Mobile Recording Studio

Expandead

Expandead

Expandead

Associate
Joined
3 Oct 2006
Posts
79
Greetings,

My first thread here so hi im Rob :)!

Basically, my dilema is, I am interested in recording my own music with my guitar etc. I am looking at getting a professional recording soundcard and was looking at the 1616m E-MU. I can pick this up for around £300.

Obviously, its a laptop card, so i need a laptop! I have around £800 to spend. On the E-MU website the laptops which are confirmed as being compatible are:

IBM ThinkPad T40
Compaq Presario 2100
Dell Inspiron 600m
HP Pavilion zv5000
IBM Thinkpad T23
IBM Thinkpad A22P Pentium III 933MHz Laptop TI PCI-1450
Dell Latitude (X5502) Laptop TI PCI-1420
Sony Viao PCG-V505EX Ricoh R/RL/RT/RC/5C475(II), R5C520
NEC VERSA LXI (X5138) Laptop TI PCI-1450
HP pavilion N5310 Intel Celeron 750MHz (X5140) TI PCI-1420
Toshiba A75 (X5953) P4 2.8 GHz Laptop ENE Technology CD-1410


However i was wondering if there was any OTHER laptops or specifically BETTER laptops for the price of £800 which come with the requirements of the soundcard, obviously im recording, so fast rendering is needed, and being able to play wow and cs1.6 would be an added bonus.

I havnt detailed the requirements of the card yet but:

Intel® or AMD® processor - 1 GHz or faster
Intel, AMD or 100% compatible motherboard & chipset
Microsoft® Windows® XP (SP 2) or 2000 (SP4)
256MB System RAM
900MB of free hard disk space for full installation
Available Type II CardBus slot (PCMCIA slot)*
CD-ROM/CD-RW or DVD-ROM drive required for software installation
XVGA Video (1024 X 768)

I have now. Sorry about the large post, and im not sure if this is the best place to post however it is sound related and i know nothing about laptops and the way their soundcards hook up.

BTW i was ALSO looking at the fujitsu xi1546 laptop, if i can persuade someone from work to get it for me (i work for fuji but i dont have discounts for 6months).

Thanks in advance,

Regards

Rob
 
Firstly I would go for a similar M-Audio unit over EMU.
EMU are a sub-brand of Creative, and those guys seem incapable of writing a simple, lightweight driver set.

A firewire unit would be a good choice, as it should have a good amount of bandwidth (although not as much as a PCI based unit), and ensures compatibility with a far wider range of laptops.

I would go for a laptop with a dual core intel chip as these will work very nicely with the latest versions of most music software. I have a Toshiba Satellite P100 and it's nice to work with (although I haven't used it for audio work yet).

I would reccomend Steinberg Cubase SL3 for audio editing as it has excellent multi-cpu support, which makes all the difference IME.
 
I am very sure that this soundcard will live up to the expectations. I have done my review work. The soundcard is definatly the best for the price as well. So, i just need advice on the laptop side of things.
 
Expandead said:
I am very sure that this soundcard will live up to the expectations. I have done my review work. The soundcard is definatly the best for the price as well. So, i just need advice on the laptop side of things.
Click to expand...
I would suggest a trip to a few more audio forums and reading user-reviews...

It's your money though, and I've only been involved in recording music for fourteen years, so hey, what do I know :p
 
Do you actually need all the inputs/outputs available on the interface you've picked? Whilst it is generally regarded as a good choice considering the number of inputs you get for the price, for £300 you could do a lot better buying something else.

It would appear that you have limited recording experience (hence the need for you to create a thread) so you might find it beneficial to give some thought to advice offered by others with more experience.

On the subject of a laptop, I've heard on the grapevine that Dell laptops can be prone to grounding related interference (ground loops - look it up if you don't know what it means) when they're being charged up, so you might want to check that out some more.
 
To eliminate any ground loop issues you can just change the power supply. Look for a 2 prong figure 8 input PSU as opposed to a cloverleaf 3 pin input connector, this shows it is an unearthed isolated supply. When recording, you could always use the battery for a while if you get earth loops with the supplied PSU.
 
sinister_stu said:
Do you actually need all the inputs/outputs available on the interface you've picked?
Click to expand...

Yes :rolleyes:

I will stop being awkward and look into it some more. Its just a pain when you think youve researched enough and your ready to click "buy now" to find out that, no, its rubbish.

^_^
 
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I'd highly recommend a Thinkpad. Pretty bulletproof from experiance, and they are well put together, with components that are generally compatible with everything.
Ive got a Z60M, but you can pick up, for £800, a dual core 15" thinkpad iirc.

General tips though:
-Dual core would be handy.
-At least 512Mb memory, preferably 1Gb.
-HDD, at least 30Gb.
-Dont worry about gfx, as long as you can adjust the shared memory to 16Mb or so, it'll be fine. Obviously, if you can get a discrete card, like a X300, that'll be better.
 
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Not sure how relevent this is, but I've decided to make myself a somewhat portable music production PC myself, probably not your thing, but there are aspects of a PC that make them far more suitable for this than a laptop.

At the moment the plan is:

1U server chassis (found an ATX one with 2HDD spaces and 250watt PSU for £140).
Some sort of padded rack bag, 2U. (£40)
My currently CPU, low power Turion (40TPD) matched with a low profile passive heatsink. (dirt cheap these days)
M-Audio 2496 PCI card (£50)
A new motherboard with onboard graphics. (£50 tops)
Currently 2x250GBs in RAID0 for apps and scratch + 500GB external for storage.

I don't play games anymore, but some sort of integrated graphics should run CS1.6/Command and Conquer etc fine.

If I go ahead with this it should work out cheaper than a laptop, won't have the powersupply problems (on laptops I've used plugging/unplugging from the wall socket causes audio problems as the earth potential changes), and the main reason: I can have a much better soundcard, which in future I might want to replace with something more powerful or with DSP/preamps etc.

Nearly everywhere I take it will already have a monitor to hook up to, if not I've got a 17" TFT + carry case.

If you've got £1100 to blow on this you could get a fantastic system with a top end RME card.

Sorry if this seems like a hijack, but I'm in a similar situation to you and the thought just came to me, had to share :P
 
Memory is your friend in music - so you are looking for 2 gig! Also Id be tempted to get a slightly cheeper top brand laptop thats got a half decent CPU - rip out the Harddisk and put in a mobile 7200rpm HD in - music needs the fastest HD you can get! Most laptop HDs dont crack it for multi-track music recording, but a 7200rpm one with 2-4gig of ram will!
 
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