marklchambers
I recently had to get a new computer because of motherboard problems on the old laptop running sys 7. My new laptop is, of course, Sys 8 with 4gb ram and tons of harddrive, AMD E1-1200 APU 1.4 GHz HD Display, 64 bit operating system and X64 based processor
As i see of your spec on the laptop, its not the most " powerful " one ( 1.4Ghz )
When running software based VSTi's and plugins , you will find out that it will require quite some CPU power.
after laying down a few midi tracks with softsynths, the computer starts to get hiccups ;-)
you may also to prevent that raise the audio buffer to compensate for it, resulting in
larger latency, when you try to lay another track down, making it almost impossible to
play in beat, or play at all !
I personally have an old laptop at 2 GHZ, with 2Gb of ram, and win 8 64bit
even that one struggle, when i start to load some tracks and VSTi's and , vst plugins.
So of course im not using that for any " Music production ", but of course it is good to have
when i need to go someplace to record a few audiotracks down, and transfer it to my main
Stationary computer if needed.
Another thing is to consider to get a External USB soundcard if you not already have one !
an external soundcard will help a bit, because it will take some load off the CPU itself
Also using Asio driver, that comes with the external soundcard.
onboard soundcards is no solution for " music Production ", even with the " Asio4all " driver.
To find out , just start to load up several miditracks and vsti's, to check how mutch you can load the cpu
of your computer, before it start to get those hiccups and so forth ;-)
If you can do what you want with the software you have at present time, i would recommend that
you continiue using it for now, and maybe uppgrade Sonar later ? but of course if you want to upgrade
if theres someting you need in the other Sonar version, then do it.
I am just saying this, so you are aware of those things
you have got your questions very well answered by : scook in the post above.
wish you good luck with the music making ;-)
Jan
post edited by Soundblend - 2013/09/20 20:15:56