Laptop for music production

Alright guys! A mate of mine wants a laptop so he can work on his productions on the fly. He has asked me for help but I don't know much about laptops really as I've always used a desktop for anything serious. I've put this together on PC Specialist:

Chassis & Display

Optimus Series: 17.3" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU)

Intel® Core?i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3720QM (2.60GHz) 6MB

Memory (RAM)

8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)

Graphics Card

NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 650M - 1.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

Memory - 1stHard Disk

750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

1stDVD/BLU-RAY Drive

8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)

Memory Card Reader

Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)

Thermal Paste

STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING

Sound Card

Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack

Network Facilities

GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N130 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH

USB Options

2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD

Battery

Upgrade to 62.16WH 6 Cell Lithium-IONBattery(£39)

Power Lead & Adaptor

1 xUKPower Lead & 120W AC Adaptor

Operating System

Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence

Keyboard & Mouse

INTEGRATEDUKKEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD

Mouse

INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE

Speakers

NONE

Webcam

INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM

Warranty

3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Dead Pixel Guarantee

NONE

Insurance

1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft

Total Order price (Ex VAT)

£785.00

Total Order Price

£945.00

How does that sound? Good choice of components? Good bang for buck?

Generally, there's 4 things that matter: CPU speed, amount of RAM, HDD space/type and audio interface. Everything else is irrelevant.

When it comes to the specifics:

No matter what, he'll need a good audio interface, which has been completely neglected here. He'll need to look into a good Express Card/ PCMCIA Card or whatever type of interface so that he'll be able to render with minimum latency and no clicks or pops. He should research which interface has good performing stable ASIO drivers, as that's the deal breaker. RME is a popular brand, but he'll just have to research. You can have a 3k$ setup and terrible drivers that would render it useless..

He'll need a powerful CPU and a good amount of RAM (which I'll get to), especially if he uses synthesizers. Synthesizers are generated from realtime math rather than prerecorded samples that lay on the HDD.

If he has tons of sample libraries, he'll of course need a large hard drive. SSDs will increase polyphony and if he uses Kontakt, it'll also decrease the memory footprint so he won't have to load as much into the RAM. SSDs aren't necessary, but I highly recommend it if he just wants to hop on and make music without waiting for samples to load. Use HDDs for libraries used less frequently.

The amount of RAM he'll need depends on whether he goes 64-bit or not with the DAW program. It's not uncommon for music producers to stick to the 32-bit version because of plugin compatibility and the plain fact that they don't use over 4gb RAM. Generally, you only need that much RAM if you have a large template or you produce orchestral music. Everything else is relatively lightweight. If he produces orchestral mockups, it's not uncommon to have from 16gb to 64gb RAM. Once again, he must have a 64-bit DAW, but not all plugins are 64-bit compatible so it's just something to keep in mind.

If he's serious about this, he there's a forum dedicated to this stuff with a wealth of information about it:

http://www.vi-control.net/forum

Still, many of the answers aren't just laid out there. The average consumer laptop will probably get the job done, but when your projects become professional-grade, you'll have to really do the research.

As a side note: Mac Book Pros tend to be quite popular among producers when it comes to mobile platforms, it seems. Perhaps he may want to look into one of those.

Generally, there's 4 things that matter: CPU speed, amount of RAM, HDD space/type and audio interface. Everything else is irrelevant.

When it comes to the specifics:

No matter what, he'll need a good audio interface, which has been completely neglected here. He'll need to look into a good Express Card/ PCMCIA Card or whatever type of interface so that he'll be able to render with minimum latency and no clicks or pops. He should research which interface has good performing stable ASIO drivers, as that's the deal breaker. RME is a popular brand, but he'll just have to research. You can have a 3k$ setup and terrible drivers that would render it useless..

He'll need a powerful CPU and a good amount of RAM (which I'll get to), especially if he uses synthesizers. Synthesizers are generated from realtime math rather than prerecorded samples that lay on the HDD.

If he has tons of sample libraries, he'll of course need a large hard drive. SSDs will increase polyphony and if he uses Kontakt, it'll also decrease the memory footprint so he won't have to load as much into the RAM. SSDs aren't necessary, but I highly recommend it if he just wants to hop on and make music without waiting for samples to load. Use HDDs for libraries used less frequently.

The amount of RAM he'll need depends on whether he goes 64-bit or not with the DAW program. It's not uncommon for music producers to stick to the 32-bit version because of plugin compatibility and the plain fact that they don't use over 4gb RAM. Generally, you only need that much RAM if you have a large template or you produce orchestral music. Everything else is relatively lightweight. If he produces orchestral mockups, it's not uncommon to have from 16gb to 64gb RAM. Once again, he must have a 64-bit DAW, but not all plugins are 64-bit compatible so it's just something to keep in mind.

If he's serious about this, he there's a forum dedicated to this stuff with a wealth of information about it:

http://www.vi-control.net/forum

Still, many of the answers aren't just laid out there. The average consumer laptop will probably get the job done, but when your projects become professional-grade, you'll have to really do the research.

As a side note: Mac Book Pros tend to be quite popular among producers when it comes to mobile platforms, it seems. Perhaps he may want to look into one of those.

thphaca

Hey, thanks for the reply. Yeah I know what is needed for a production computer as I produce myself, just not familiar with laptop hardware/prices personally. Need to know if this is a good deal and if the processor is a good choice more than anything. He has a decent external audio interface already. Mac isn't an option as he is using Cubase plus they are WAY overpriced for what you get.

Hey, thanks for the reply. Yeah I know what is needed for a production computer as I produce myself, just not familiar with laptop hardware/prices personally. Need to know if this is a good deal more than anything. He has a decent external audio interface already. Mac isn't an option as he is using Cubase plus they are WAY overpriced for what you get. bulby_g

OK cheers, I'll see what they offer that might be suitable.

ionusX: The terms audio interface and sound card are used interchangably, but if it's an external "sound card," it's more likely to be called an interface. Most of the time, the integrated audio is terrible and unnacceptable for audio production, just like integrated video for gaming.

OP: The laptop seems fine, but I recommened you look at some benchmark comparisons to make sure. When you enter the 1k$ range, you should be getting alot of bang for your buck. a 750gb HDD seems measily (they can be had for 40$ on ebay); it should be a decent sized SSD and 8gb RAM is OK, but DDR3 is cheap nowadays.. You should be getting 16gb at that price. But maybe you don't need those as much? Perhaps the beefiness of the CPU will suffice? I could personally survive with a 120gb SSD on a laptop because I don't use regularly use a large number of libraries, but on my desktop HDD I have nearly 1TB of samples.. If I were producing on a laptop, I'd only have the essentials, thus HDD space wouldn't be a priority. There's no universal forumla for this; but if he has the audio interface, he's tackled half the problem. Now the CPU on that machine seems to be quite top-notch for a laptop. It tears up Photoshop and such in these benchmarks.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3720qm-ivy-bridge-mobile-ultrabook,3185-3.html

Concidering that, perhaps the value is recovered from the power of the CPU.

I can't stress it enough though: it depends completely on what type of music he produces. It's possible to make production quality music with a 300$ laptop if you're just throwing loops together. It's a different story if you're producing a full orchestral score.

It's a bit odd to approach the situation like this: you post specs and ask if it's a good value for music production. I would do it in reverse.. Determine what type of components you'll need based on what your production needs are, THEN narrow it down based on the budget. That's why I mentioned the fundamentals.