Is anyone using P5 on a Dell laptop?

Hi, all! I am thinking of "building my own" laptop at the Dell website. I doubt there would be any issues, as P5 appears to be working well with various soundcards. But if you have a Dell laptop, especially a recently acquired one through the Dell site, please say what model you've got and what is your soundcard, as well as how good is the sound.

If anyone wants to share thoughts about their non-Dell laptops, and the kind of sound they are getting from the soundcards while using P5, please feel free.

Thank you!

I have an old Dell Inspiron 5100. It's quite old now.
It's been very reliable.
Though the battery just died -- I run it on AC
(also have a 250 gB external drive)

Usually I run it on the internal Sigma Tel Audio soundcard and driver -- which is not the best, but adequate for a lot of work
When I get serious, I install PCMCIA Indigo Echo card (or is it Echo Indiogo?).
I have two one with an input channel and one w/o -- since P5 went with the ability to record a channel after I already had the card w/o an Input channel. Highly recommended -- excellent quality.

I have a dell, 20 months old. I would recommend the Edirol UA-25 as an external souncard (i think edirol have just updated this particular model) - it works a treat and you'll get a vastly superior sound to the internal soundcard with the dell.

One thing i asked Dell to do was load it with Windows XP - it was at the time Vista came out. If you can afford XP professional, even better. I thnk they will still do that for you. I don't know about Vista, but XP Pro is very stable.

The other thing i would recommend is you ask them NOT to load their 'free' anti-virus software. I kept on getting corrupted file projects, i removed the anti-virus software and the problem has disappeared. (So no surfing to dodgy sites after removal.)

IMHO!

Yours, Brian

And never carry your Dell notebook in and out of your girlfriends house in the ghetto's of Pontiac. It will eventually get stolen...

I'm surprised they didn't take my camera too....

I have a Dell XPS M1330 (Windows Vista) that I run P5 on (it's the only system I use now). It works fine with the stock hardware if you are just playing back or composing in a hunt-and-peck sort of way (manipulating loops, entering notes in the MIDI editor, etc.). If you are attaching a keyboard or recording audio you will definitely want to use an ASIO audio interface (due to latency).

It depends how seriously you're taking your music? I bought a pair of Tannoy Reveal 5A speakers, they are incredibly accurate reference speakers (less than 0.7 of 1% distortion) and i would recommend them if your budget allows. They cost me about 250 GBP, so i don't know how that translates in the States. They are way loud enough to deafen you, should you choose, so you don't need anything more powerful. But there are probably smaller, cheaper speakers that will do the job very well.

I'm sure others on this site have their preferences, but i love my Tannoys and they are, as i've said, very very accurate. What is amazing is listening to recordings from the 60s,70s,80s,90s etc and realising that every set of home-stereo/car-radio speakers you ever listened to that music on, coloured the sound, and often in a very favourable way. The original recordings sound very different, the engineers/producers knowing the music would be played on systems that would add their own sound colouration.

IMHO.

Yours, Brian

http://www.tannoy-speakers.com/s.php?product=14

I have something like this in mind

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10099148&logon=&langid=EN#

The speakers go into the external audio interface, there are 2 pairs of speaker ports at the back of the Edirol.

Yours, Brian

i have speakers AND headphones

so pro! in teh mix

headphones only damage ears when they're too loud

there's no need to mix or listen at damaging volume levels
and there's lots of reasons not to

for one thing ears are more likely to get fatigued at high volume levels
and most professionals will tell you that they mix at moderate volume levels

if you have to turn it up to get definition and separation, something's wrong

I mix with headphones -- an affordable pair of Grado 80's very flat and very good definition in the mid range
not the most comfortable headphones, but the best flattest ones I could afford

I don't think my hearing is any worse than it was when I started this

Most 'experts' will tell you not to mix with headphones, but I believe it can be done with some training and 'calibration'
The easiest thing to lose is control of sharp, loud transients because the 'mental' ear will adjust (and those are also the sounds that cause damage)

good reference headphones are a lot more affordable and convenient than good reference monitors (and room treatment)

but that's just me

if you've got the money, go for it

ORIGINAL: HiThere

Thank you, guys! I didn't realize one could use an external soundcard, thinking that you are limited to the laptop's internal card only.

If using the internal sound card you might need to use a 3rd party driver from http://www.asio4all.com/ in order to get good latency and consistent performance. Sometimes the original drivers don't work so well.

If you step up to a more professional "external" audio device you will get extra features like multiple ins/outs, audio routing, limiting, compression, multiple sample rates, multiple bit depths, balanced ins/outs, digital ins/outs, etc. There are a range of solid products from many manufacturers with a range of prices and feature sets available in USB or Firewall connectivity options which may fit your needs well.