Building a DAW advice

Processor: Get as much you can afford. Intel has the single fastest chip, but you will get much more for your money buying one or two tiers below the absolute fastest. A more crucial decision will be the motherboard and chipset. The AMD/Via combination works well for DAW. Intel makes their own chipset for their CPUs. Do not buy AMD/Nforce4.

Disk: Get the two internals. One for windows and one for audio & sample libraries. You can always burn a CD to bring data with you. Unless you absolutely have a need for an external disk, don't bother paying the premium for it. Plus there is a big performance hit with an external disk - USB is worse than Firewire.

Interface: Get Firewire. PCI interfaces are a dead-end. You will lose a lot of money if you try to sell a used PCI interface when you decide to upgrade later on.

Video: Do not get a PCI-Express card. The PCI-Express bus takes priority over everything else in the system when it is used. AGP is fine and most cards come with dual-monitor support. Older ATI or NVidia cards have plenty of horsepower for a DAW and they will have an analog VGA and DVI connections. This means that if you go dual-monitor, one monitor will be VGA and one will be DVI. Just make sure that the card can use both at the same time.

Memory: You didn't mention it, but you should consider buying "low latency" ram from Corsair or OCZ. For a little bit of extra $$, you can get a nice performance boost.

HI,
actually for a laptop "major brands" are a huge gamble.
your better off buying from a DAW builder who has laptops known to work for audio.

first no big name company in fact no one builds thier own laptops
everyone from dell to Alienware HP etc all have laptops built for them by 1 of 7 manufacturers.

the issue with laptops for audio or video for that matter is most laptops made are not designed nor expected to be used as a workstation.
thus why so many dont work for audio and tend to lump all resources on 1 or 2 irqs. EG, USB/PCMCIA/Firewire and IDE
the bios tend to be very small and internal thruput very limited.

while the CPU power keeps incresing the memory still lags behind as does the internal PCI bus. this is evident on harddrive benchmarks.

95% of laptops made are horrid for audio.
i dont mean 10 tracks a few plugs and a few VSTi.
i mean real world use 40-80 tracks recording 24 live.
lot o plugs and vsti.



anyway when new procs come out we go thru alot of laptops before we find one that works. (we get lucky once in awhile and get a winner within 1-2.)

unlike motherboards with manuals, you cant get a layout of how things are routed with a laptop.

so its either buy from a known good source or hit and miss with Dell, hp etc.
about the only ones that are know to work is Apple. and i dont know if this will hold true with the new ones. i would assume they had Intel design thier mobo to be robust on the laptop and not lacking resources.


aside from that the obvious tweaked for audio, support for audio hardware and software

Scott
ADK

Kicker,

He said laptop, not desk top.. I'm pretty sure you are describing attributes of a desktop DAW, not laptop

BD

ORIGINAL: JTwin

^
So what do you suggest? I share a small apt. with my girlfriend, so I have nowhere to set up a desktop, which is why I use a laptop (a HP NC8000, which works and sounds fine, like you said, with a limited number of tracks, but my last project used 21 stero tracks with a lot of VST's, and it didn't do too well). I see Cakewalk recommends the Dell Prescision M90, but it's an expensive machine once you customize it.

i suggest a custom laptop thats for pro audio the Dell isnt that i suggested staying away from "name brand"

keep looking

Scott
ADK

JTwin,

What about a small cube/mini PC? I run a Biostar (http://www.biostar.com.tw) iDEQ with an AMD cpu, two sata discs, external audio card (although I still have a slot available for an internal one), 2GB RAM and a DVD-DL-RW. Works good and doesn't take up much space at all.

ORIGINAL: jcschild

lol Corey,
THANKS!
we must of been typing at the same time

Scott

Hey, no need to thank me. You built a ROCK SOLID laptop for me... and it's opened up new revenue streams for the studio. I tell everybody who asks about your gear!



Corey

ORIGINAL: JTwin

ahh, i see scott works at ADK. never heard of it until now. nice clientelle list. the setup i'd want runs about $2,500 there so it'll be a good while before i can afford it, but i might have to order your way when i'm eventually rich and ready.

JTwin,
When you say "the setup I'd want" costs too much, that is the nut of the situation. It is unrealistic to expect equivalent performance from a laptop as from a similarly-priced desktop. A laptop must be smaller, lighter, less power-hungry, and less prone to overheating, and it must also be physically tougher and sturdier than a desktop. All of those capabilities and features have significant tradeoffs in terms of manufacturing costs or performance hits, and usually both.

If you cannot comprimise on space, then you must expect to comprimise in terms of paying more. If you must have the smallest computer and can't afford to pay more for it, then you have to expect that you're going to end up with bargain-basement performance. Most laptop manufacturers aggressively try to cram in as much CPU speed, screen size, and battery life as they can for the lowest price. This doesn't necessarily translate into a good machine for multitrack audio. On an apples-to-apples basis, comapnies like ADK really aren't charging that much more than a comperably-configured "bix box" computer would cost, if you could find one.

You may want to reconsider a desktop-based solution, which is a much easier and less expensive way to get an audio powerhouse. It sounds like you are planning on using a coffee table to work on your audio, no? Well, a keyboard and a flat-panel monitor really don't take up much more space than a laptop, and there are plenty of dektop cases that will fit under a coffee table. This is actually very close to the setup I work on right now. I have two flat-panel monitors on a coffee table, a wireless keyboard and trackball that sit in my lap on the couch, and the actual computer sits under an end-table off to the side of the couch. If I ever want to clear the coffee-table, it's FAR easier to stick the LCD monitors and keyboard under the end table than it is to take down all the cables, stands, instruments, speakers, etc. I recently switched to this "living room setup" because I thought it would be a better environment to work in than sitting at a desk. My jury is still out on whether it's an improvement, but if it's what you're stuck with, it really isn't that hard to set it up in an actual functioning living room.

Given that you already have a computer that works for small-track-count projects, I would be really reluctant to spend all your money on a new computer that may only deliver a marginal increase in performance. If it's not going to at least double your real-world track count, then you may as well just get in touch with the freeze function, rather than spend an extra $400 per additional track capability or whatever. And whatever way you go, it will be a good thing to hang onto your current computer to use as the web-surfing, office-work, and other computer stuff machine. Leave the audio one for audio only.

Cheers.