laptop specs for music editing?

Hi, I have been a musician for a while now but haven't really took the initiative to start editing all the recording tracks i have, i've been looking around for some time at programs to aid me with remixes and other types of edits, so now i am looking for a windows laptop

but i am not sure what hardware do i need to run music/dj software , ports that i should have on the laptop etc

i am also thinking going with windows and most of the software can be ran on windows too, most of my friends that edit music have macbooks and say OSX is better for arts and stuff, but i really don't want to make the switch over, but is it true and worth it to do so in long run?

any help is appreciated

sorry for all the various questions, my main question is what hardware i need for this type of work thanks in advance

 

Not too much required actually unlike video editing. Your friends are quite correct, most tend to find the osx software to be more intuitive than windows equivalents combined with the superb Mac hardware.

You want to consider the following features.

Connectivity:
USB3.0 at least 2 ports is the minimum. You'll want this in order to transfer your projects otherwise its gonna take a while.
Gigabit Ethernet is also minimum since you don't want to unnecessarily nerf your upload speeds if you have good internet.
Thunderbolt would be a nice addition but not mandatory.

Performance:
At least a quadcore haswell. To my knowledge, I don't think sound transcoding can be offloaded to GPUs so you'll want something beefy. Generally get the cheapest or go for midrange but unless you can justify the ROI, avoid the extreme or the one below extreme.

16gb of inbuilt or upgradeable RAM. WAV sound files are huge.

Storage
A reasonable 256gb MLC SSD is the minimum since it will have the additional duty of being a scratchdisk, I would recommend something with the LAMD controller since a good portion of your work is Write heavy which is exactly where the LAMD excels. The OCZ Vector is even better but I can't recommend that since OCZ is bankrupt.

Finally, you will preferably need a secondary 2.5inch bay so you can use a high capacity HDD or SSD to store the output.

Everything else now is gravy but those above are the mandatory features.

 

thanks for the information, i don't have a problem with software being not intutive, but as far as the programs, i read they are available for both operating systems with similar features

 

this used to be a thing like 5+ years ago.

OP, what DAW/production software and hardware will you be using? the latter's pretty important to determine before anybody can help you with what I/O you might require. latency is obviously a big issue here. i don't think transferring projects is a major concern to you of yet, nor does RAM have anything to do with the size of your final product. but i agree you should probably be considering 8-16GB of memory and a quad-core CPU to handle what you'll be doing. this article should be somewhat of interest.

your budget would also greatly help.

 

All our audio guys and gals here ( production of broadcast video and cinematography ) all use Windows 7 and 8 now. OSX is not near as popular and the go to for music any more, just as it is no longer big in video editing.

but as was said if you wouldn't mind filling out the form

 

most of my music has been recorded at the university's studio i go to, although i do not know the name of the equipment etc what type it is, i am not an art student, business student, just been using it with some friends who are art majors so i had permission to use it lol , but the next step would be would be to get a studio at home with some nice equipment which i plan to save up around 3k or so to get started with recording hardware/synthesizers etc, i have the following instruments i plan to use: alto/barry sax/ a few guitars, both acoustic and electric, keyboard, trumpet, clarinet, drum set, pretty much the instruments i own and can play, i plan to record and edit all types of music as you can see. i am not going to record any vocals either, i also have an already sealed room to record

the programs i have access to are avid pro tools and fl studio, i will be purchasing them eventually since my university sells programs at a really discounted price, not sure if i should get something for sequencing/recording yet

as far as hardware goes, i currently have an i7 desktop at home 3rd gen K series, but that's at home so i am looking specifically for a laptop around the $800 dollar budget, i figured it shouldn't be too difficult since i am going to to do the ram/storage upgrades myself, pretty much only need something with a decent sized/quality screen/resolution and quad core (thanks to your guys help leading me there), going to keep it small at 14" or under, but as far as ports, i have read about it being nice to have ports for better transfer speeds like firewire



for now with this laptop it will most be dedicated to mixing the already recorded rock music i made into electronic music and fooling around till i get the ropes for some serious work, i've already placed a bunch of books on hold at my university about DAW, can't pick them up lol until school opens because of weather.

 

Editing music doesn't require anywhere near the horsepower of editing video, but it doesn't hurt to have more than you need. Especially since audio and video are closely related and it perceivable that you will have to edit at least some portion of it along the way.

As far as the Mac vs PC hubbub is concerned, that comes from the fact that the industry favor Mac due to its traditionally superior ability to natively support more industry peripherals. It actually still has that advantage, which allow you to do more right out of the box and to a much higher level.

Even so, a PC is still very capable choice and can be optioned to provide more than enough support for all but the most advance professionals. Your home studio should be fine either way. In fact, I have ProTools 11 on my laptop (something that would have been unheard of just a few years ago), and although it did require a bit more effort to get setup and running, its working fine with everything I need it to do.

If I were you I'd concentrate more on mic since you have a wide variety of instruments to record from. I'd also wouldn't consider anything smaller than a 15" since screen real estate becomes a valuable commodity when using any editing software.

Good luck

 

I've been dabbling in audio recording lately (voice overs and videos mostly, which is nowhere as hard as music), and I found that the audio hardware is by far the most important part - so far I got a new mic, good headphones, good preamps for both, an external recorder and will probably get a good mixer. Also, high quality cables .

Any decent reliable laptop can do the editing - quad core and 8+ GB RAM are desirable for multiple effects - but really, you'll only need the USB ports (3-4 is good), maybe a Firewire (which kinda sucks in Windows) and that's pretty much it...

As for software, Audacity is free and Adobe Audition is just super powerful from what I've seen, I don't think Mac OS X can top that...

Oh yeah, screen resolution - you'll want Full HD for comfortable editing, 1280x800 is just painful, 1366x768 probably even more so.

 

common in business class laptops or units with expresscard slots. if you want painful try a thunderbolt to firewire adaptor

 

ONLY available on PC laptop, since Apple, -- its developer -- abandoned it years ago. And without as much as a tough luck to all of its supports. Now they want us to invest in their Thunderbolt? Really?