Laptop For Home Studio Recording

Using a laptop for home studio recording projects is a great idea. After trading in my big ol' desktop a few years ago I put everything onto my laptop including my music recording software. Using mainly Pro Tools and sometimes Digital Performer, but also have used Cakewalk and Cubase in the past.

What made this change-over so appealing to me was how much laptops have improved in the last couple of years. With the speed, power, and storage capacity rivaling some of the top desk top models. Throw in the portability factor and it was a no-brainer.

You can also take your home studio to another home or even pro studio and integrate your project into their set up or simply transfer your tracks. Having this option has saved me lots of time and money as well as improving on some of the quality of some tracking I wasn't able to do at home. After which, you simply pack up your laptop and go plug it back into your own home studio with all those new tracks to play around with.

Which laptop?
The choice for PC users has come down to this: Intel Core 2 Duo Pro. Luckily for us, they have started producing laptops that are truly high performance music production machines (see below). The key point here is the Intel Core Duo CPU processors. Yup, two processors to make these laptops run many times faster than any high powered desk top you may have be using.

Everything from the CPU to the FireWire card to the optical mouse has been designed to make these laptops a high powered studio recording monster. For model and a full list of features see link below as there isn't enough room here.

Mac Computers
Same thing applies to macs. The new Mac PowerBooks have Intel core 2 duo as well, making them faster than anything we've seen yet. These are truly amazing at only 1 inch in thickness and up to 4 Gig's of memory and 250 Gig hard drives.

Considering these kind of features and their portability and small usage space on your desk, any home recording studio enthusiast would be crazy to even think about a big ol' desk top anymore.

How To Eliminate Those Computer Configuration Problems & Headaches - Get a Laptop that was built specificaly as a music recording machine.

If a Mac just isn't for you then have a serious look at this laptop built for music production.

MusicXPC Professional M3 Production Laptop

The MusicXPC Professional M3 Production Laptop is a sleek, stylish, super-fast mobile notebook ideal for digital music production. It features a beautiful silver and black exterior, light weight, and fast operation. With the M3 you will complete projects in ProTools, Cubase, or Sonar with greater speed and operate your production schedule with the peace of mind that comes from the industry's best backup and restoration utility.

Apart from being a top performer for music software, the M3 is mainstream with everything you would expect like USB 2.0, FireWire, Wireless LAN, PC Card Slot, etc., and other features you may not, like Gigabit LAN, DVD+/-RW and live telephone support.The M3 notebook features an Intel Pentium M 1.73GHz CPU, an 80GB 5,400rpm hard drive, 512MB of DDR333 RAM (expandable to 2GB), a 15.4" WXGA wide angle screen that gives you visibility even at off-axis points of view.

The M3 comes with a recovery utility that stores the system factory settings outside of the Windows OS world in a host-protected area of the hard drive. This allows you to restore the M3 to the factory even if the hard drive has been accidentally re-formatted. The M3 has Gigabit LAN to improve workflow and play projects stored on other computers via Ethernet; built in 8X DVD+/-RW burner for archiving and more and more and more.The MusicXPC computers excel and differ from most off-the-shelf PCs and Macs in these key areas:

1. VERY QUIET OPERATION- The Professional M3 is very quiet. Part of the secret of this silence is the presence of a heat-pipe that moves heat away from the CPU using convection instead of loud fans. A small temperature-controlled fan is then used to cool the extremity of the heat-pipe which causes more heat to flow away from the CPU. This is simple, smart, and effective and results in a super quiet notebook.

2. HIGH PERFORMANCE- Without power you cannot realize the boundaries of your imagination. The Professional M3 delivers enormous power in terms of track counts and simultaneous plug-in tests. The Pentium M CPU blazes through CPU intensive tasks like Virtual Instruments and Effects Plug-ins. The machine delivers scores and scores of audio tracks.

3. TWEAKED FOR MUSIC- MusicXPC Professional is made for demanding media production professionals. It's not a laptop you would purchase for organizing photos or playing back MP3s, this is a machine for professional audio recording, mixing, mastering, and media creation. The entire operating system has been configured for recording and playing back digital media using the popular professional software used by today's media professional. Windows XP services that are not needed are turned OFF and the ones needed are turned ON. Out of the box, the M3 is ready for production because MusicXPC has already tweaked it to perfection.

4. RECOVERY- In a busy music production workspace the most critical piece of equipment is the media computer. When it is not working properly then you cannot work properly

Mac's need to be a G4 933MHz or higher and preferably a G5 or Intel-based Mac.

That should give you an idea of the basic computer requirments. If you're there with your computer then one of these systems is a great way to go about building your digital home studio.

Mac users
If your old Mac isn't up to specs mentioned above, the good news is they've come down in price since you bought your last one.

Apple Macbook Pro 15/2.33/2G Intel Core 2 Duo

Apple MacBookPro is built on the revolutionary Intel Core 2 Duo which packs the power of two processor cores (in this case 2.4GHz) inside a single chip and provides 4MB of Smart Cache that can be shared between the cores as needed.

Whether you're creating 3D animation, recording audio, or playing your favorite video game, the MacBook Pro notebook computer delivers serious processing power with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics controller.

It also delivers up to 4GB of 667MHz DDR2 memory with a faster, 800MHz frontside bus and support for hard drives up to 250GB. Amazingly enough all this power comes in a package only one inch thick and a mere 5.4 pounds, making the MacBook Pro model among the thinnest, lightest notebooks in its display class.

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