Windows7x64//Kontrol S4//M-Audio FSPro

[Garygary1]

The fast is track most likely taxing the processor less than the sound card in the s4 (hence your under powered processor). BigBeatzz isn't having the same problem because his i5 processor is, not only far more powerful, but also more energy efficient than your core 2 duo. Your getting pops and crackles because the processor is being nearly maxed out and your system, in order to keep itself from crashing, is choosing to send any available energy flow to the processor and, therefore, cuts off energy flow to external sources (your s4 and its sound card)

[El_Gato]

@All

Thanks for all of the great input, Im glad this forum is filled with people willing to give great advice instead of just flaming. IE: Get a Mac, Your setup just blows, etc etc...

I never thought I would be this far involved in the music world when I purchased my laptop. I bought it for school, but also wanted to have a decent amount of processing and RAM for touching up photos I take with my Canon DSLR.

Last year, my Nissan 240SX blew the motor and I traded the shell for the speakers, tripods, wires, and a Numark NS7FX... Serato was too limiting so I sold the NS7FX in Jan 2011 and purchased the Kontrol S4 a few weeks ago.

It's been a steep learning curve, but I'm always willing to learn new things....

Again, I'm all ears here.... well eyes, I should say...

[simoan]

I was searching forums for a long time and this is my first post but I've been following for a long time.

My question is, I've been wanting to upgrade to a KS4 or Pioneer T1 for the longest time. Though I've heard the S4 has alot of problems for Windows users. My specs are : Intel i7 @1.6GHz / 4GB RAM and I was wondering if my processing power was strong enough for the KS4. I read somewhere that the processor I have has some kinda turbo boost technology that would raise my clock rate to 2.8, but I'm not sure if my base clockrate would be high enough.

[El_Gato]

@Simoan

Well my laptop is running at 2.26Ghz and runs just fine after the KS4 driver was updated. I haven't used an external sound card in a long time. I only use it for recording outside of Traktor.

You may be able to overclock your processor but I'm sure it will fry it in no time... maybe it's time to upgrade to a faster laptop before dropping bucks on equipment. I wouldn't buy an S4 to run on 1.6Ghz, and expect it to run flawlessly because even my laptop doesn't meet minimum specs for the S4.

One thing that also helps is the Power Script located here:

http://www.djtechtools.com/2011/08/1...-power-script/

Get that and Right Click on it and hit Run as Administrator.... works wonders to shut off unnecessary processes

[JSM]

an i7 at 1.6Ghz would be fine, most i7's run at a low base rate. I have a i7 Q740 which runs at 1.73Ghz base. The fastest generation 1 CPU on the mobile market is the Q840, which is 1.86Ghz base.

The CPU has enough balls on it's own without the turbo even kicking in.

The specs suggested refer to the old dual core processors, the i7 is a quad core with 8 threads running.

Look at a Mac book pro, it's only a 2.5Ghz gen2 i7, which is the fastest thing around.

If you are buying a new laptop, see if you can find a gen2 i7 (they are called "sandy bridge"), because they have all 8 cores able to boost, unlike the gen1 which only boost one core. And now that Traktor is multicore aware, clock speeds should be irrelevant anyway.

PS unless you can see a setting in your BIOS for QPI, you can't overclock an i series processor. They do not work in the same way as previous chips where you could change FSB and multiplier. The i series overclock automatically when you need more CPU cycles. It's like having intel "speedstep" in reverse.

[simoan]

Thanks for the information, I wasn't sure about all of this because all the threads about minimum specs were old. So I guess it's safe to say my laptop will run the KS4 and traktor smoothly(with minor bumps). Now to decide whether to purchase the pio T1 or S4.