How Do You Buy A Laptop Computer For Audio Recording?
Most laptops that are on the market today are not capable of performing the task required by a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). The weak spots of most of the notebook computers out there are the following: 1. Firewire Chipset (1394 Chipset) 2. Hard Drives 3. Processors 4. Power Saving utilities • Choose a TI Firewire (1394) Chipset. You need a machine that uses the Texas Instruments (TI) 1394 Chipset. Nearly all of the manufacturers of Firewire Audio Interfaces clearly state that their hardware ONLY works well with this chipset. All of the other chipsets out there (VIA, NEC, Ricoh) seem to have problems ranging from audio dropouts, digital errors, software crashes to full blown system crashes and the infamous “Blue Screen of Death.” Macs ships with the TI 1394 chipset as do some of the “workstation” classes of laptops by HP. Dell uses the Ricoh chipset which is seriously problematic if you actually want to use the firewire port to transfer audio data. If you already bought a notebook c
• Choose a TI Firewire (1394) Chipset. You need a machine that uses the Texas Instruments (TI) 1394 Chipset. Nearly all of the manufacturers of Firewire Audio Interfaces clearly state that their hardware ONLY works well with this chipset. All of the other chipsets out there (VIA, NEC, Ricoh, JMicron) seem to have problems ranging from audio dropouts, digital errors, software crashes to full blown system crashes and the infamous “Blue Screen of Death.” Macs ships with the TI 1394 chipset as do some of the “workstation” classes of laptops by HP. Dell uses the Ricoh chipset which is seriously problematic if you actually want to use the firewire port to transfer audio data. If you already bought a notebook computer that has a problematic 1394 chipset, you may be able to Disable it in the Device Settings area of your control panel and purchase an ExpressCard 1394 with the TI chipset. I have been told that this only works is you have an Intel ExpressCard bus. (Thanks to ADK Pro Audio) • Sele
