can I use my lap top to record with?

[mrmorpheoso]

okay so Im thinking about using my laptop as my production studio. I will be running sampletank 2.5, cubase se 3, and a usb mobile pre interface. with these pc specs will I be okay?

intel pentium4
mobile cpu 1.70ghz, 1.69ghz
1gig of ram
windows xp

[kope]

My personal opinion - NO.
You can do it but with big limitations. One day , when you needed mostly, you will find yourself front of the big wall with no door. At least what you can do is to increase RAM to 3 Gb.

[ecc83]

If you just want to grab two tracks sure. I do that with half that spec'.

But as STUDIO workhorse? No, as Mr K said, forget it.

Dave.

[mrmorpheoso]

lol, damn it!! thanks guys. not what I wanted to hear!! im not wanting to use it as a work horse just to record midi. I have a power mac g4 with 2 gigs of ram which will be my work horse the sample tank is compatible with my mac but some of my other vst's are not. thats why I was asking if you guys thought Id be able to use the laptop. I need a good but simple sample machine if I will not be able to use the laptop im looking for one that is simular to the sr-202

[sabianq]

There really is nothing wrong with recording to a laptop if your project is limited as Dave suggests.

It might be worth it to update your PC a bit if you need to have a more robust recording experience as Kope suggested.

Max out your RAM
and see if you can get a good quality PCMCIA Solid state drive that you can record to as a second drive.

The main disadvantage of using a laptop for recording is that fact that there is only one hard drive. the operating system and application information resides on that drive.

If you are recording on a hard drive that needs to be accessed by an application or the operating system, the drive head literally has to stop recording for a microsecond to carry out the command given by the CPU then go back to recording, while there may be a buffer if the DAW application is written to take advantage of free RAM space, there is a greater likely hood that some data will be lost due to a non-linear recording break, this can cause artifacts in your final recording.

this is the main reason that the system operating system and application data should reside on a different "physical" (not different partition) hard drive than the one being recorded to.

if you are looking for a good digital audio workstation application, I always suggest using Cakewalk Sonar 5+ or Adobe Audition
(In my personal opinion, they are two of the best, very powerful and easiest applications to work with)

hope this helps.