I find it great for audio. Just as good, or maybe better than Win 7
 
Oh, also... I would consider running a program that isn't super CPU intensive. Going the VST route really begins to require a lot of computing power depending on what you're using and how many instruments, plugins, & tracks you're running.

But... I used Reason on my old laptop with the 1.8GHz Celeron and it worked great for many years. That was Reason 3 at the time. Reason seems to be very light on the system overall. It's a great choice on a laptop if you can't afford the most powerful laptops out and you NEED a laptop. (Honestly.. I think building your own desktop is the absolute best choice for price & power).
 
Dreday said:
I recently bought a laptop for music production, I'm uncertain if the laptop i have will be capable of handling the many programs and software and production that will be used. I have a list of all the programs at the bottom with links, can you please assure me that i made the right decision. I'm not the biggest computer nerd so please help me out!

- Toshiba Satellite C55 4gb memory 500 gb harddrive

Toshiba Satellite C55-A5300 Laptop

- FL studio producers edition
- refx Nexus
- sylenth 1
- ominisphere
Click to expand...

That's why you must do a research before getting new equipment. You basically can run a "normal" version of FL Studio, which takes up 4gb of ram, and also you have a "Lite" version which takes fewer (don't remember if it's 2gb or 3gb). Both "versions" are installed when you buy it.

Now, keep in mind that the ram is used to store sounds that you are using on your productions (wav files loaded into the playlist) but the sounds generated by synths are rendered "on the fly", using your processor.

Sweeping through the Specs part in the link you provided showed me that this Celeron processor can't handle that much. You'll probably get problems with rendering the sounds inside the synths.

I advice you to search another computer for music. A good gamer laptop (or desktop) should do the trick. It doesn't need to be a high end one, just one with better specs than this one.
 
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