Laptop Recommendation

Hi,

i‘m using Audio 6, Komplete, Ableton Live, Ozone, Addictive Drums on a Win10 Laptop and i‘m considering to change to a MacBook Pro 13“ because of latency problems caused by win drivers.
Are there any latency troubles caused by apple drivers like in win?
I think the software can be used with a mac without buying new licenses.

is a MacBook Pro (2020) with i5 and 16gb ram enough for producing music? My projects have about 10 vst instruments with some plugs each channel. Maybe one or two audio/voice tracks...

i hope to get some inspiration here about getting new hardware.

 

Yes and no. My current setup is

and running Cubase. If the question is can I create a track with 10 vst instruments and 2 audio channels with a few plugins thrown in, then the answer is yes.

The problem is that I might have to get a bit creative to do it and start freezing instruments or bouncing the midi down to audio, etc. In general I don't have much of a problem, certainly no problem with latency, and I can load up a few vst's, add a few plugins, and happily create songs or practice all day long. The difficulty comes when you start using hungry stuff like Replika XT or some of the Kontrol instruments without purging the cache. Then you have to start looking at where you can make savings.

Still, it's a laptop and it works great with a few synths and a few plugins loaded up so, I don't really expect it to have the power of my overclocked desktop.

 

There shouldn't be specific "Windows" latency issues unless you are talking using the WDM audio drivers which is why ASIO should be used on Windows.

Switching to Mac is kind of a bigger deal in the scheme of things and if you can get away with it, switching to a desktop that offers more value for power may be a better option.

Mac may or may not solve your problem, could have other issues entirely and unless you are pretty familiar with the OS it could prove fruitless to troubleshoot. These days one selects a Mac/PC mostly based on what they prefer to use and performance wise, there is often little between similar specced systems.

Sometimes just tweaking things in a win laptop like CPU power settings can make a world of difference (remember that laptops are designed with power saving features in mind by default so if you have not done any tweaks in this area then you will be losing some performance) but you haven't mentioned what your specs are or what actual latency issues you are having so kind of impossible to say if shelling out another $2k+ on a system will be any better

 

This is my hardware i'm using:
Yoga Slim 7
AMD Ryzen 7 4800 U
16GB RAM
Win 10
Audio 6 with Komplete ASIO drivers

With Latencymon i have issues with wdf01000.sys (Microsoft Framework) and ntoskrnl.exe and sometimes with the tcp/ip.
my drivers and bios are all up to date and i switched off all background-stuff that is running.
i'm using a docking station with permanent power supply. not running on battery.

when i start playing with ableton and a few kontakt-instruments it's clicking sometimes but the system monitor shows max. 30% usage.
Latencymon shows in the beginning DCP around 300 but after the clicking it show something with 3300.

i tried a lot of things but i can't get rid of the troubles caused by windows drivers.

i talked to a lot of people who are making music as their main occupation and no one uses windows. they all told me to switch to mac so i won't have these troubles...

 

I use windows, and Ableton and have no issues. Can be loads of things but if you feel Mac would be better then I’m not gonna stop you, just not all people use Mac.

 

Ok, maybe i have to look over my system...
Do you have a Laptop or a desktop pc?

 

Desktop pc. I also have a MacBook Pro but don’t use it for production. One of the things to check is your power profile, if you search for “power” then check the profile is set for “high performance” with “max” as the cpu power, this is often set to a power saving option for laptops which cycles the frequency based on system demand to save power and reduce heat but can cause glitches in live audio. There are also bios options to check but this differs between models. Desktops don’t usually need these tweaks but there are always things to tweak such as usb sleep settings, HDD power saving and environment performance settings. Lots of guides around for all of this

 

i know the issue with the power saving option.
i don't have the "high performance" profile. i can't even configure the cpu in the power management by creating a new profile.
that's the problem with new laptops. they have something like a "modern standby".
i had a discussion with the microsoft support... maybe i can figure out how to deactivate the "moden standby"...