Korean Job Discussion Forums

lepid gecko · Joined: 28 May 2004

I need a laptop for audio work, audio software..(FL Studio, Sonar)
I've been tempted to get the macbook pro but I'm not convinced I really need it. A pc laptop with an external soundcard should do the job, but on what minimum spec requirements? Any recommendations?

Thanks.

tweeterdj · Joined: 21 Oct 2005 Location: Gwangju

re:cursive · Joined: 04 Jan 2006

Finding out minimum spec requirements isn't too difficult if you know what software you will use. Go to the websites and check out what their minimum and recommended specs are.

Fruity Loops system requirements:
http://www.flstudio.com/English/frames.html

Sonar system requirements:
http://www.cakewalk.com/products/sonar/system.asp

Beyond that it is hard to say based on your original post. "Audio work" is a bit vague. What type of work are you looking to do? How intensive will it be? What do you expect/want your machine to be able to do?

More information needed.

rocklee · Joined: 04 Oct 2005 Location: Seoul

Tweeterdj, what speakers do you use?

tweeterdj · Joined: 21 Oct 2005 Location: Gwangju

unfortunately i have neither a good amp nor good monitors here, i just tested some from one of the Jounja places around to see which were the flattest, and picked one. really though, as long as you 'learn' your speakers, you'll be fine. i know that these speakers really exagerate the mid-range, so i try to compensate my ears for that. it's not perfect but it gets the job done.

Talbain · Joined: 28 Aug 2006 Location: Cedar Park, TX

Indeed, audio work is a bit vague. Are you going to be spending a lot of time breaking the audio up into pieces? Is it mixing? Resampling? Dubbing?

I've used Cubase and Cool Edit Pro, but then I'm an amateur audio editor, and I never have any problems with them running on a fairly modest machine. However, lots of RAM is always a plus, simply because you can avoid the system from becoming bottlenecked. A dual-core processor may or may not be helpful, depending on if the software you want to use supports it (I haven't checked).

Also, is the type of audio you're talking about something you want streamed over something like the internet? As that's a different can of worms as well; and so is recording, if that's what you're doing.

One thing I am sure of though is that if you're just doing audio editing, you don't need a terribly powerful graphics card, a good CPU and 1GB of memory should suffice for most sound work you might want to do outside of high-end commercial work (where you would need a more dynamic processor and software).