Best laptop for music production

[rickrockpark]

Hello,

I was wondering if Macbook Pro would be the best bet for music production Could you guys suggest if should go for Mac book or buy a high end laptop with good sound card?

 

[Narrillnezzurh]

You won't be using the soundcard in the laptop anyways, you'll be running through an interface. What you're really looking for is a good processor, a good supply of RAM, and hard drive space. As far as Mac/PC, it depends what DAW you want to use.

 

[gauravjeet]

Exactly what i said bro. Sound card is external anyways. Just search the highest apecs available in the market and buy it.hehe

 

[rickrockpark]

Many of the music producers recommended Mac book so I got confused. On asking them they said Mac is much more stable to work with. Thanks for the help anyways

 

[Oneirokritikos]

The new Macbook Pros will be revealed soon, and will likely benefit from the advances seen in the Macbook Air (insane battery life), so I’d wait a bit for reviews if I were you. Logic Pro X is a killer DAW, so it could be a perfect package.

 

[Ikiharmaa]

On asking them they said Mac is much more stable to work with.

This is often true. I'd claim that windows OS' are better suited for people who know how to handle them, or at least they were before. Windows 7 seems to be an improvement in stability though, probably? But if you're buying a laptop you're likely to have to remove some bloatware etc.


I'd get a pc but that's just my personal preference, I prefer the flexibility and options available over macs. Just need to make sure the hard drive is fast enough and that it has the TI firewire chipset if you're planning to use the firewire, plenty of ram and top processor are obvious.

 

[rickrockpark]

Thanks man. I have been working on Windows 7, i3 processor, 4GB RAM setup and I didn't
face much issues with exceptions of CPU overload when opening around 15-20 VST's in my DAW. That too might have been due to low hard disk space.

 

[xzyryabx]

go with a windows PC unless you're looking for ProTools; faster RAM, more RAM, faster processor and ideally a SSD are the things you are looking for. Macs are expensive and over-rated, you can get a PC equivalent for much less. As other said, don't worry about the soundcard, but invest in a good interface.

 

[rickrockpark]

You people make life so much easier. Thanks

 

[HaloHat]

4THmy .02

Like already said on RAM processor speed etc. I found the gaming laptops to have the specs I wanted. I'm not anti MAC by any means...

Online Laptops | Gaming PCs | Best Custom Gaming Laptops | Cheap Extreme Gaming Laptops | Ultimate Gaming Laptop | Custom Built Powerful Graphics Notebooks

I just bought the G750JW-DB71 with the following specs/upgrades -

4TH Generation Intel i7 processor. I have not heard the cooling fans run yet. Battery life is very good overall imho [It was at about 20% battery left after 4 hours of use running Presonus Studio One, BeatCraft, WinAmp streaming mp3's, watching some YouTube vids, checking emails [yeah I know, the desktop I build will be music use only lol.]

12GB RAM [I'll buy the rest up to its 32MB max [four slots!] elsewhere for less $ and better quality RAM]

256GB SSD [OMG solid state drives are just incredible. If you can only do one upgrade this is it. The external drives I buy will all be SSD whether I can use the Thunderbolt port or not. Boot up time = 15 seconds. Shut down = 10 seconds. Every program loads almost instantly. I can't tell you enough what a difference in the right direction the SSD drives make. Worth every penny without question. Plus they are more stable/reliable as they have no moving parts to bump around.

1 Thunderbolt port [more hardware becoming available daily and prices for them going down]

Four USB 3.0 ports

It has a built in subwoofer but honestly I'm a little disappointed with the built in sound. However running it thru my Tapco 5" powered monitors it sounds killer. As already said about the laptop, it's sound card is not what your going to use anyways.

I bought it from PROSTAR. I could not find any other seller who lets you do the upgrades you want to pick and choose from as easily as PROSTAR. Very good website buying process, service and shipping etc. I'm very happy with it. $1700 ish with all upgrades and shipping. I could not get anything even close to these specs on a MAC for this price. With my humble income and all the PC software and hardware I have already spent $ on, a MAC just is not for me right now. Good as they are no doubt.

I will eventually also build my own desktop but for now this is working much better than I thought it might. Just plain wicked fast. SSD Rules! Thunderbolt Rules! I paid a bit extra for the Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade. It comes with Windows 8 and from everything I researched before buying this Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate versions got much better reviews than Windows 8. I have been using XP for the last several years and there are some navigation differences but after about a week now I'm liking Windows 7 Ultimate as much as XP.

Best of luck to you however you decide to go.

 

[Alphanumeric]

Apple - Macbook Pro

Windows - Anything with I7 and more than 3ghz.

 

[oneblackened]

Apple - Macbook Pro

Windows - Anything with I7 and more than 3ghz.

More than 3 on a laptop? Nah.

I have a MBP (just got it from Berklee the other day) and a laptop that's basically the same specwise. The windows laptop can handle something like 70 tracks in REAPER.

 

[Narrillnezzurh]

If you like paying twice what the machine's worth, get a Mac. Otherwise, get a Windows machine.

 

[davidthangjam10]

there isn't much difference in windows and mac. mac are overpriced they got thunderbolt and maybe SSD in some of them! if you not going to use Logic/Pro Tools/Garage Band. Get PC you'll be saving loads of money and you can get a good Soundcard

 

[svenlk]

mac is almost unbeatable , id go with that

 

[Drew]

I just made the switch from a PC to an iMac, and while it hasn't been without hiccups (some of the plugins I've been used to are PC only, and I had a video card fail, preventing the thing from booting up and necessitating a trip to the Genius Bar to get it replaced), so far I'm happy with the thing. That said, my old PC worked without a hitch for years, before it pretty much died of old age (it had two drives, and the main boot drive was from my PC before this one, which I bought new in 2005) rather than any spectacular blowout. Based on that experience, I'd have no hesitation running a Windows 7 recording workstation again, even though I personally switched to a Mac.

Maybe this is a more pressing question - why a laptop? Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but with a laptop you're paying a premium for computing power in a small package, so a comparable desktop tends to be cheaper and more powerful than a comparable laptop. Is this specifically supposed to be a mobile recording setup, or will you mostly be working in one location?

 

[rickrockpark]

Yes mobility is a factor for me. i use Cubase, Studio One DAW and a lot of VST's. The only thing that made me consider mac was because people told me that it is more stable as compared to windows laptop. That is a critical requirement for me as I even want to use this for a live setup as well.
But on going through various forums, i found that even mac is susceptible to crashes while working with Cubase, Neundo, and third party VST plugins.

 

[iron blast]

if you are dead set on mac just get dual op/hackintosh pc. You pay a huge premium for the Apple name brand so why not buy a pc with better specs and just upload the mac operating system best of both worlds aproach.

 

[Drew]

Yes mobility is a factor for me. i use Cubase, Studio One DAW and a lot of VST's. The only thing that made me consider mac was because people told me that it is more stable as compared to windows laptop. That is a critical requirement for me as I even want to use this for a live setup as well.
But on going through various forums, i found that even mac is susceptible to crashes while working with Cubase, Neundo, and third party VST plugins.

That means your entire rig needs to be mobile, then - typically, a small interface (or a dedicated rack case setup), 'phones instead of monitors, probably no more than a couple tracks at a time, with the primary limitation being the number of mics and mic stands that you can really carry around at a time... Mobility comes with a LOT of sacrifices.

About the time my iMac was on vacation at the Genius bar, a mac-using buddy of mine quipped, in response to my saying that I thought the nice thing about Macs was supposed to be they 'just worked,' was that they "just work... until they don't," and when they do fail they usually fail pretty spectacularly. They're probably easier to set up and get to work with other devices, but there are a few negatives - "hot swapping" external drives is a no-no; on a PC, when you're done copying data over to a flash drive you can just pull the thing out, but on a Mac for example, you have to eject it through the software before you can remove it, or you risk corrupting your data. And until my hard drive started to fail, I had no reliability issues or instability issues with my PC - it worked remarkably well, and when the drive did begin to fail it was nearly 10 years old.

At the same time, my mom's laptop, which is significantly newer than my old PC, was frustrating to use to search the net, much less anything data intensive. As everyone has reiterated here, a fast processor, tons of RAM, and a large, fast-writing hard drive with a few USB and Firewire ports are going to matter much more than Mac or PC.

 

[rickrockpark]

Thanks for the great advice. It helped a lot.