@robert_e_bone thanks for the advice re Wi-Fi already store data, samples and mixdowns on an external Western Digital drive, really helps my current laptops work load.

liamflanagan
@CakeAlexS I'm getting a laptop as I may have go off site in the future, so good to have that option. I can see what you mean about doing my own research. What is Scan then? Who is a DAW specialist. I thought of going with Scan as they could tune up the laptop to work at maximum capacity and I wouldn't be have to deal with all the crap that you can't remove from a consumer laptop that takes up hard drive space and processing power.

Well their blurb:
 
" Our Pro Audio workstations are fully optimised for studio and music production duties. We test our music production PCs with a wide range of software & hardware with a focus on building powerful, quiet audio solutions so that you can simply get on with writing and producing great music. "
 
So as I haven't bought a machine off them recently I guess I can't comment.
They just assemble PC's which they custom build and install Windows on top of it. They may do some optimization, but it won't be any where near as good as you will do eventually.
 
But I suggest YOU are to become the DAW specialist. They may optimize it, but they don't maintain it throughout it's life. In order to maintain it you will need to do some optimizations yourself. Like I say though Cakewalk should work out the box without much optimization to start off with. You might have to tweak the power management but that generally is all. It's all part of the fun anyway (and pain which everybody goes through once in a while).
 
Do what you are happy with anyway, maybe I'm over harsh on them but I hate people spending money on stuff they don't need to spend it on because of marketing.

Why don't you start another thread like ... Please recommend me a laptop and an audio interface... Give us your requirements about what you actually want to do.... Ta

@CakewalkAlexS I akready have an audio interface and have optimised X3 Producer for my laptop. I just need to upgrade from my current 5 year old laptop. The Scan laptop I'm looking at furfils all the specs that I know about. Getting stuck with things I don't know about such as Graphics card. I'm wanting to work doing Music for Media so the laptop needs to be able to handle Producer X3 and video files and be stable. Just want some help/advice or direction to help and advice on what I should looking for.
 
 

Before I bought anything, I would check with these guys, they make computers especially for audio work, they can fill you in on the latest information.  http://www.adkproaudio.com/

Here is a site to compare hardware. I don't really have much brand loyalty myself with graphics cards:
http://www.hwcompare.com

I strongly recommend looking at internet reviews as well in case of known issues. Thanks.

Seth Kellogg [Cakewalk]

liamflanagan
I use Windows, so X3 doesn't use either CUDA or GPGPU for processing? What does use? How do you know what it uses?
 
Thanks
 
Liam

It uses your CPU. GPU based DSP and audio processing has not caught on because of competing API's and technical issues. GPU architecture is designed for multiple simultaneous threads being run in parallel. Since DAW's and audio processing in general require a lot of serial data flow,  it's not the easiest thing to implement. 
 
.................

Digressing slightly, I just learned about core parking in Win7.  I see in my i7 cpu, all the odd numbered cores are "parked," at desktop idle anyway.  Anyone know if tweaking the registry to unpark them increases performance in Sonar?  Or is it not really an issue because of the serial nature of the data flow?
 
Thx,  Ron

It is not really necessary unless you are experiencing symptoms such as clicking and stutters. Save your energy otherwise I suggest or perform your own benchmarks to find out.

I don't know if this is still true and for these specific bits of hardware, but it used to be that NVidia And Intel CPUs ran a little cooler than their AMD/ATI counterparts, for similar performance. This may be useful in a laptop situation with sub-optimal cooling pretty much by definition.

OpenCL is the best option for applications  looking for GPU acceleration, because CUDA is propriety and wont work on other hardware besides nVidia.
OpenCL is also receiving a lot of support from video encoders and video editing programs.
 

robert_e_bone
I will add that with laptops, in particular, please note that MANY Wi-Fi adapters on laptops cause massive latency spikes, which doesn't matter other than when you need low latency for things like Sonar or other music applications.
 
Sooooooo, my suggestion is to be prepared to either physically switch off the Wi-Fi (if there is a switch), or use a function key to do do (if it uses a function key for controlling the Wi-Fi), or go into Windows Device Manager and temporarily 'disable' your Wi-Fi adapter, ONLY doing so just prior to launching Sonar - or some other music application that is streaming audio.

This is true, I had this problem. You can find an updated driver from the official manufacturer of the hardware (not the brand it was licensed under) and that can also fix it and you won't need to change anything.