Laptop/pc for music production

[Eliganza]

I'm looking to start producing music with ableton, but I need to decide on a pc/laptop to run it on. Can anyone suggest either that would be suitable for around the £500 mark? Or am I better off buying a second hand mac of some description?

 

[GiT]

Have to say, the main producers/DJ's seem to prefer Macs to anything else. Seen a few Viao's though.

 

[Eliganza]

I had a vaio previously; wasn't all that tbh. Broke after a couple of years too.

 

[GBH14]

you dont need a mac, in fact, the money you save on not buying a mac will allow you to buy more plugins, synths and hardware etc for your production.

I have a desktop running 64bit win7 with 8gb RAM, cant remember CPU speed off top of my head, but that runs everything I have perfectly, and I dont work light! I have an automated DAW controller/mixer, Cubase 6, Kontact, numerous plug ins and VST intruments, around 10-15 tracks of audio per project and my pc has never struggled with that. Dont be drawn into the whole Macs rule for music production, yes they are good but you dont need it, save your money and get some decent mics and software!!!

 

[Eliganza]

Software and Vst's aren't a problem; I have all of those, already have a basic interface and Sm57 mic (I'll only really be producing drum & bass anyway). I'd need some monitors though!

 

[GBH14]

Software and Vst's aren't a problem; I have all of those, already have a basic interface and Sm57 mic (I'll only really be producing drum & bass anyway). I'd need some monitors though!

Yeh man, you need at least dual display for in the box production, well you dont need but its annoying as f**k flicking between about 10 different windows all the time!!

 

[oska]

We got a PC made especially when I was into it. To be fair though I also have a low spec desktop with only 1GB RAM, 2.6GHz and a decent graphics and soundcard and it runs Ableton and Reason fine, albeit previous versions.

 

[Ade182]

I was running an AMD Dual Core 5400+, 2GB RAM with a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 soundcard and suffered no issues running Cubase 5 and upto 10 VSTi's at a time. However if I tried to run two instances of Z3ta3+ it would crap out.

Maybe an issues with Z3ta itself but who knows.