New laptop recommendations

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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New laptop recommendations

Hi all, been having some difficulties with my MacBook Pro and after owning it for some years, the time may of come to finally upgrade..

The price tag on the new 15" MacBook machines seems rediculous so without jumping straight into the thought of a new one of those, has anyone any recommendations for running ableton and traktor on a lower priced laptop?

Anyone know if the hp envy is any good? Open to options any helps great, thanks

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I have an envy.

It came with so much bloatware I nearly chucked it!

You’ll need to do a full re-install of the OS if you buy one. If you go with Win 10, make sure you have updated all of your drivers and made backups of 'em before a clean install of the OS. The Win10 native drivers are terrible, and cause terrible performance (memory leak?!?)

But, once it’s up and running, with a clean OS and up-to-date drivers, it’s a great machine.

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Suppose it depends what you are going to use it for..

Lenovo Z50 here. I5 proc.
Can’t really fault it. Some bloatware, and is pretty easy to remove, (except mcafee after the 30 days, - that was a pain in the arse) but not near as bad as HP for preinstalled shit…

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

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The 13 inch MBP has a high enough resolution screen to never really be an issue, so consider that. It pains me to say but avoid the Surface Book. Feedback I’m getting is that it’s really not very well built. I’d say if you get a Windows 10 laptop, the first thing you should do is wipe it and install a fresh, naked copy of the OS, just to be sure. Also, create a user account just for DJing and make sure it has nothing running other than what you absolutely need. I’d also see if there’s any feedback online about whether your preferred choice has issues with DPC latency. That can be debilitating and frustrating as you’ll be forced to disable every bit of hardware you don’t need to avoid dropouts and crackles. Some laptops are worse than others for this. Some don’t have problems at all.

To be clear, I’m pretty platform agnostic: I’ve got a Windows10/Ubuntu gaming rig, a MacBook Pro for general work, and an Android phone. They all have their advantages and disadvantages.

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I recommend:

Take an Intel CPU. Minimum: i5.
Some AMD CPUs make problems with different audio softwares.

Max the RAM. Minimum 8GB.

Choose a SSD.

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^ This mostly.

i5 CPU
SSD (Mines a 240GB and is not half full yet)
4GB RAM minimum, 8GB is plenty.
No need for gfx tomfoolery.

I insisted on, and got, the Windows install disc for my machine. The first thing I advise anyone to do with a Windows laptop if they’re going to be using it for DJ’ing is wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows from scratch. Kills all the bloatware and potential conflicts stone dead.
Other than that it’s a simple case of optimising (prioritise background tasks, etc) and away you go.

I’m using a 2011/12 Dell Latitude and get <5ms latency on TSP 2.6.8 with no clicks pops or freezes.

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My lappy specs are similar to what you mentioned, Intel i5, 8GB RAM, 1TB Hybrid drive. Also on 2.6.8.. stability is great btw..

Wonder would you try something to see if you get the same result.

Take a track, 320kbps, play track on traktor, and analyse it as it plays.
Do you notice a tiny ‘glitch’ as the analasys completes? You may need to listen hard because it’s really slight.

I’m curious to work out if it’s Traktor or something else. Can’t seem to work out why it’s doing it on my machine..

It analyses pretty quickly, so technically if I’m better prepared I can analyse before playing track.. was curious more than anything

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I’ve quite often started playing a track before it’s been analysed, can’t say I’ve ever noticed glitching though. I’m rejigging my room at the mo so when I get everything set up again I’ll have a go a see what happens. Will PM you if I find anything.

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Thanks.

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