Is my laptop good enough..

[tenementkid]

Hello I am completely new to audio editing and recording as well as new when it comes to knowing what is technically efficient for audio.

I will be recording speeches and talks of about 20 - 30 min long and adding music from a cd onto another track for background. Sometimes the vocals will be pre-recorded sometimes they will be recorded directly to my computer. They will then be put on a cd or turned into an mp3 for web downloads.

My question: Is my current laptop good enough (Dell Inspiron 1300 w/a 1.40ghz celeron processor and 248 mb of ram) or should I invest in a new desktop or laptop dedicated to audio recording? I have a budget of $400 - $500. If I need a new computer what minimums should I look for when it comes to processor and ram?

I downloaded and used audacity the other day as an experiment and although it worked, it was very slow.

[AndyH]

There are two major factors. One is audio quality, the other is processing power.

Laptop built-in audio is never very good, often it is rather bad. Too many laptops cannot record good audio even with a marvelous soundcard (USB, firewire, or cardbus) because of their basic power supply design; the recording will always have a lot of noise in it. There are many laptops without this noise problem, however. You just have to be aware of what to avoid. According to comments I’ve read in a few places, the current crop of Dell’s are all bad from the audio viewpoint.

If your computer can record adequate (to your standards) audio, it then needs the power to do whatever you have to do to get to the end product. You current laptop should be able to record two channels at once, possibly four or more (with an appropriate soundcard). This somewhat depends on the OS you are using, the later the Window’s version, the greater is hardware requirements to do anything at all.

But the computer you described, with so little memory, will be quite slow at getting anything done post recording. You may well not be able to do some not particularly uncommon mixing and mastering tasks at all. With enough hard drive space, the computer can probably do the file manipulations, but one normally has to be able to do many of these things in real time if he ever hopes to achieve a satisfactory mix. RAM and CPU power are important.

[tenementkid]

thanx andy,

i did get the feeling that my laptop was not the tool for the job, but can anyone give me suggestions about what minimums i should look for when it comes to processor and ram? are there any specific desktop configurations i should request when i go to the store?

[howie15]

TK,

Unfortunately that celeron processor is a pretty limited engine and your RAM is WAY low for DAW use. Now for what you should be looking for. Being a Electronic retail employee in computers I can confidently tell you that you can get a laptop with a dual core processor AMD turion or Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB of RAM, and decent hard drive for under $1000. For the $500 you listed you are probably going to see the Intel Pentium Dual Core or the plain AMD X2. One of the main difference being battery efficiency.

You can get a little more bang for your buck in a desktop if portability is not an issue.

Now that is very general information. When it comes to DAW use, there are many things you have to be careful with, especially in Windows world. Microsoft is keeping most new PC in the retail world with Vista which means you have to pay attention if you buy an external audio interface. Also, if you go firewire, some of the FW chipsets don't like some interfaces...(i.e. non Texas Instruments chips) This can be a real pain to look up in a retail environment. I can tell you from experience. The manufacturers don't give us that down and dirty of details. We sometimes have to dig into the machine to find out. There are also driver concerns depending on what software you choose. I think Audacity is for vista, but I'd have to double check.

I'm a mac user who sells PC's as one of my jobs. itsplayed is ONE of our resident PC experts when it comes to DAW's. Maybe he can chime in with some more detailed info.

Howie J

[itsplayed]

While the Celeron is not the ideal processor for running a DAW, it should be more than adequate for doing what you are planning on doing.
You will need to beef up the ram capacity....1gb or more is what I'd recommend.
You should also replace the internal drive with a 7200rpm unit and invest in a dedicated audio interface.
That said, I would first advise looking at how well your laptop deals with it's system resources. This will determine whether or not it's worth investing into it or replacing it altogether.
Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > System and select the Hardware tab > Device Manager. In the menu that opens select View > Resources By Connection. In the menu that opens you'll see Interupt Requests(IRQs) with a plus sign(+) next to it. Left click on the plus sign to view a listing of devices and their corresponding IRQs. Post the list here so we can determine whether you'll have any possible issues.

[tenementkid]

thanks itsplayed,

is there a way to copy and paste this info. it's a lot. i'm trying to highlight them to copy but it won't do it.

[itsplayed]

Your welcome tenementkid,

Do this....
Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information

Expand the "Hardware Resources" section and click on(highlight) "IRQs".

Then at the top click Edit, then Select All.
Click Edit again and click Copy.
Then just paste it here directly or onto notepad first before posting it here.