My main music PC is a little more than 2 years old. The CPU is a3.06 GHz i7 950 (quad core). 12 GB RAM. SSD drives for system and samples. M-Audio Delta 44 for audio. I use Sonar X2, and I rely solely on sample-based soft synths, and have Komplete 8. The PC is fast enough to handle 8 instances of Kontakt (and/or the synths that came with X2) with about 10 ms latency. Good enough for me.

I'm thinking about getting a laptop for making music when travelling (or in the other room). I'd like it to be able to handle 8 instances of Kontakt with 10 ms or better latency.

My question is: are X2/Komplete friendly laptops still considered "high end" (and therefore expensive) these days? Or could a modern mid-range (say, $1000) suffice? I already have a laptop for web browser and work, so there is no point in my getting another laptop if turns out it's too slow and/or unreliable to function as a decent sample-based DAW. So I don't want to cut corners, but then again I don't want to spend a ton of money just to be able to make music on the couch instead of in my office chair.

Has anyone else (who is soft-synth dependent) upgraded/cross-graded their setup to a laptop recently? Any recommended specs (or even just dollar amount expectations)? Any observations on how well the laptop is coping?

Kia Ora Tripecac. I'm doing pretty much what you want with a Toshiba Tecra R850 i7. I got it through the Laptop Company in Welly. The newer version has more USB3 ports but is otherwise the same, more or less. Take a look at their site.

I would suggest something with:

i7

8 GB memory or higher

17.3" screen - laptop would likely be large enough for 2nd internal HD.
Any internal drive should be 7,200 RPM or SSD (I recommend 2 SATA 3 drives - primary 500 GB - 1 TB, secondary drive 1 TB to 2 TB) 

If you have the coin, then as large of an SSD for primary drive as possible - but the SATA 3 7,200 RPM non-SSD drives are plenty fast enough for Sonar.  I used to have a primary drive that wa SSD, but when it failed I replaced it with a non-SSD drive and had enough money left over for a nice new 46" HDTV, which is now my primary monitor.

You certainly will want at least 1 USB 3.0 port on the laptop, try for at least a couple of those, with one or more USB 2.0 ports as well, in case your audio interface needs a USB 2.0 port.  

If you want a 15.4" screen, you will likely get a single internal drive, which is still OK, as long as you have either a USB 3.0 port or eSATA port for an external secondary drive.  Getting the larger 17.3" screen sized laptop would allow that secondary drive to be internal, and would be a bit less cumbersome for mobile use.

Here are links to a few - some may not be in stock, I just chose these for the specs and relative cost - shop around for price and availability:

http://microcenter.com/pr...Computer_-_Black_Widow (about $1250 - has two 7,200 500 GB drives and 12 GB memory, 1 open slot for an additional 4 GB memory totaling 16 GB)

http://microcenter.com/pr...puter_-_Midnight_Black (this one is about $1000, but has a 5,400 RPM drive - you would want a faster 7,200 drive - do not know if room for 2nd)

http://microcenter.com/pr...aptop_Computer_-_Black (about $1200 - comes with 7,200 750 GB drive and 8 GB memory - 2x4GB - upgradable to 16GB, but you would have to scrap the existing strips and get 2 8GB strips which would be expensive)

Anyways - there seems to be a bunch of machines in the ball park of $1000 to $1300 that would be quite powerful for several years of mobile use.  You can run Sonar on lesser machines, but I believe the difference in performance between what you would get in a laptop for $600-$800 and one running an i7 with a combination of lots of memory and faster drives is well worth the extra couple of hundred or so to get the more powerful machine.

Sonar loves power and memory - and having 2 drives is also the way to go, in my opinion.

Bob Bone

I recommend Rain Computers - if you look at them you'll see why. I've had an excellent experience with them.

I bought this one: http://www.newegg.com/Pro...el-_-Content-_-text-_- ..... it says 6 gigs, but it's upgradable to 10, which I haven't done yet. 6 has been MORE than enough.

Lots of bang for the buck with Ausu laptops. I bought a new Asus N56VM-3rd Gen i7 3770, nvidea 2GB vid card, 1080 HiDef display, etc, etcf. 16GB ram. The only downside was it only has USB 3.0 ports, no 2's. But everything I have works fine on the 3.0USB, even my new Roland OCta capture.
Also, eaasy to mod HD's.
 
I removed the 750 GB 7200rpm HD and put in an Intel SSD 240gb, Then I took the optical drive out and (with $19 adapter kit) put the 750gb 7200 that came with the laptop in there.
I couldn't be happier.
 
One oddity-The user manual and even Crucial website say this model only takes 8gb ram. Sure glad I ran a cross a blog that said that was wrong.
It takes 16gb and flies. Love it-

I bought and HP Envy DV6 at walmart for $648.00 it's a 2.3 quad core with 8 gigs o ram and a super loud heaphone output....this thing rocks! - Shawn

I just bought a Samsung through dealnews.com for $650 it comes with i7 2.5ghz quad core 1tb hd 8 gb ram 2 usb 3.0 2 usb 2.0 blue tooth and wifi its a 5400 rpm hd and the dvd/cd rw is there in the second bay need to learn about upgrading it to faster hard drives. Of course I would love to have the primary drive be an SSD. maybe later on down the road.

For those of you who have posted about laptops in this thread, here are some questions:

1) Which soft synths are you using?

2) How many instances are you able to run smoothly?

3) At what latency are you running them (while recording, not mixing)?

If we're using primarily soft synths, how does hard drive speed (5400 vs 7200 RPM) affect our experience?

My guess is that 5400 RPM means slower loading times (for samples), and possibly slower bounce-to-disk times (assuming Sonar slows down enough to accommodate slower hard drives). However, once samples are loaded in RAM, the hard drive is not accessed, so hard drive speed would not affect audio latency during performance, correct? And recording those performances is all MIDI rather than audio, so hard drive speed is a non-issue there.

So, unless we're recording audio, does 5400 RPM have no real effect, other than having to wait while samples load into memory, and then at the end, when we export our audio to a wav?