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| Thread ID: 115424 | 2011-01-17 18:49:00 | Laptop for Music Studio | pctek (84) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1170598 | 2011-01-17 18:49:00 | Got asked about this. Wants a laptop. Mostly to use as a recording studio. Has a stereo and various bits, wants to record his own stuff using his guitar and such. He went into some shop and they pointed him to an $8000 Mac laptop. The price didn't thrill him too much so he asked me. I don't which Mac it was but he said it had 6 audio inputs. is there a Windows based laptop that you can do this with. He won't consider a desktop. |
pctek (84) | ||
| 1170599 | 2011-01-17 19:50:00 | You could do this with a medium speced lappy and a high end external sound card/mixer. Something like this or better. au.creative.com |
DeSade (984) | ||
| 1170600 | 2011-01-17 20:02:00 | Don't know of any, might need to get some kind of expansion card, but if he wants portability he may not want something hanging out the side of the laptop either. | Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1170601 | 2011-01-17 20:07:00 | Here (www.homestudiotips.com). :) |
Trev (427) | ||
| 1170602 | 2011-01-17 20:34:00 | There's a new HP which is supposed to have the sound designed by Dr Dre (music producer). Look for Beats Audio www.noelleeming.co.nz |
psycik (12851) | ||
| 1170603 | 2011-01-17 21:10:00 | As per the earlier post, any reasonably well spec'd lappy would be fine. The key thing is the inputs and the quality of the sound processing. There are numerous add-ons that enable you to plug in your various instruments - guitars etc - and feed into the laptop via either a USB or Firewire connection (effectively bypassing the laptop's built-in soundcard). Built-in soundcards are often not great quality and suffer from latency/lag - which is not good for recording. I came across a good site yesterday : www.rubbermonkey.co.nz which is a site devoted to audio/electronics for professional and enthusiast recording equipment. They have a number of devices of the sort that you would want/need. And the cost of these plus a moderately spec'd lappy would be miles less than the $8k quoted for an iMac!! I bought an iRig from them yesterday (and it arrived today!). It together with the "Amplitube" iPhone app effectively turns your iPhone or iTouch into a guitar amp/effects rack and multi-track recorder. Great for practicing/jamming and/or recording your own stuff. Hope this is useful .. and no I don't work for rubbermonkey ... just happened to come across the site yesterday as I was searching for info on the iRig. Another thought is to look at an iPad and some of the recording options available for those ... like the Sonoma Wireworks multitrack recording app. You still need something to get your sound signals into the thing though. www.sonomawireworks.com The FAQ will have info on what is required to do that .. |
marke (457) | ||
| 1170604 | 2011-01-17 21:32:00 | Also make sure the laptop has a Firewire port as many of these plug in devices use Firewire to connect to the PC/Laptop. Prices for the addon devices seem to range from $400-500 up to $2k or more. Here are a couple of them: www.rubbermonkey.co.nz www.rubbermonkey.co.nz - Hmmm ... technolust! ;) Some people also use something like the Soundblaster Live though I'm not sure how good these are for recording. Perhaps a more musically minded PressF1'r might be able to comment? |
marke (457) | ||
| 1170605 | 2011-01-17 21:38:00 | Thanks, passed on all the info to the person. | pctek (84) | ||
| 1170606 | 2011-01-17 23:02:00 | Personally I've used an Mbox 2 with a Pro tools LE setup to do recording. Took a while to work out at first, especially since I was using it in a school system setup with a system admin who's an absolute retard, but when I did get chance to use it, it produced very honest recordings. As in, the sort that you want to get in a studio. The laptop itself was 3k at the time, low spec by today's standards, but an Mbox can be found pretty cheaply at say, rockshop or musicworks. My friend who's doing work in the industry has himself a macbook now, not sure what interface he uses though. Probably an mbox or similar since he used pro tools as well. An acquaintance of mine also used the same setup for his recordings. So yeah, USB or Firewire Mbox + Pro tools if you're looking for something on the cheap. I sure as hell wouldn't trust any internal setup, particularly not on a laptop, no matter how expensive. Especially not if it was an apple product. |
8ftmetalhaed (14526) | ||
| 1170607 | 2011-01-18 09:18:00 | Got asked about this. Wants a laptop. Mostly to use as a recording studio. Has a stereo and various bits, wants to record his own stuff using his guitar and such. He went into some shop and they pointed him to an $8000 Mac laptop. The price didn't thrill him too much so he asked me. I don't which Mac it was but he said it had 6 audio inputs. is there a Windows based laptop that you can do this with. He won't consider a desktop. There is no $8000 mac laptop, their 17 inch tops out just under4K. The person at the shop must be trying to sell a lot of other stuff to get it that high. There are plenty of usb and FW interfaces from $50 upwards that will do the job depending what their are after. Might be good to PM Rob on guitar |
plod (107) | ||
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