Best Laptops for Pro Tools LE

[guitarstewman]

Okay, I feel lame right now, what is the Davec test?

[thomsbrain]

Okay, I feel lame right now, what is the Davec test?

it was "introduced" in the PT Performance thread. Basically, make a 44.1/16bit project, open a new mono track, arm it, then add Compressor, 4-band EQ, Slap Delay, Medium Delay, and Long Delay. Then copy that track until you start getting CPU errors. You have to be able to record to all those tracks at the same time for at least 1 minute without it giving you errors. If you get an error, remove a track and try again, and keep removing them until you can record for a minute. If you can fill all 32 tracks, make aux tracks with the same plugins until you start getting the errors.. (Hence the 32+something scores).

Someone correct me if that was wrong.

[besmusic]

When you're recording to the tracks in the Davec test, may I assume that you must engage "Low Latency Monitoring" under Operations in order to do so?

Also, has anyone provided any definitive information anywhere on either of the following?
1) Centrino performance vs. AMD 2500+ performance on a laptop
2) Centrino 1.4 performance vs. Centrino 1.7

Thanks,
Pete

[ricfoxx]

Is anyone using the Compaq Presario 2100z? If so what type of performance are you getting. I have about $1000 to spend on a laptop could anyone suggest something in that price range...Thanks

[Steve Moore]

Great thread... but could someone please elaboarte a bit for me? Which of these systems will work with an 001?

[tele_player]

Without a very expensive PCMCIA-PCI adapter, NONE of these laptops will work with 001.

If you want a laptop, and features similar to 001 (but better), it's time to move up to the 002 Rack.

[guitarstewman]

Hello all, I have made my mind up....I am going to purchase a Dell Inspiron 8600. I will be using a 002 rack and PTLE. I heard that the 8600 flys and is a super work horse for a laptop. I have even read that it out performs some desktops. I have a couple of questions though.
First question
1) Can I add another Firewire port in the 8600? As well as a second hard drive @ 7200rpms?(internal) If I can get another Firewire port and a second hard drive, what are good brands and models?

Second question
2)If I can add a second Firewire port, Can I have that port supported by a seperate bios then the first firewire port and if so, how?

Lastly,
3) What do I need to disable or enable in windows xp to have it run smoothly? I know that I have to disable the wireless and anti-virus. Disable MSN Messanger. But is there anything else that I can do to make the system fire?
Thanks again for all of the great information and help.
Jamie

[Rammelt]

Hi guitarstewman!

I bought an 8600 a couple of weeks ago and though I haven't had the opportunity to really stresstest it, it sure outperforms the desktop PC I had before. I've made 32+17 on the Davec test and I'm very satisfied sofar.

RE: your questions...

1) I bought a Lacie Firewire 800/400 PC Card, which gives me two 800 ports and one 400 port.
I bought FW cabinets for my old IDE drives and a new LaCie FW800 250GB/8MB drive.
Works like a charm
AFAIK, you can't add a second internal HD unless it's a module bay drive.

2) I really don't understand. Separate BIOS? You have to explain further what you're after, mate.

3) I simply made two partitions - both with Win XP Pro - the first partition is for Audio work and nothing else, so that installation of XP is really trimmed down, and the second XP installation is for office work, internet and stuff.
If you need input on how to trim your XP installation for Audio, this forum contains a lot of useful info if you do a search. Otherwise MusicXP.net is a great place to start.
And you're right, no networking or Anti-virusing stuff on your Audio partition.


As I mentioned, I'm really satisfied with how fast my new laptop is, especially when compared to my "old" desktop. And I've been doing the greater part of producing and arranging a forthcoming album on the desktop, so I'm eager to try the same on the laptop.
As a matter of fact, if all goes as planned, in a few days I will be contracted to arrange and produce another album, and then I'll do the greater part of work on my 8600 latop setup, then move it all to a Accel HD3 rig on Mac for the final stages.

Ahhhh...I just luuuuv when things work the way you want them to, don't you?

Good luck,
John

[technician]

I was just about to build the athlon 64 3000+ I was talking about in the best system for protools topic. And I came upon something that caught my eye. The "model 8350" athlon 64 bit notebook! It is almost exactly the same as the desktop I was going to build, and a decent price to boot! I priced it out (the version I wanted) at http://www.lynncomp.com/shop5/index....=item8350.html and got a price of around $1600 which I think it completely reasonable! But before I jump into this, I had a few questions.
It does have the same structure as the asus k8v deluxe. It has the via VIA K8T800 + VT8235. With standard firewire, 4 usb 2.0, sxga 1400/1040 resolution screen, amd athlon 64m 3000+ cpu, 1gb ddr333 ram (for some reason the bios wont support ddr400) which is the only downfall.
Anyway, I want some feedback on this before I jump on it! Also, emachines makes a very similar notebook for only $1549 at bestbuy! Which is actually cheaper than the one I want from the other company, but I want the sxga screen!

I would appreciate some advice here! Thanks everyone

[Esteban WB]

There is a fix of sorts for recording at low buffer size (128) on the 8600. As suspected, the Nvidia card (5200 FX) being stacked on IRQ 11 with other devices including Firewire/USB, causes byte clogging (technical term). 8600s with the 4200 Nvidia card are able to record at 128 out of the box (Gtrguy4). The 4200 card is not available as a choice on the website anymore; maybe a different story if a person were to call Dell.

Anyway, disabling the Nvidia driver and letting Windows load a default VGA driver permits recording at 128 with Dverb on tracks. The screen looks horizontally stretched because the VGA driver was probably not developed for the 8600 widescreen, and redraw is noticably slower.

In the DaveC test setup at buffer size 128, I did a full minute of recording with 18 tracks, 15 aux, 5 plugins each. Haven't done any editing so don't know what the effects are of the VGA driver in that mode. Recording at higher sample rates reduces the ability to record at 128 with a Dverb.

I think this proves that if the video card could be moved from IRQ 11, these 8600s would fly with PT. Barely computer literate reasoning: changing drivers from the Nvidia to the Win default reduces resource usage enough on the IRQ address to permit working at much lower buffer sizes even though the Nvidia video card is still in use (limping along featurewise) and drawing resources from that IRQ address. Moving the card to another address should free up significantly more resources for PT.

To perform the change: Go to device manager; disable Nvidia driver; let Win restart; all objects will be huge after restart; go to control panel, display, settings, and change resolution to highest. PT Mix window will fill the entire screen perfectly, just a little horizontally stretched.