Pc Laptops For Music Production – A laptop can be essential for live music performances, but which one is best for programs like Sonic Pi and Max/MSP? Photo: Vince Bucci/Fox/PictureGroup/Rex/Shutterstock
I’m a musician and software developer looking to get into live and electronic coding using software like Sonic Pi and maybe in the future Max/MSP from Cycling 74. Most people seem to use Apple MacBook Pros, but I’ve always been a Windows user and I develop software on Windows using Visual Studio, so I’m reluctant to switch to Mac. Every time I tried to get a good setup for creating music on Windows, I was plagued with latency issues. From what I’ve read online, it seems that the Windows sound drivers, although improved by Windows 10, still lag behind the MacOS drivers. I have a Roland Duo-Capture EX and an older Novation X-Station and I’m happy to use either as part of my setup, but I’d like a system that’s portable enough to be easy to play with. Finally, a touchscreen would make a lot of sense for less code-based interaction—ideally, one where the screen can be laid flat, like the Lenovo Yoga series or the Microsoft Surface Pro. Miles
Pc Laptops For Music Production
Your best bet would be to find and cultivate some people who compose and/or play with Windows laptops – they are! – and ask for advice. Fields like this usually involve tacit knowledge that you only learn by doing things for a while, and I didn’t do that at all.
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If not, there are probably websites or online communities that specialize in this topic. I haven’t found any, but people who are heavily involved in this area will know where it is. This is another question readers can answer in the comments below…
However, you may want to think about your overall strategy. As I understand it, you want to do everything on one laptop, which might mean taking your work machine into dangerous nightclub-style environments. This gives you the worst of both worlds.
Laptops are not the best choice for continuous work like coding because they have poor ergonomics. You should use a desktop computer—which will run faster and last longer for less money—with an ergonomic keyboard and a large screen. For the price of a properly equipped MacBook Pro, you could probably buy a desktop computer for programming and a second-hand MacBook for performance.
Using a desktop will allow you to add a suitable sound card and avoid most if not all Windows driver issues by using Steinberg’s kernel stream or ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) supplied with some devices or ASIO4ALL. Of course, you can replace your old Roland with an external USB sound card. This should provide better sound quality with a laptop, as well as – hopefully – reduce the risk of latency issues.
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Sam Aaron’s open source program Sonic Pi was written for the Raspberry Pi, so any PC or Mac should be able to run it well enough. It’s a very simple system where you enter a note by just typing a number, but it gets very powerful when the “note” is a sample. It reminds me of the Logo language where you can repeat simple instructions to create attractive designs. I bet Terry Riley would love that.
Cycling 74’s Max/MSP (Max Signal Processing and/or Miller Smith Puckette), now owned by Ableton, is another pot of bouillabaisse. It is a visual programming language where you can link objects (routines) and create huge data flow diagrams.
The Cycling 74 website recommends an Intel Core i5 or faster processor and 8GB or more memory to run Max 8, which “includes MSP, Jitter, Gen and support for Max for Live.” (Interestingly, the “recommended ASIO compatible sound card for optimal audio performance” with Max 6 has been dropped.)
Most DAWs (digital audio workstation programs) actually require 16GB of RAM, and some work best with 32GB (Pro Tools). However, Max 8’s graphical fuss seems to be the main challenge, and the helpful user forum Cycling 74 has at least one example of someone running Max on a 4GB Core m3 Intel Compute Stick.
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An Apple MacBook Pro or Microsoft Surface Book or Surface Pro might be good options, but neither can be upgraded after purchase. Composer: Samuel Gibbs
You didn’t mention budget, but the best MacBook option right now is the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 2.3GHz seventh-generation Core i5, 8GB of memory and 128GB (£1,249) or 256GB ( £1,449) SSD storage. A system with 16GB of memory and a 256GB SSD would therefore cost £1,629. Adding three years of AppleCare – a good idea given the keyboard’s previous failures – comes to £1,878.
One of the main problems with the current MacBook Pros is that you can’t upgrade them: you have to buy everything you need upfront and pay Apple prices. If you buy a Windows laptop, you can choose a laptop with more configuration options that you can upgrade later.
My current pick is the 14-inch Lenovo ThinkPad T480S with an eighth-generation 3.4GHz Core i5-8250U processor. A base system with 8GB of memory, a 128GB SSD, Windows 10 and a three-year portable service would cost £1,189.99. Upgrading to 16GB of memory and a 256GB SSD takes the price to £1,279.59, but there are many more options. In fact, you have four processors up to Core i7-8650U, four RAM capacities up to 24GB, four SSD sizes up to 1TB and four different displays up to WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels). If you want a touchscreen it costs £46.80 extra.
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One option I would definitely go for is to extend the warranty to three years on-site service for an extra £63.60. Lenovo offers up to five years of on-site service for £225.60.
There’s also a slightly cheaper, slightly larger version, the ThinkPad T480, which starts at £949.99. This offers even more possibilities. It has a traditional 2.5-inch drive bay – the base model has a 500GB hard drive – so you can have two drives. It also has two memory slots instead of one, so you can have up to 32GB of memory. These are the real advantages of being able to remove the back and upgrade the parts later.
The T480 and T480S don’t have 360-degree hinges to act as tablets, but they do rotate 180 degrees so you can lay them flat.
The Lenovo Yoga range isn’t built or tested to the same standards as the ThinkPad T range, but prices start at £199.99. However, the top model Yoga 920, currently available for £999, only has 8GB of memory and is not expandable.
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The Microsoft Surface Pro 6 lets you have just 16GB of memory if you buy a 512GB SSD and a Core i7, which costs £1,723.99, including a Type Cover keyboard. That would be stupid.
You can check your computer for latency issues by running the Resplendence Latency Monitor for at least 15 minutes. This can help you identify what’s causing the problems, although running SiSoftware’s Sandra Lite will give you more useful advice on how to optimize your system.
But the truth is that Windows is a general-purpose program, not a real-time operating system. Let it run long enough and eventually it will find something that is, for a few milliseconds, more important than the delivery of your audio bits. You can reduce the likelihood by not running other software, turning off non-essential background tasks, disconnecting from networks, etc., but you can’t completely eliminate the risk. A home recording environment is a comfortable setup for a music producer. It’s great to come up with a song in the kitchen and then go into the bedroom and record the ideas you just came up with.
A great home studio starts with a great laptop. Chances are you record songs with lots of audio and MIDI tracks. Therefore, it is important to have a reliable, fast and standard laptop at your disposal. In this article, we list eight features you should look for in a laptop if you plan to produce music:
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You may have heard the terms “CPU” and “core” before. “CPU” means “Core Processing Unit”. You can think of CPU as the speed at which a computer can process information. As you can guess, the faster the processor, the better it is to run a digital audio workstation (DAW).
When talking about a computer processor, you’ll also hear numbers like 2.2 GHz or 2.7 GHz. A higher number means the computer processes information more often, which is better. A minimum of 2.2 GHz is recommended for a good music production experience.
The second term that comes up a lot is “core”. You’ve probably heard of “dual-core” or “quad-core.” Traditionally, computers had a single core, so if you had more than one
