Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Little Pigbacon
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Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

devastone said:
You shouldn't have any issues with the single SSD drive, but if it has a bay, wouldn't hurt to have a 2nd drive just for audio. Run your programs on the main C drive and have it record all the audio to the other drive, put all your samples, etc... on that drive too.
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Normally I'd disagree, but a 256GB SSD is pretty small for Windows. I'm not sure about 10, but my work machine with Windows 7 Pro requires around 100GB for the OS and installed apps. That doesn't leave a ton of space for audio projects or sample libraries. A 500GB SSD OTOH would be large enough to have a couple sample libraries along with a few projects on the main disk, though it would still be a good idea to move finished projects to another drive. If this is going to be a general purpose (gaming, etc) machine in addition to recording, I'd feel safer with 1TB instead.
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

That must be a semi-recent thing, I've always heard it is best to keep the audio on a separate disk if possible, and the studio guys I knew (which granted weren't a lot) had separate discs or arrays for the audio. That may be old school, pre-SSD thinking, I haven't done much recording it years and it's probably become a non-issue these days with processor speeds and SSDs.

But yes, with a 256G drive, you'll probably run out of space pretty quickly these days. I remember when a 40M disk was considered huge, and "you'll never fill that up!". Of course that disk cost as much or more than a decent laptop now days.
 
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Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

I’ve thought of putting at least a 512GB SSD in the second bay. What if I replace C: drive with a 1TB SSD and put another 1TB in the 2nd bay? Come to think of it, the factory SSD is already partitioned. D: is about 87GB.
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

devastone said:
That must be a semi-recent thing, I've always heard it is best to keep the audio on a separate disk if possible, and the studio guys I knew (which granted weren't a lot) had separate discs or arrays for the audio. That may be old school, pre-SSD thinking, I haven't done much recording it years and it's probably become a non-issue these days with processor speeds and SSDs.

But yes, with a 256G drive, you'll probably run out of space pretty quickly these days. I remember when a 40M disk was considered huge, and "you'll never fill that up!". Of course that disk cost as much or more than a decent laptop now days.
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Separating system and audio drives is pre-SSD thinking, and with mechanical disks it's a really good idea due to rotational latency. With SSDs as long as the drive is big enough and the system has enough RAM, it really isn't an issue anymore.
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

Yeah, I'm an old guy, we used tape back in the day, even recorded one band on an 8-track to cassette machine.
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

devastone said:
Yeah, I'm an old guy, we used tape back in the day, even recorded one band on an 8-track to cassette machine.
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I've never owned a tape machine, and the only times I've ever recorded on one were in a local Music School's studios. I did own an ADAT machine and recorded a few of my old band's demos on it, so I'm at least somewhat familiar with the workflow. I actually try to work similarly when recording on a computer as I find committing to sounds early makes it much harder to get lost in the trees of various plugins and other potential digital distractions.
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

First recording: Mic an amp, or in the box?
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

Little Pigbacon said:
I’ve thought of putting at least a 512GB SSD in the second bay. What if I replace C: drive with a 1TB SSD and put another 1TB in the 2nd bay? Come to think of it, the factory SSD is already partitioned. D: is about 87GB.
Click to expand...

Trusting in dystrust's advice (hmm?), one 1TB disk should be enough, and you can get a USB disk to use for external backups (always a good idea if you have any valuable info), they don't cost much more than a regular SSD.
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

Old Guy said:
Mic an amp. Sounds better. :D
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Not if you A) can't get that amp sounding good in the room and B) don't know how to mic an amp worth a ****.

I do encourage to work on mic techniques for micing amps as it will certainly be rewarding and sound good in the end.

Better yet, get a DI box, put the THRU to the amp and capture both. Amp tone not working? No problem, move to ITB!
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

If you’ve already got an interface like the Focusrite mentioned earlier, what role would the DI box play, other than splitting the guitar signal between the interface and the amp?
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

Little Pigbacon said:
If you’ve already got an interface like the Focusrite mentioned earlier, what role would the DI box play, other than splitting the guitar signal between the interface and the amp?
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Lossless signal splitter. Plus the buffer won’t hurt. A powered ABY will do the same but not buffered for long cable runs.
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

Naturally, Radial comes to mind. They only make about three hundred different DI boxes.
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

TwilightOdyssey said:
They are all great, just get one that does what you want and is in your budget.
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Is there any truth to the statement that you want an active DI for passive pickups and a passive DI for active pickups? I've owned and used a passive Radial DI box, and I'm wondering if there'd be any benefit of buying a J48 for reamping.
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

dystrust said:
Is there any truth to the statement that you want an active DI for passive pickups and a passive DI for active pickups?
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Never head that before.

I've owned and used a passive Radial DI box, and I'm wondering if there'd be any benefit of buying a J48 for reamping.
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I use passive DI and reamp (Pro RMP) from Radial; they both work great! And I use passive pickups ... but technically, the signal coming from your interface will be closer to an active pickup's output, I think ...
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

TwilightOdyssey said:
Never head that before.
Click to expand...

I've heard it said multiple times, but a quick Google search shows that it isn't entirely true.

The important factor is input impedance, and most passive DIs have an input impedance around 100K which is too low to accurately capture passive pickups. Active DIs are much more likely to have an input impedance around 1M which works far better with passive pickups.

TL;DR:
As a general rule, an active DI is probably better with passive pickups, while DI type probably doesn't matter with actives.
 
Re: Shopping advice for a new recording laptop?

Well, many active DIs will run off of phantom power, and using phantom power makes me feel sexy. Point: Active.
 
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