computer advice

brownels

Hi,
I'm looking for some advice - basically I've been playing music for about 10 years now and I'd like to try my hand at some electronic music. I listen to a lot of electronic bands, from Boards of Canada to Groove Armada, and I'd really like some help, if any of you can offer it. I want to buy a laptop, but I know very little about computers. I've been told I need about I gigabyte of space, if I want to use the computer live, and that I will need to buy an external soundcard. Anyone got any more information? I was looking into Dell laptops, but I'm told they're not really that great music wise. Also whats the story with ibooks? Whats the advantage? Can I use programmes like cubase and soundforge which I have on my pc on an ibook? Also, if anyone could recommend a specific laptop model that would be great, as I really am lost here.
Again, I appreciate any help that anyone can give me,
Thanks a lot,
Luke.

Bri

Listen I'll leave this to the experts but I would recommend buy way more than a gigabyte of space. Most laptops come anywhere between 20-40gigs of hard-drive space and if you want to save high quality recordings the last thing you need is to run out of space.

That said you can buy an external Hard-Drive for your laptop if the need arises.

Standard Toaster

I'd say he was advised a gig of ram and not harddrive space.

jimi_t

If you have cubase and soundforge on a PC (i.e. a Windows machine) you won't be able to use them on your Mac as they use different Operating Systems...
My advice is to go to the ComputerMusic site (the online portal for the same named magazine). They give all the advice you need to get started with a good section on buying laptops suitable for music production - just search around

Bri

The_Edge wrote:

I'd say he was advised a gig of ram and not harddrive space.

Indeed.

Also - consider if a laptop is exactly what you need. If portability is what your after first and foremost then go right ahead. But that portability can come at a price - if you make the machine work hard for extended periods it can get too hot and it's also not half as 'expandable' if you wanna upgrade it in the future (or if you decide you should have bought a higher spec in the first place). Just something to consider. For instance you can buy high quality sound cards for a desktop PC, wheras most laptops are basic.

Kingsize

if you get an i book running mac osX, you probably wont need a sound card
(to begin with) however you will need to get software .
if you already have software on your pc it might be cheaper to buy a windows laptop & and soundcard tweak it a little & to transfer the software over.

jozi

I'd think any high spec laptop with a good sound card and lots off storage would be suficient (120+gigs maybe).
You might get better advice on the above mentioned link or maybe even the computer forum here on boards.

Jozi

Kingsize

should have mentioned that if you want to work a lot with audio your best bet its to store your audio files on a seperate (external?) hard drive.

Bri

And if it's external it should be connected by USB2.0 or Firewire, NOT USB1! (You'll just cause yourself hassle)