SONAR on a laptop...surprising

I have had many tower systems over the years, my last was a quad core 2.6 with a delta 1010 and I loved it but it was stolen.  I now have a 2.2 triplecore laptop with two internal harddrives. I keep SONAR on the system drive and samples on the other internal drive and projects on an external usb 3.0 drive.

It took me awhile to get it right but this thing smokes.  I achieve a 10ms latency on MIDI and have had like 8 VSTs many effects and 20+ tracks and it just smokes.  I was shocked at ow well it works.

Now, it's not that fast of a machine but I think what makes it all work so well is the on-board sound card...even better than PCI I guess. I use an Audio Kontrol 1 for XLR mic inputs and the neat thing is I use the MME32 audio settings and the input of the Kontrol 1 still shows up, I still use the internal sound card for monitoring.

I'm just sharing this because I see most of you have these beefy machines like I used to and maybe have never tried a laptop and I think you would be surprised.

Been running Sonar on my HP DV7 Laptop for over a year.  I can run over 50 audio tracks with tons of plugins without a hickup (even more with X1)!  My specs are in my signature.

I've used laptops for years.  Up until now, there was always kind of a "speed limit" to them where they couldn't handle bigger and more CPU intensive VST's without freezing everything.  I'd always push them to the limit and suffer with occasional glitching with the CPU meters at 50% or more.

When X1 came out I bought a new VAIO - quad core i5.  This laptop is extremely powerful and it handles anything I throw at it.  30 or 40 tracks, Superior Drummer 2, Trilian, GPO.  I've got a big 7200rpm drive.  The meters barely move. 

Roger,
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Shawn,
I'm affraid you missed the joke! He's referring to the baby in the picture as if it were you.

Lol!!!!!!!!!! Good come back!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RogerH

shawn@trustmedia.tv


by the way my laptop is an hpdv-7 4069wm I purchased at walmart a few months ago for $850.00.

Is it ok if I ask how old you really are? Seem to be quite young.....

Rarely do I actually Laugh Out Loud. But THAT'S FUNNY.

chuckebaby


...i also have that akia lpk you have in the picture..what a bargin hu??? does just what i need for synth stuff.this is a feel good post...i like it.

The Akai LPD8 is also kick ass and a great bargin as well. You can set it up as a Transport control with ACT as well.

A1MixMan

chuckebaby


...i also have that akia lpk you have in the picture..what a bargin hu??? does just what i need for synth stuff.this is a feel good post...i like it.

The Akai LPD8 is also kick ass and a great bargin as well. You can set it up as a Transport control with ACT as well.

I looked at that but I went with the KORG nanoKONTROL...

told ya shawn..i happy for you..just be sure to read that manual on the asio its short but there are a few fine tuning things you can do to make it even better..and watch out for the  ms microsoft synth..dont have your onboard card and the asio work at the same time..just the asio4all

chuckebaby

hey are you in 64 bit now too???

hey are you in 64 bit now too???

no, I do a lot of Video Editing also and I use SpeedEDIT from NewTek, It works much faster under a 32bit OS so I run Win 7 32 and quite franky my SONAR setup does everything I need/want it to do so until SpeedEDIT is 64bit friendly i'm sticking in the 32bit realm...

I suggested a few months ago and I maintain that the desktop computer is dead.  The laptop system is still not perfect one being cheap usb and firewire chipsets (I have had a few issues and am having one at the moment) but in terms of power, a laptop even a 1000 dollar one has more than enough power for audio.

The one thing that tips it over the edge is access to a UAD laptop card increasing your plug in power exponentially.

I will never go back, although I have a couple of Creamware cards and may soon in the near future set up a desktop and patch it into my current system.

Apart from that why bother with all the problems associated with setting up a desktop, for the most part I have been able to use my laptop/interface and software without configuring windows seven right out of the box.

Here is my tip's for getting a laptop for musical production one, make sure it has an express card slot.  Very important if you are going use a UAD DSP card and it is fundamental to have some DSP no matter how powerful your computer is.

Two an e-sata port again important because it allows you to hook in a second hard drive, if you don't have a laptop with a two hard drive configuration.

Finally check the quality of your USB and Firewire chipsets.

P.S of course all this information is almost obsolete (the problem with technology) laptops are now starting to phase out express card slots.  E-Sata is being replaced with usb3 and usb 3 is being replaced with thunderbolt.

Dr.Hash
www.aaudiomystiks.com

Somerset


I'm thinking of buying a laptop too. I do have a work laptop which is a couple of years old, but I should get my own. Nice to know you guys are getting good performance running X1 on a laptop. An off topic question maybe - but does anyone have a Macbook Pro with X1 running on it? (Not sure if this is possible via Bootcamp or something like that).

I had a macbook pro and ran sonar under bootcamp with n problems

Having a powerful/portable setup is absolutely amazing!!!!! 

Somerset


Thanks Mike & Shawn. I might look further into this, but nice to know it should work OK on Macbook.

I really don't think you'll have any problems, have fun!