Lewguitar
Old Know It All
Which Mac do you have?
Shoot! My laptop died. Need recommendations...
- Thread starter Lewguitar
- Start date
JasonE
New Member
Be careful with any of the touch screen dual purpose laptops. I have one of those that is an Asus. It has had plenty of issues with high disk usage with just normal operation. I wish I had never bought it. I found most of the issue is the hardware and an OS bug in Windows that affects this particular hardware. I was able to get it to be usable but I would never rely on it for anything important. That is what drove me to buy the Dell that I had tons of issues with. It seems like just about every laptop manufacturer is having issues providing reliable machines that run well.
I also have a Mac Book Pro. I have had that laptop for over 7 years. It is the backbone of my recording rig and that is all it gets used for. It is still going strong and runs Logic with no issues. However, these are super expensive. It cost me $2500 when I bought it over 7 years ago.
With whatever you get make sure it has an SSD main drive in it. This should be the standard these days but with budget machines it may not be. I would also recommend 16 Gb of RAM in it.
I also have a Mac Book Pro. I have had that laptop for over 7 years. It is the backbone of my recording rig and that is all it gets used for. It is still going strong and runs Logic with no issues. However, these are super expensive. It cost me $2500 when I bought it over 7 years ago.
With whatever you get make sure it has an SSD main drive in it. This should be the standard these days but with budget machines it may not be. I would also recommend 16 Gb of RAM in it.
Same here.
I switched from PC to Mac in 1987, when MS-DOS was used for other machines. It was a revelation. I liked using it so much that I bought one for everyone in my old law office, both lawyers and legal assistants. I was able to network them myself, no specialists needed. Had the office building install the necessary cable and jacks, and boom. Done! It was that simple.
My friends were spending fortunes on installer companies, and computer techs, just to get the simplest things going. When I got around to creating a studio, I ran my MIDI gear with a Mac running Performer, sync'd to my tape machines (including Sony U-Matic video machines) via SMPTE-to-MIDI time code. This was before digital audio workstations existed.
Easy. No issues. Set the whole thing up myself. And I'm no tech wizard.
I've had a lot of Macs since; they've all worked well for anything I've needed.
I bought the iMac that I still use in my den in 2014, and have used it every day, first in the studio, later in my den. I'm using it now, in fact. As so often happens, it's more powerful than the Mac Pro it replaced, and my 2020 machine runs all my software perfectly, no glitches or slowdowns. That's a LOT of software at once, because it includes virtual instruments for my orchestral work, and those things are hogs for computer resources.
Macs last a long time with extremely minimal upkeep, and they work. But some folks would rather run something else, and as a result I decided not to proselytize. I do recommend them, and that's about it.
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Moondog Wily
Howlin' At The Moon!
The specs on that computer for that price are REALLY good! Intel iCore chip, Win 11 pro, M.2 drive!! The RAM should definitely be upgraded from 8GB to at least 16, but that is a very inexpensive and easy upgrade.
As someone who has built their own boxes (not laptops though) for the past 20+ years, I have always rejected Apple products for two reasons. The price and the proprietary component nature of their builds. They adjusted positively on both of these situations over the past 10 years or so, but the way they limited music apps on their systems made me just despise the company. All that said, their user interfaces, ease of use, design, durability and classically speed have always been better in my opinion than any Windows machine (and I have used plenty of both). They take away a lot of the complexity and problems but also limit you in what you can do to/with them. Once again, this has improved lately, but that is why I never followed the road of fruit!
Also keep in mind that if you do go Apple, you will need to learn a new operating system. As mentioned in the paragraph above, they make everything easier for the average user, so it will not be a steep learning curve, but if you are used to Windows, it is something to consider.
As for Dell, I ALWAYS purchase from the "Dell Outlet". Reason is, the products are significantly cheaper than new, usually have very minor problems (I usually look for scratch and dent rather than refurbished or returned) and the warranty is the same as the new products. I once got a tower (only tower I have purchased pre built from a mfr in the last 20+ years) from the outlet for $918 and when I specced out the components on a custom build of that workstation, it would have been $9800 brand new. Dual CPU's, two $1500 graphics cards, etc. It was a monster.
I recently purchased a Lennovo laptop for $300 in a crisis moment when the one I was working with for a deadline lost it's "Delete" key which I needed critically to make my project timeline. That was in February that I bought it and I have not opened it since, but it was a great deal on a laptop with good specs, including Win 11 Pro.
EDIT: Wrote my first computer code on an Apple in 1984!
Lewguitar
Old Know It All
Thank you. That does seem like the best laptop I can find for the money. I can order it and have it next monday. Think I should go ahead and spring for it?
Moondog Wily
Howlin' At The Moon!
Can't say for sure, but it has a few things going for it. The stuff I mentioned above (good specs), Lennovo being a huge player therefore not some flakey knockoff, in your wheel house (OS you've been dealing with) and price range. I would take a look at the Dell Outlet ( https://www.dell.com/en-us/dfh/lp/outlet ) before you pull the trigger. I will do so but need to run some errands, so it will take me a few hours before I get around to it. One drawback to that Lennovo is 13" screen. Pretty small, almost tablet size. You might be happier with a larger screen especially when you are just getting up to speed on DAW's and mixing on the computer.
ANYTHING goes wrong with a Mac, they won't fix it and they won't recover your data (unless you upload all your data onto THEIR cloud where they and virtually anyone else under the sun can snoop through your stuff). Then they will tell you that that your item cannot be fixed and that you MUST buy a new one. Their "Genius Bar" doesn't have any actual geniuses working there. Only sales thugs who will lie to you, even to the point of showing you a disassembled item that looks exactly like the one you put in for repair and point to it while rattling off a bunch of technical sounding jargon for the sole purpose of breaking your will and convince you that your completely repairable item is beyond hope so that you will surrender your wallet and buy a new product. Then they will toss your actual device into the scrap pile once you've bought a new one.
But I do have good news. I just saved a ton of money on my car insurance by outrunning the cops.
But I do have good news. I just saved a ton of money on my car insurance by outrunning the cops.
JasonE
New Member
Another thing to be aware of is how much disk space the machine has. Once you start recording music you can fill a drive up sort of fast if you are recording a lot of tracks and not realize it until it is too late. I have an external drive that I move DAW project files over to once I am done with them. That way they are not taking up space on the main drive of my laptop and they are easy to get to and pull them back over to the main drive if I want to do more with them. It is always best to work with the files on your main drive. It will be faster.
Lewguitar
Old Know It All
I'll have to do that. What would you recommmend? I know a bit about guitars but not much about computers and back up.
BTW, I found an old laptop and got it working again so at least I don't have to post on my cellphone.
But I still need a new laptop. This one's old, slow and has a couple of sticky keys.
JasonE
New Member
They have a bunch of different and better ones on the market now than they did when I bought mine. They are cheaper now too. I would look for anything made by Western Digital, Seagate or SanDisk. They are all pretty reputable manufacturers of these things. The unit may be made by another manufacturer but they may use a drive made from one of these three.
The one I have is a 2TB drive, I actually have two of them this size. That would last you for a while, maybe a long, long time. Mine are not solid state drives, which means they are slower and have a mechanical old style drive in them. There are a ton of new solid state drives out there. If I were looking to buy a new one now, I would go that route. A solid state drive with USB 3.0 on a new laptop may actually be fast enough to record tracks to. I would have to test that out to feel comfortable with doing that. I always record to the local disk and when I am completely finished and have everything mixed, mastered and in a final version, I move the files over to the external drive.
This is one I would consider if I were looking for one now.
Or this one.
Lewguitar
Old Know It All
Are they ALL compatible with any brand of computer?
JasonE
New Member
Yes, it is a hard drive. The most you may have to do is format it for the system you are going to use it with. I use one of mine with my Windows machine and the other with my Mac. There is a utility that I ran on the one for the Mac that allowed it to be read by both Mac and Windows. All of these tools come free with the drive. Some of them are loaded on the drives from the factory and others you may have to download but they tell you where to download them from. For the most part for a Windows machine, these are plug and play.
Lewguitar
Old Know It All
OK. Thanks!
This is getting expensive.
I still need a laptop tho.Starting to think about Les's suggestion of a Zoom or Tascam.
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It is. So, incidentally, is one of the earlier magnetic drives. Recording and playback of linear audio isn't very challenging for a computer or disk, even with multiple tracks.
However, sample libraries are different, I use a pair of very high speed (2840 MB/s) thunderbolt RAID SSDs for my sample libraries. Sampler software has to load in large amounts of data very quickly, and the more recent libraries will bog down a machine with a slower hard disk. These are what I use for sample libraries:
OWC 8.0TB ThunderBlade Thunderbolt (40Gb/s)... at MacSales.com
TB3TBV4T08 (*) 8.0TB OWC ThunderBlade Thunderbolt (40Gb/s) NVMe RAID SSD External Storage Solution with SoftRAID. Extreme performance NVMe Solid-State Drive (SSD). Includes Thunderbolt cable. *New, Open Box*
eshop.macsales.com
For recording audio, however, an inexpensive USB SSD is an excellent choice. I generally record audio to tiny portable USB SSDs, and even run video on them at the same time when I score to picture. No issues. I've had very good luck with these, and heck, they're very inexpensive.
I back up to a traditional magnetic RAID drive.
Nonetheless, the internal drive on any modern computer is fine for recording audio. It's simply a good idea to back up any data.
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Prina
Avoiding imperial entanglements
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2023
- Messages
- 834
More like: insane not to do it. A super cheap option for backup is a couple of SD cards. If you get a pair of SanDisk (which I've never had a problem with) you should be fine. For example $27 for a pair of 64GB cards.
Lewguitar
Old Know It All
Lewguitar
Old Know It All
Well I ordered the Lenovo Yoga.
Just seemed like a great deal.
A $1795 laptop and got it for $629.
So that's settled.
It'll be here Monday and I can quit using this iPad Air.
And I ordered a TASCAM Portacapture X8 32-bit 8-Channel Multitrack Field Recorder from Sweetwater.
It'll be here Monday as well.
Just seemed like a great deal.
A $1795 laptop and got it for $629.
So that's settled.
It'll be here Monday and I can quit using this iPad Air.
And I ordered a TASCAM Portacapture X8 32-bit 8-Channel Multitrack Field Recorder from Sweetwater.
It'll be here Monday as well.
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Moondog Wily
Howlin' At The Moon!
Glad you got it worked out Lew! I know this stuff can be a lot to think about when all you want to do is make some music!! Let me know if there is anything I can do to help when the equipment arrives!!!
