Recommended laptop models

[Chris Beuermann]

Hello everyone,

We always get alot of questions from customers regarding which laptop to buy. This is always a difficult question to answer for us, because there are many factors like driver / hardware combinations involved. A different audio interface for example, could cause troubles on a certain system.

Perhaps it is interesting/helpful to see which setup you and other users here use (PC and Mac).

Please post here your working laptop (PC/Mac) setup with the following information:

• 1. Manufacturer
• 2. Model
• 3. Operating System
• 4. CPU and speed
• 5. Amount of RAM
• 6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type)
• 7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version
• 8. Which Steinberg software and version
• 9. What kind of projects

Please keep this topic discussion free.

Gr,

Chris

[Chris Beuermann]

1. Manufacturer: Acer

2. Model: Aspire 5100

3. Operating System: Windows XP SP3

4. CPU and speed: AMD Turion 2000 Mhz

5. Amount of RAM: 1 Gb

6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type): 160 Gb 5200 Rpm internal

7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version: Steinberg MR816X driver version 1.6.0

8. Which Steinberg software and version: Cubase 5.5.1

9. What kind of projects: 16 channel live-recording 24-bit 44,1 Khz

Remark: ACPI mode from the battery should be turned off in the device manager of the operating system to avoid dropouts.

[Chris Young]

This works well for me...

* 1. Manufacturer -
Dell
* 2. Model
Studio 17
* 3. Operating System
Win7 64bit Pro
* 4. CPU and speed
i7 Q720 (1.6 Ghz, 4 physical cores, 8 virtual cores, core parking turned off so all cores are running all the time)
* 5. Amount of RAM
8 Gb DDR3 1333 mhz
* 6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type)
two internal 500 Gb 7200 rpm
* 7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version
MOTU Ultralite Mk3 (using a firewire express card with TI chipset, not the internal 1394 port)
* 8. Which Steinberg software and version
Cubase 5.5.2
* 9. What kind of projects
Home studio hobbyist

[Brendan Woithe]

* 1. Manufacturer : Apple (someone had to say it)
* 2. Model : Macbook Pro (various - 2007 to 2010) - all 15" models
* 3. Operating System : all on OS X 10.6.5 currently
* 4. CPU and speed : Core 2 Duo 2.1 up to Core I5
* 5. Amount of RAM : Minimum 2GB, Max 8GB
* 6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type) : Internal 120GB to 500GB. External : Mainly lacie rugged HD's (FW400/800) but recently a little raid 1 2x2.5" yumcha box thats getting me amazing throughput.
* 7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version : Metric Halo 2882 and ULN-8
* 8. Which Steinberg software and version : Nuendo 5.x and Cubase 5.x
* 9. What kind of projects : The lowest machine has very successfully run 60track plus sound design and music projects from the internal drive. The newest machine ran a project that my oldest mac pro (2006) could not run (Spectrasonics VSTi's, loads of audio, video, altiverb etc. BUT - the one caveat is that buffers are always around 512 or 1024.

[bevis]

* 1. Sony
* 2. Vaio F-series
* 3. Windows 7 64bit
* 4. quad core i7
* 5. 6Gb
* 6. Internal SATA 7200rpm
* 7. M-Audio Fast Track Ultra
* 8. Cubase 5.5 32bit + many soft synths
* 9. House & Trance, Hammond & Guitar

Works very well; stable setup.

When plugged into the mains needs to be pushed very hard to reach any ASIO / disk / CPU limits (I run 20+ tracks of soft synths & effects without problems). When on battery its performance is not so good.

[LQM]

1. Dell
2. XPS M1530
3. Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit SP2 (no worries, especially since SP2)
4. Core2Duo T8100 (2.1 Ghz)
5. 4GB
6. internal SATA 320 GB 5400 rpm WD Scorpio (performs better than some 7200 rpm drives) and maxtor one touch ultra III 300GB (7200 rpm)external connected with usb 2.0 (works better than firewire, it can do both).
7. Alesis IO14 and Echo Indigo I/O expresscard (the latter is better for mixing with lower latency but has no preamps, the former provides 4 XLRs, decent converters (cirrus logic) and is a solid unit but not the best for latency due to firewire issues on laptop with ricoh chipset, but has a direct monitoring option which works well)
8. Cubase 5.5.2 32 bit
9. Home projects, mastering work, occasional collabs or recording other artists.

[galvinstephen]

Remark: ACPI mode from the battery should be turned off in the device manager of the operating system to avoid dropouts.[/quote]

Sorry. Wrong thread.

Can you expand on this remark? How to turn off ACPI in Windows 7.
Device Manager has a list.
We can see ' Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery' as a sub-heading of 'Batteries' and 'ACPI Fixed Feature Button', 'ACPI Lid' and 'ACPI Thermal Zone' as a subheading of 'System Devices'.


Many thanks
Stephen.

[Hugh]

Hello,

1 - Apple
2 - MacBookPro 4,1 + 5,1 + 6,1
3 - 10.5.8 + 10.6.5
4 - Core2Duo and i7, from 2.33GHz to 2.8GHz
5 - 4G and 8G
6 - Internal plus various external - Avastor, RocStor, G-drive
7 - MadiFace, Digiface, Multiface, Motu Ultralite, latest drivers
8 - Nuendo 5.1
9 - Television audio production and post production

Our large recordings are on a Win7/64 dual-madi machine. The projects used to be loaded into the above laptops for content cuts and prelim edits. With recent larger projects we can't load them due to excessive ram consumption, so two machines have PT9 because Nuendo 4/5 can't load the projects on laptops. Unfortunately these PT9 editors are not coming back to Nuendo.

Hugh

[prajnaimmovable]

1- LENOVO
2- T510
3- WINDOWS 7 64BIT
4- INTEL i5 CORE 2.66MHZ
5- 4GB DDR3
6- SEAGATE 500GB HDD 7200R.P.M INTERNAL
7- ECHO AUDIO FIREWIRE PRE8
8- CUBASE 5.5.2
9- VOCAL TRANCE, R&B, HIP-HOP

I USE THIS SETUP IN MY PROJECT STUDIO WITH A ROLAND FANTOM X8, AND A FOCUSRITE ISA-ONE, SUMMIT AUDIO TLA-50, AND A SUMMIT AUDIO FEQ-50. FORGET ABOUT A MAC BOOK PRO, LENOVO IS THE WAY TO GO. THIS IS THE BEST LAPTOP --- MAC OR PC, THAT WILL NEVER CRASH ON YOU. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR . AND YOU CAN RUN ANY CUBASE SOFTWARE AND I STAKE MY AUDIO REP. ON IT . LENOVO T51O OR LENOVO W510/w i7 in it. http://www.lenovo.com

[prajnaimmovable]

1- LENOVO
2- T510
3- WINDOWS 7 64BIT
4- INTEL i5 CORE 2.66MHZ
5- 4GB DDR3
6- SEAGATE 500GB HDD 7200R.P.M INTERNAL
7- ECHO AUDIO FIREWIRE PRE8
8- CUBASE 5.5.2
9- VOCAL TRANCE, R&B, HIP-HOP

I USE THIS SETUP IN MY PROJECT STUDIO WITH A ROLAND FANTOM X8, AND A FOCUSRITE ISA-ONE, SUMMIT AUDIO TLA-50, AND A SUMMIT AUDIO FEQ-50. FORGET ABOUT A MAC BOOK PRO, LENOVO IS THE WAY TO GO. THIS IS THE BEST LAPTOP --- MAC OR PC, THAT WILL NEVER CRASH ON YOU. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR . AND YOU CAN RUN ANY CUBASE SOFTWARE AND I STAKE MY AUDIO REP. ON IT . LENOVO T51O OR LENOVO W510/w i7 in it. http://www.lenovo.com

let's not forget lenovo was formally ' IBM ' until they sold it. and lenovo's "NOT MAC'S" are used in the international space station for mission critical, as you will see when you visit the lenovo website.

[JMCecil]

let's not forget lenovo was formally ' IBM ' until they sold it. and lenovo's "NOT MAC'S" are used in the international space station for mission critical, as you will see when you visit the lenovo website.

Even astronauts need to do their updates on Twitter, how else would anyone know they are in space?

[Subpantelis]

1. Manufacturer: Sony

2. Model: Vaio VPCF13Z1E/B

3. Operating System: Windows 7 64bit

4. CPU and speed: intel i7-740QM, 1.73 GHz, 4 cores

5. Amount of RAM: 8 Gb

6. HDD: 500 Gb 7200 rpm internal SATA

7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version: Line 6 POD Studio UX2 (USB); driver v4.1.1.7

8. Which Steinberg software and version: Cubase 5.5.2

9. What kind of projects: Pop/Rock/Dance/Trip; 32bit, 44.1 kHz; usually about 4 VSTIs (Kontakt with 4 or 5 instruments loaded, Battery, Absynth, Massive) + about 20 stereo audio tracks + loads of heavy plugins (Waves, Steinberg, PSP, Antares); and still able to run POD Farm 2 in parallel and with virtually zero latency, in order to hear guitar sound when recording.

Remarks:

Has 2 X USB 3.0, 2 X USB 2.0 and 1 X firewire ports. One of the USB 2.0 is combined with an E-SATA port and has an own bus. This one is great for USB audio hardware cause it does not produce conflicts with other stuff on other buses, be it USB or graphics. Can't say whether the firewire is good for audio too, but I've heard about so many problems with firewire chipsets that I believe that USB is the way to go with laptops.

Resuming: Rather expensive, but works like a charm as a DAW.

[chrisyking]

Can you add a number 10. to this thread with price paid and what date you bought it?

[TabSel]

1. Manufacturer DELL
2. Model Precision M6500
3. Operating System Win7 Prof x64
4. CPU and speed i7 920xm
5. Amount of RAM 16GB
6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type) 250GB SSD (System/Stream partition) + 500GB 7200rpm HD(projects, plugins, audio/midi libary)
7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version RME HDSP Digiface v3.21
8. Which Steinberg software and version Cubase 6.0.1
9. What kind of projects everything and nothing

[nightowlgk]

* 1. Manufacturer: ADK Pro Audio
* 2. Model- Q1 (Quanta) 2 yrs. old
* 3. Operating System- Xp Sp2
* 4. CPU and speed- Core2 2.0ghz
* 5. Amount of RAM- 2GB
* 6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type) internat 500gb 7200rpm
* 7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version- MOTU Ultralite Hybrid ( best using firewire- down to 192 samples, USB is ok but not for demanding Ivory live use.
* 8. Which Steinberg software and version- Cubase 5.1
* 9. What kind of projects- LIVE on Stage - Ivory and tracks playback.

Also, let's specify the interface connection: Firewire/ w/ on board plug or express card adapter, or USB.

Any tablets?

[MFX]

Great thread and idea. My concern is Firewire compatibility with RME FF800 and other FF devices. I am noticing theres seem to be a need to get an expansion card? Any FW ibuilt with TIs?

[Strophoid]

This topic is supposed to be discussion free, but:
My HP elitebook has onboard TI firewire, and it works fine with my soundcard. (Terratec Producer Phase x24)

edit: as some people have requested me via PM:
The elitebook is model 8531w.

[Mittendorfer]

1. Manufacturer: SONY VAIO
2. Model: VPC-F13Z8E/BI 0111CD II4 (F13 Series)
3. Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
4. CPU and speed: Intel Core 7-7400 M, 1,73 Ghz
5. Amount of RAM: 8 GB DDR-3-RAM
6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type): 640 GB, 7200 rpm
7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version: Steinberg MR816X
8. Which Steinberg software and version: Cubase 6, 64-bit
9. What kind of project: Electronic & Pop - a lot of VST-plug-ins

Several problems at the beginning with the on-board NVIDIA GT Force 425 M graphic card -> produces asio crackles & dropouts in connecton with the firewire connection. Update the NVIDIA Driver to the latest version and switch off WLAN connection. Afterwards works peferfectly.

[Chris Beuermann]

1. Manufacturer: Acer
2. Model: Aspire 5742
3. Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
4. CPU and speed: Intel Core I5
5. Amount of RAM: 4 GB DDR-3-RAM
6. HDD: 500 GB, 5400 rpm
7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version: Onboard
8. Which Steinberg software and version: Cubase 6.0.2, 64-bit
9. What kind of project: Audio mixing projects

[enghell666]

1. Manufacturer: ASUS
2. Model: N53JQ
3. Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
4. CPU and speed: Intel Core i7 740QM 1,7-2,9GHz
5. Amount of RAM: 8Gb
6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type): 500Gb internal, 250Gb 7200 eSATA external drive for audio + 2Tb USB 3.0 external drive for backups
7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version: RME Babyface (0.984 USB driver version)
8. Which Steinberg software and version: Cubase 6.0.2, Wavelab Elements 7.1.0
9. What kind of projects: Extreme metal (black/death/funeral doom)

[MRedZac]

1. Manufacturer: Dell
2. Model: Latitude E5520
3. Operating System: Windows 7 Professional x64
4. CPU and speed: Intel i5 2,6 Ghz
5. Amount of RAM: 4 Gb
6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type): 320 Gb 7200 Rpm internal
7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version: Phonic Firefly 808u with its ASIO Driver and also Asio4All
8. Which Steinberg software and version: Cubase 6
9. What kind of projects: 32 channel live-recording 24-bit 44,1 Khz

With its Full-HD Display, this is a perfect fit for laptop productions

[zakufan]

1. Manufacturer: Sony
2. Model: FW550F
3. Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium x64
4. CPU and speed: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93 GHz
5. Amount of RAM: 4 Gb
6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type): 500 Gb 7200 rpm internal
7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version: Focusrite Scarlet 18i6 with its ASIO Driver and also Asio4All
8. Which Steinberg software and version: Cubase 6
9. What kind of projects: anything

[jellebakker]

1. Manufacturer: BTO
2. Model: X•BOOK 15CL38 (custom configuration)
3. Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium x64
4. CPU and speed: Intel i7 2720QM 2,2 Ghz
5. Amount of RAM: 8 Gb
6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type): 120 Gb SSD intel 320 series
7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version: Realtec HD audio
8. Which Steinberg software and version: Cubase 6
9. What kind of projects: Private use

[AndyThommen]

Here's mine:

• 1. Manufacturer: ASUS
• 2. Model: X53SJ
• 3. Operating System: Win7, 64bit (clean install)
• 4. CPU and speed: i7-2630QM 2GHz
• 5. Amount of RAM: 4GB DDR3, 1333
• 6. HDD (also external HDD and which connection type): SSD OCZ Agility 3, 240GB (self installed, replaced, note: it's a SATA3 SSD on a SATA2 interface, so I'm using only half of the speed)
• 7. Used Audio Hardware and driver version: Roland Quad-Capture (UA-55), latest drivers
• 8. Which Steinberg software and version: Cubase 6.0.2, 32bit
• 9. What kind of projects: Very long (10-25 minutes) songs, audio intensive (17 drum tracks, bass, 3-5 guitar tracks, 2-5 vocal tracks, some percussion, keyboards and other noises); few VSTi (Pianoteq, VB3, MTron); a lot of VST fx (external EQs for 50% of the tracks, half of the tracks with compressor, 2-3 reverbs on returns, 2-3 delays on returns, some modulation fxs; 4-5 group channels. All project formats are 24bit/48kHz.

Notes:

• I use an additional LCD monitor for dual screen extendet desktop
• The laptop has only 3 USB 2.0 ports: dongle, mouse and sound card... left: 0

Rock solid.

Have a nice day.

Andy

[TabSel]

I really can recommend the EXSYS EX-1177 USB 2.0 HUB.

I had problems with cheaper hubs, having powered:
Logitech Unifying receiver
Midex-8
Kore2 controller
Maschine controller
SL25MkII keyboard
ATEN USB switch
Matrox dualhead2go

Now everything usb rock solid