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laptop for home recording

arbitrary

arbitrary

Oct 24, 2005
4,175
1,787
Boston, MA
#1
ok now...so its been about a decade since I had to buy a laptop; a mac for grad school.

Now that things are a bit easier to get, I'm looking something for home recording to run ableton, a 2i2 and me and my bass. Looking to spend (edit) $850? Likely a pc I figure. What makes sense here? What would be good for those needs nowadays?

thanks
 
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#2
most reasonably configured laptops are going to be plenty powerful for basic recording needs these days. I would make sure it's equipped with at least an Intel i5 (or AMD equivalent) 8GB of fast RAM (16GB is better) and a decent sized (500GB) SSD. If you are looking at Focusrite interfaces, they offer pretty good guidance on laptop models that are known good with their boxes. As someone who recently jumped back into recording using a Focusrite interface (18i8), aside from basic specs, the bigger issue is finding a laptop hardware build and OS (Win 10) implementation that offers the lowest possible system DPC latency (delayed procedure call). High DPC latency (among other things) can cause drop outs and "crackling" when pushing the laptop during recording sessions.

so, my advice is ... go to the Focusrite website and check on makers/models they identify as known good for your chosen interface.

with new Focusrite purchases, an Ableton Lite license comes packaged with the box along with some other reasonably cool goodies.

good luck
 
#3
Does it have to be a laptop? If so, consider a refurb at BestBuy. The core i5 and 16GB RAM + 500GB SSD are good specs to baseline from. Desktops will be cheaper for equivalent resources, and more flexible/upgradable in many cases

IMO the budget is a little tight.
 
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#5
(Disclaimer - I work for Dell, but I have nothing to do with Dell PCs)

Something like this would be good:

Inspiron 15 Inch 5593 Laptop with Intel 10th Gen Processor | Dell USA

And then add 8GB more RAM. I am assuming more memory can be added because the i7 version has 16GB. If I were buying I would research that part first. Since I’m spending your money, I’m playing loose with the facts.
 
#6
OP - I got a refurbed Macbook Air for $800 a while back. The SSD is only 128G (doh!) but I save all my work to a 256GB SD card anyway.

I use it with a MOTU hybrid FW/USB interface, but I know it works with the Focusrite Scarlett (USB) and Saffire (FW) interfaces (for Firewire you must use a Thunderbolt adapter, $30).

It has the horsepower to support ~ 32 audio tracks while running 3 or 4 softsynths along with amp modelling plugins. It it super-quiet (SSD) and has good battery life

I've been using Logic for almost 10 years now, so sticking with Mac was important to me. I am suggesting Mac because you stated you had used them before.
 
#9
I still haven't grabbed anything yet; other expenses came up. Ideally I'd like to grab something within the next month: pc, laptop, going to run reaper with a focusrite 2:2, under $850. I hear I can use 8 or 16gb, but 16 would be ideal. I'd honestly like to stay away from refurb, but thank you.
 
#10
Costco is a good place to buy a laptop.
They give you 90days to try it out. And simple return if it doesn't work out.
AMD processors are a good value. Recent desktop I bought was a Ryzen and I have not seen any problems whatsoever.
This time of year they usually have some back to school deals but things may be different this year.
 
#11
i'm looking at an older mid-2012 MBP with upgrading to an SSD and 16G of RAM...i have been reading that they're still pretty good to use...i'm only tracking bass parts, though, no mixing or anything...was using an Alienware until my son decided he wanted it for gaming, and even that was about 10 years old
 
#13
HP is having a sale right now: Link Removed

Last year I purchased an HP gaming desktop (Intel i7, 16 GB of RAM, 500 GB SSD primary drive and 1 TB secondary drive, 1 GB video card) with 8 USB 3.0 ports and a DVD-ROM drive. It's been great for recording.
 
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#15
seamonkey said:
Costco is a good place to buy a laptop.
They give you 90days to try it out. And simple return if it doesn't work out.
AMD processors are a good value. Recent desktop I bought was a Ryzen and I have not seen any problems whatsoever.
This time of year they usually have some back to school deals but things may be different this year.
Click to expand...

Update on the Ryzen desktop. It shutdown for no reason one day. Nothing obvious but I wanted to know why. Called Asus ROG and Costco but phone wait times were stated to be hours. I didn't think a new PC should shutdown. It had two power bricks and that was a little clunky. It seems some manufacturers do this to get the case size small.
The fan could get a little noisy also when it would render things.

So I took it back to Costco. No problems at all returning it. It's a good way to try out a PC as it can take months to know if it's going to work out and sometimes little irritations are all it takes.
 
#17
Something to consider... I have about a 5 year old Acer Aspire E-5 laptop with an Intel I-5 2.4 Ghz CPU, 16GB RAM (came with 8GB from Microcenter, upgrade was about $60 from eBay). I think it was about $350 new. This laptop works fine for mixing and mastering but doesn't have enough umph for dedicated recording with virtual instr. or large plugins. In my practice room I have a late model refurb Dell PC mini tower I bought from Amazon for about $200 with a 500GB digital drive and 16GB of memory (upgradeable to 32GB). It's a workhorse. Not sure what kind of recording you will be doing but if you are looking at virtual amps and plugin's you'll need decent CPU and memory in a laptop. I was recording with a 2i2 interface and Cakewalk DAW with a virtual amp plugin when my laptop started bogging down.

Good luck with it
 
#18
Hi @arbitrary, I would never buy a refurbished computer from Amazon, eBay, or Craigslist, but I've had very good luck buying refurbished PCs from the Dell Outlet for Work. These come with the same warranty as if they were new, and I've never been able to find a scratch on them. I think in some cases they are surplus that businesses purchased, but then never used, returned them to Dell unopened. These are enterprise-grade product lines like the Latitude and Precision that maybe aren't as impressive specs (on paper) as similarly priced consumer/gaming laptops, but they compensate with better reliability and build quality.

I'm typing this from a refurbished XPS 13 laptop that was only about $800. ;) For heavy-duty tasks (like rendering) I also have a 15" Precision w/ Quadro GPU. A couple weeks ago, I dropped it on the floor... and the floor broke!

Take this with a grain of salt, but I work in IT, and everyplace I've ever worked, the preferred brands are (in no particular order): Lenovo, Dell, Apple.

@DigitalMan it's good to see a Dell employee here!

(edit) One final thought, is that for your purposes, I would recommend integrated graphics as opposed to a dedicated gaming GPU. For example if I had my choice between Intel integrated graphics vs. Nvidia GeForce GTX, I would choose the Intel (for music production purposes). Reason being, drivers.
 
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#19
Tosh said:
OP - I got a refurbed Macbook Air for $800 a while back. The SSD is only 128G (doh!) but I save all my work to a 256GB SD card anyway.

I use it with a MOTU hybrid FW/USB interface, but I know it works with the Focusrite Scarlett (USB) and Saffire (FW) interfaces (for Firewire you must use a Thunderbolt adapter, $30).

It has the horsepower to support ~ 32 audio tracks while running 3 or 4 softsynths along with amp modelling plugins. It it super-quiet (SSD) and has good battery life

I've been using Logic for almost 10 years now, so sticking with Mac was important to me. I am suggesting Mac because you stated you had used them before.
Click to expand...

I was going to say the same. Get a Mac and use Logic ($199 app) or GarageBand
 

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