John6528
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good laptop?
Is there a best laptop to run Sonar?
John
Sonar 8.5 64, Win 7 64 Asrock X58 Extreme3, I7-950, 12G ram OCZ Vertx3 120, Vertex2 90, WDM 1T Focusrite Saffire Yamaha P-70 Keyboard M-Audio Midisport Uno Miroslav Philharmonik , Nanosynth
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Jeff Evans
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Re: good laptop?
2016/04/26 02:28:31
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I am about to buy a laptop and build a secondary DAW system. Rather than being about a good laptop for Sonar maybe it should be about a good laptop built for music production.
Is there one right out of the box that is well setup to do it. I have observed a few things. Some mechanical drives are only running at 5400 rpm so they may be a bit slow. Also it could be good having the two drive concept here as well. One SSD for the OS and apps and perhaps a fast mechanical drive with lots of capacity for audio.
Is the CD ROM drive still needed? Many laptops are leaving them out. The mini HDMI connection could also be a pain too. You will always need an adpator etc..Quad core machines are going to be better than dual cores etc..
Specs i5-2500K 3.5 Ghz - 8 Gb RAM - Win 7 64 bit - ATI Radeon HD6900 Series - RME PCI HDSP9632 - Steinberg Midex 8 Midi interface - Faderport 8- Studio One V4 - iMac 2.5Ghz Core i5 - Sierra 10.12.6 - Focusrite Clarett thunderbolt interface Poor minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas -Eleanor Roosevelt
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Jim Roseberry
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Re: good laptop?
2016/04/26 02:46:04
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All highest performance laptops are currently using a Clevo shell running a desktop CPU (i7 6700k).
They're not small/light... and they're not cheap... but it's the only way to get desktop performance in a laptop.
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Cocked n' Loaded
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Re: good laptop?
2016/04/26 03:55:36
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I'm running an i7 Asus G751 with 32gb memory and 2tb of h/d. My last project was 50+ tracks of audio and loads of plug ins- the Asus wasn't even slightly bothered by it. It's not a cheap laptop but pretty powerful and very chunky and hard wearing and it has a decent screen size.
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synkrotron
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Re: good laptop?
2016/04/26 06:17:05
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I've had a CLEVO P150EM i7 based laptop for over three years now and it copes well with what I do with it. Having said that, I guess I don't do much... Mainly VST and a bit of audio recording. I did a test project some time back using power hungry VSTi's, like Absynth, and was impressed at how many instances, over twenty, that I had running in real time. As Jim says, they're not cheap, especially if you go for the latest i7 chip. Back in 2012, I went for the 3820QM @ 2.7GHz, and it saved me quite a chunk. I went all SSD from the outset and have since upgraded to a 500Gb system drive and a 1Tb data drive. In order to give me the extra drive bay I had to ditch the optical drive, which, to be frank, I do not miss. I have an external USB optical drive, just in case I need it, and it hardly ever gets used in this age of downloaded media/software. So, yeah, CLEVO, for me, was a good call 
http://www.synkrotron.co.uk/Intel Core™i7-3820QM Quad Core Mobile Processor 2.70GHz 8MB cache | Intel HM77 Express Chipset | 16GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 RAM | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM | 500GB Samsung 850 Pro SSD | 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD | Windows 10 Pro | Roland OCTA-CAPTURE | SONAR Platinum ∞ FFS| Too many VSTi's to list here | KRK KNS-8400 Headphones | Roland JP-8000 | Oberheim OB12 | Novation Nova | Gibson SG Special | PRS Studio
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bapu
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Re: good laptop?
2016/04/26 12:29:40
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I have the slightly older I7 960 ADK laptop (model 9000X) that runs Platinum just fine with 6GB of memory.
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Rick H
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Re: good laptop?
2016/04/26 22:41:15
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I'm Running an ADK that is 4 years old. Have never had a problem. Solid units, IMO the best. Should I ever upgrade ADK would be my 1st choice again. Id much rather spend the extra $ then have to worry about PC performance.
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John6528
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Re: good laptop?
2016/05/22 20:13:20
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Testing a Lenova Yoga 900 with I76560U. Best Buy had a sale on them. It's very light and a 2 in 1 and right screen size (13 or so) to read music from. Unfortunately the sound card in it is so bad that Sonar won't use it at all. I have all ancient sound cards that won't run in windows 10 so now I'm stuck with nothing. Focusrite Saffire won't run at all and M-Audio Delta 92 will only handle output... no input. Windows 10 says it isn't running at all. I hate to invest in new card for the desktop if I'm going to a laptop but I can't test the laptop without some sort of usb card for it or something. Old Gigabyte motherboard and i7950. I never hooked up the motherboard sound and now don't know how. Built the computer myself.
Guess my question now is what sound gizmo should I get that is small, light, and will easily hook up to a laptop. Just 2 in 2 out is enough for me. I am toatlly new at this.
John
Sonar 8.5 64, Win 7 64 Asrock X58 Extreme3, I7-950, 12G ram OCZ Vertx3 120, Vertex2 90, WDM 1T Focusrite Saffire Yamaha P-70 Keyboard M-Audio Midisport Uno Miroslav Philharmonik , Nanosynth
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gbowling
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Re: good laptop?
2016/05/22 20:52:47
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I have a clevo p170 in the form of a sager laptop and am very happy with it. As far as I'm concerned the sager lappys are about as good for price/performance as I've seen. Highly configurable on their web site at http://www.sagernotebook.com/ They pretty much all run $2K plus to get what you need. I have a 17" with i7 4810 (older, now the same machine would be a 6700), 32 gig ram, and dual ssd. It's a dedicated machine for music production, it's not a sleek thin laptop, more of a luggable. But it works very well and I've been very happy with it. gabo
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