LOL - you could have said, "Yeah no problem ya squeamish wimp !"Originally Posted by bird.land
Wimpy confession:I ended up taking it to a guy I know who sets up computers and he did it for me. Cash was exchanged. He reckons it's not an easy task. He seemed not keen so I crossed his hand with silver. I copped out.
I bought my lap top a year ago before I got into music production this year... it's a Samsung bought from PC World with a 2G RAM, 160G HD and packaged with Vista 32bit home premium.
The DAW I use is ACID Pro 7... works perfectly as do all the VST plug-ins.
The soundcard I use is Cakewalks UA1G USB Audio Interface... works perfectly, great 24bit recording.
I also use an M-Audio MIDI Keyboard packed with KeyRig's soft synth and Ableton Live Lite... all work perfectly.
Popular belief is that Vista is whack, but I've had no issue's with it mate or with my high street laptop. At the end of the day it's about making sure that you DON'T purchases software/hardware, plug-ins, Audio interfaces, DAW's etc that are NOT compatible with what you have and purchasing one's that ARE! From my research it appears that most things click with PC's/Windows and indeed Vista, although some things might require you to download a driver from the manufactures web site but big deal.
I'm slightly concerned that my I'm streching my 2G RAM (although had no problems yet) so I think I might actually dump Vista (with all it's bells and whistles it uses 1GB on it's own) and put my Dads copy of XP on it (uses about 150MB) because you CAN change operating systems, you are not stuck with what the laptop is packaged with. My laptop has two RAM slots anyway.
My only other concern is my Hard Drive, it's not exactly big, but more than big enough to host a selection of virtual instruments, plug-ins and DAW's/sequencers etc I'll just bung my WAV files, MP3's, samples etc on an external hard drive if and when required, you can get 500GB in the palm of your hand these days, just plug it in via a USB slot... simples.
Hoping to complete my first completed tune very soon, been working on it all summer, all started with an old synth I seen in a porn shop (Yamaha CSX1) bought it to piss about on, worked out a killer riff, wondered how I might be able to record and sequence it and one thing inevitably led to another and I'm now totally hooked on the whole production bag, just can't stop researching on here, dolphin music, DV247, Sound on Sound etc it's almost as fun as doing "studio" work! I really need to stop buying stuff though and exhaust what I already have...
By coincidence I'm looking to get a laptop at the moment and saw this thread.
I haven't decided on a laptop yet but I thought about the "M-Audio Mobile Pre USB soundcard". It looks quite nice and is bus powered.
It looks like it's only USB1.0, but I never record more than one audio track at a time, so USB 1 should be enough, shouldn't it?
The only problem is that it records at 16bit, studio quality is 24bit, so depends how fussy you are. I had a 16bit USB audio interface at first working with a basic sequencer but found it wasn't compatitable with my DAW (ACID Pro 7) which only supports 24bit recording and above so then had to get a 24bit AI. Most DAW/Sequencers support 24bit recording, but can't say if most support any less than this, mine certainly doesnt. Then again if you only plan to use Ableton Live Lite 5 which is bundled with it then you'll be fine.
Thanks. The more I look into this the more confused I get!
On my desktop I'm currently using Cubase SX, Guitar Rig, Battery 2, and my audio card is the M-audio Firewire Audiophile.
I'm planning to use exactly the same software on the laptop, if that makes it more straightforward.
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