New laptop Situation, What are your guys opinions for FL/Reaper/Massive(moved)

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ChahliG

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Aug 26, 2012
i have been using an old dell lattitude e-6400, with a 90 gb hard drive for ever. It sucks, the hard drive is encrypted and i cant wipe it, cant reinstall windows, it says my copy is counterfeit. LOL, its a microsoft employees old laptop. It has a decent processer, its rated around 2.5ghz so i understand how its managed so well so long. But when i start using massive, especially, or getting loads of automation and effects going. Which really isnt loads by most of standards. It doesnt get very happy, and has completely frozen on one occasion. Anyways, im in the market for a new one, with about a grand or so to spend. Now i can get a MUCH better laptop with a tb hard drive, 8 gb of ram, and a 17 inch screen with 4 usb 3.0 ports for 699, or a 15 inch for 598, but, im thinking the rpms on the hd may very well be one of the most important factors here, so, ive been trying to find 7200 rpm drives with at least 350 or so mb, preferably 500+ and preferably a big screen or at least 15 with an hdmi out. since thats what i mostly use it on anyways, because i cant do Jack mix wise with a 15 inch screen or smaller.
I already know the required and reccommended specs, but which brands seem to have the least bs on the computers, and what are your guys PRIMARY needs and purchase points on computers. So far, the hp evny, vizio, and sony f series, seem to be my favs, a few samsungs as well
 
Correct me if If I'm wrong, but I think CPU, Ram and Soundcard, provided you don't have USB monitors are your biggest factor here. Something with a decent amount of ram; 4gb will do the job roughly, but if I'm right, 3rd party plugins are what chew your CPU the most, aren't they? 8gb is excellent, MY OPINION THOUGH, because I'm running 2gb and can only create demos. That's why if you go to my soundcloud, next to nearly every song has demo next to it because that's all I can get too! Haha! I run a lot of 3rd party reverb plugins; I'm a reverb addict, I just love it. I'd say, good cpu, good soundcard and enough ram.
 
What you want, is a modern intel core based laptop. i5 with preferably 4 cores is what you want, most modern DAW's are multithreaded and will use up to 6 cores if needed. RAM is so cheap these days that i would buy a machine with 4gb in to save a few quid then buy another 4gb for like £15 online. HDD wise you want a solid 7200RPM drive with at least 16mb cache, even better if you can get an SSD too, as they are simply amazing for boot times, data access, and improving the snappy feel of your machine.

Ignore all this Beats audio bollocks, it doesnt mean f all, merely software they install that has its own EQ's etc. get a standard machine with normal soundcards, then buy yourself an external interface.
 
You want the best processor you can get. If you have a grand, go for one with a quad core i5.

RAM - 4GB or more. The more the better, but 4GB will be perfectly fine for most tasks.

Hard drive - RPM speed is pretty much irrelevant. You just want plenty of storage space.

You should be spending about £600 on such a machine.
 
Unrelated question i have for fl studio 32 bit version:

My cpu is good(i7 @ 4,5 ghz) but im still getting "lagg" when playing a big project. Do ram have a big enough impact on big projects for 4 gb of ram not being enough?(since 32 bit caps out @ 4gb)
 
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duckstep said:
Unrelated question i have for fl studio 32 bit version:

My cpu is good(i7 @ 4,5 ghz) but im still getting "lagg" when playing a big project. Do ram have a big enough impact on big projects for 4 gb of ram not being enough?(since 32 bit caps out @ 4gb)
Click to expand...

4GB is enough unless you are using huge samples.

You might have you buffer/latency settings too high. Decrease the latency and it uses less CPU.

or you might just have a track that has got too much going on and the CPU cannot cope.
 
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duckstep said:
Appearently 32 bit applications dont utilise all 4 cores in cpus, so it was probarly a cpu issue ye.
Click to expand...

Unless I'm mistaken, the operating environment (32/64 bit) doesn't determine the amount of cores "used", it's application dependent. In other words, if the application (or in this case DAW) is written to take advantage of the multiple cores, then it will do so. In Logic, for example, you can set the number of cores in the preferences area. You can also monitor the load placed on the cores by double clicking on the transport bar near the in/out MIDI value area.

The advantage of a 64bit environment is the lifted RAM limitation.
 
DJWhizzkidd said:
You want the best processor you can get. If you have a grand, go for one with a quad core i5.

RAM - 4GB or more. The more the better, but 4GB will be perfectly fine for most tasks.

Hard drive - RPM speed is pretty much irrelevant. You just want plenty of storage space.

You should be spending about £600 on such a machine.
Click to expand...

Hard drive speed is actually very relevant, a standard 5400 rpm drive is not going to be as stable as a 7200rpm drive.

I'd personally sack off both the 5400/7200 and go for an SSD, no mechanical parts, so none of those speed access issues, and less change of failure.

The prices of SSD is coming down, you could either buy a laptop with one in, or just buy the laptop and put one in yourself.
Buying an SSD has been one of the best things I ever did for my computer.

8 Gig RAM is only good if your OS & DAW are 64 bit, otherwise you will have a 4 gig limit.
 
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