What laptop should i buy?

What’s up guys.



Hope you guys are having a great week.

I’ve got a question that’s been bothering me lately.

Since i’m getting more into producing music, i wanna take it a bit more serious.

For my new study i have to buy a laptop. And since this can be a big investment i wanna do it right. ( Don’t worry i won’t be running big programs on my laptop only web browser based stuff or Office )

I think it’s ideal for me to produce on a laptop. All though i don’t know on wich specifications i should look. I don’t have any clue about what kind of soundcard it should have etc.

I’m running ableton at the moment, i might check logic out if i buy a macbook.

I’ve seen some ‘‘DJ’s’’ cough skrillexcough using a macbook to DJ and i assume also produce.



What kind of macbook or laptop should i get to produce some great music?

What version of macbook?

Hope you guys can help me out!



Cya! have a good one.



PS my apologies if this is the wrong section

It really depends on budget… I have a 17" MBP which does the trick nicely but they are pretty expensive.



smaller screens are defo hard to produce on so avoid the 13"

If you’re producing at home you could always get the smaller screen mac and hook it up to a big monitor, but that obviously takes up more space.



I’m looking to get a mac in the next few months but everywhere keeps saying Apple are gonna release new Macs soon so it might be worth waiting for that. I’m hoping to get a current spec cheaper once the newer ones are out, but that might not happen.

Que the ‘get a mac’ brigade…


The basic 15" MBP will do you fine.



May even be worth looking at what apple have in there refurbished section as you can still get 3 years care if you go that route, or find yourself a student as I got over £400 off my MBP plus apple care for £50 for being in college. :cool:

I use a 13" white macbook but I hook it up to my 1080p 23" external monitor (£130) and I also get the portability of a small laptop. If you don’t care about portability then get an iMac as you will get a much more powerful machine.

Thanks for the replies guys i appreciate it!

The main question that needs answering first is:



What is your budget?



If you’re dead-set on getting a macbook, we can assume that your budget is fairly healthy, but having a firm number will definitely help us help you!

Get yourself a pc laptop with an i7 processor. Saving yourself lots of money you can buy some cool plugs and a bit of hardware. Don’t believe the mac hype! Mr spectrum just bought an asus Or acer I think.

[quote]Mussi81 (05/06/2012)[hr]Get yourself a pc laptop with an i7 processor. Saving yourself lots of money you can buy some cool plugs and a bit of hardware. Don’t believe the mac hype! Mr spectrum just bought an asus Or acer I think.[/quote]

I second the PC & I7. As long as its fast, reliable it doesnt really matter. My toshiba laptop with i7, 750gb HD, 4gb ddr ram works perfect for me. I spent the other $$$ for software instead of getting a mac laptop . Dont get me wrong macs are great, i just gotta limit my budget

i also use a laptop but nobody on here can argue with me that MAC’s audio drivers are way better. Clearly, the Mac provides better access to your MIDI and Audio systems in its Audio/MIDI Utility, compared to the Windows Control Panel “Sounds” directory.



Look for good processing power , like someone said above , i7 or something. I heard good feedback from one of my mates who’s producing with an acer aspire he bought 1 year ago at about 600 euro. My experience with the i5 has not been good at all times. I cannot really use properly the few waves plugs i have and certainly cannot use lots of reverb without recording it . Real instruments processing has been a drag and using a high number of realtime synths on a track is not possible, so i have to resample a lot . Consider this and put this question in your mind :

-"Do i want a decent music making laptop or an excellent desktop pc at the same price? "



Also the delay is a bit high if you want to add something with a midi keyboard after you have a whole track in place.