when forced to use a laptop...

[mickomoo]

I'm going to school again soon and I'm kinda forced to use this old 2008 (it looks like 2008 model, it could be younger) HP pavilion dv5-1004nr. I can't really afford a desktop, but I really really want to still make music. The thing is usually when playing my speakers just burn out and stop producing sound. Are there any tips for making music or using a DAW software on a laptop. My dad was telling me about portable machines that kinda act as DAWs and you can apparently store virtual instruments on them. I have no idea what he was talking about... but yeah anyways, any advice?

[Moseph]

If you don't have ASIO drivers for the soundcard, Google ASIO4ALL. Put as much RAM in it as you can. Use external speakers or headphones. If you're streaming large sample libraries, maybe put them on an external hard drive.

[Rozovian]

If you don't have ASIO drivers for the soundcard, Google ASIO4ALL. Put as much RAM in it as you can. Use external speakers or headphones. If you're streaming large sample libraries, maybe put them on an external hard drive.

Last advice is bull. The internal hard drive tends to be the fastest for loading samples, tho it's not a good idea to fill it up completely. Streamed samples should be on a fast enough drive, preferably an internal one. Samples loaded to RAM can be anywhere.

The rest is good tho.

Your dad might be talking about hardware with their own effects, like Pro Tools' stuff. Look it up. Be aware that not all instruments/effects are in a format that they can load.

[djpretzel]

My dad was telling me about portable machines that kinda act as DAWs and you can apparently store virtual instruments on them. I have no idea what he was talking about... but yeah anyways, any advice?

Perhaps this: http://www.museresearch.com/receptor2.php or this: http://www.smproaudio.com/index.php/en/products/v-machines/vmachine or maybe even one of these: http://openlabs.com/

A good, powerful laptop w/ 4GB+ RAM and an i7 would take you a VERY long way and be solid enough to do some serious work on. Without knowing your budget, it's hard to provide specific advice.

Last advice is bull. The internal hard drive tends to be the fastest for loading samples, tho it's not a good idea to fill it up completely. Streamed samples should be on a fast enough drive, preferably an internal one. Samples loaded to RAM can be anywhere.

I think that advice was more aimed at the standard size of laptop HDDs as opposed to external drives being faster...

[zylance]

I used a 2.0 ghz Core Duo 2 laptop for a long time and streaming off a good external would always result in me hitting the cpu barrier before any sort of bandwith error. Could be different with a modern proccessor.

[Moseph]

I used a 2.0 ghz Core Duo 2 laptop for a long time and streaming off a good external would always result in me hitting the cpu barrier before any sort of bandwith error. Could be different with a modern proccessor.

This is about the same as my experience, also with a Core 2 Duo laptop. I usually run into CPU overload, filled RAM, and hard drive bandwidth issues at about the same point. As a result, when Sonar goes down, it goes down hard.

[Kanthos]

I don't remix, but I use my laptop for live performance as a keyboard player and get great results with my machine; it's a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo with 3.25 GB of RAM (well, that's all Windows can access anyway, since I have 32-bit XP). I have to be careful about how much I load, but since I'm not playing *that* many sounds (the highest I usually reach is a 13-part orchestra in Kontakt plus a couple other plugins), I'm short of maxing the CPU, and by being selective about what gets loaded into RAM, I'm fine there too.

[Cerrax]

I use my laptop as my main DAW. It has a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM and I rarely run into issues with performance. It starts to struggle when I have about 13 Kontakt instances, 3 Guitar Rig instances, XLN Addictive Drums, and multiple EQ's and other effects running at once. But it can even pile on a few more things before it pops up and says enough is enough.

And my personal preference is to run all samples from the internal drive, but as long as you have a fairly fast external, it shouldn't cause a problem. My lappy has a 250GB drive so I can afford to load 70 GB of samples without greatly affecting performance.

[mickomoo]

I'm getting a firewire and switching to protools (more like between pt and mixcraft for now), I'm assuming this'll solve the issue?

[Nabeel Ansari]

I've got a 2.1 Ghz Athlon X2 64 and 3 GB RAM, I hit the max CPU load around having 7 synths, 3 Kontakt Instruments, a Kore, and lots of compression and distortion effects on a sliced drum loop layered with homemade FL Studio modified perc samples. It's not pretty to look at, and there's barely any playback to be had, but it renders stuff just fine. My CPU's the main bottleneck, I barely hit more than a GB of RAM if I even get that high.

I'm getting a firewire and switching to protools (more like between pt and mixcraft for now), I'm assuming this'll solve the issue?

A little.

Switching to firewire allows for a faster external hardware bandwidth option (an audio interface with firewire) and switching to Protools might not solve anything.

[Arcana]

Firewire connections use less CPU than USB connections, meaning that your latency will decrease with respect to recording audio and streaming samples from a hard drive.