Rain Recording Laptops

Randyisgod15

Randyisgod15

Mikey B Nasty
Apr 15, 2008
303
0
16
New York
So my Dad's been lusting for a laptop, and long story short, he wants to "overpay" me for my old 17'" Macbook Pro (1st Gen) to help me out with a new laptop for myself. I was gonna build a new PC a while ago, but my Mac Pro is doing fine by me right now, so a mobile audio/video studio laptop is what I'm looking for. Marcus turned me on to Rain Recording a while back, so unless I can be convinced otherwise (and please do if you wish) I'm going to customize one of their Livebook/Livebook Studios.

Now, the dilemma. Do I go for a fully pimped out Livebook (Dual-Core), or a price comparable (~$3000) Livebook Studio (Quad-Core)? My gut says that the Dual-Core will be more than sufficient with 8gb DDR3 memory, but the greedy, power-wielding, never satisfied tech consumer in me wants to go for broke (quite literally :p). The real issue is that with the quad-core, stepping up the processor/memory options is a HUGE price increase (~$600 each). So needless to say, I'd be going for the standard options for the most part.

So what do you guys think? I know the quad-core is probably excessive and expensive as hell, but do you guys think it would be worth it, especially with the lesser spec'ed options? I will be endlessly tormented by my indecisiveness without some supportive (or argumentative) feedback.

For your ease, do some customizing yourself: :kickass:

Livebook
Livebook Studio
 
I don't have the Livebook but I do have their Solstice quad-core desktop. I have to say, aside from the SHITTY customer service from the less than knowledgeable "tech" department I DO love it. Its a fucking beast .. they do make some very high quality shit, you just may or may not run into some really dumb yet total pain in the ass to fix problems at 1st depending how they set it up. For instance ... they did something in their "performance tweaks" that basically left me unable to switch keyboards or the mouse I was using because windows would not find the drivers. Even manually pointing to the proper drivers wouldn't work. So after TWO 3 hours remote sessions, where they couldn't figure it out either, I finally gave up on their tech department, spent about 2 more hours going through various sites on google and found the solution myself. This is after multiple times of help ticket emails not being returned or acknowledged, phone calls not being returned, etc ... AND it also took me restoring the pc back to factory and reinstalling everything but the OS.

After a few weeks of growing pains with this machine, to the point where I was almost ready to return it, I got over the hump and have been more happy with its performance than I ever thought I would be

Just trying to give a little heads up on what you MAY run into at 1st.

Oh yeah, get the quad-core
 
Yeah, I remember that legacy Carlos - FWIW though, I've had to call their tech support twice, and both times they were extremely helpful and understanding (I say "understanding" because both calls were after I spilled water all over it :lol::oops: ); had to send it in for repair the first time (turns out it just needed a new CMOS battery), and the second time I opened it up, let it evaporate for 24 hrs., and it worked fine but would randomly shut off, so the tech dude gave me step-by-step tips on removing the heat sink from the processor and reapplying thermal paste to it (which is what he thought the problem was, turns out when I put the DVD drive back in after taking it out to for the aforementioned evaporation, it wasn't in all the way, so it would occasionally lose contact, causing the whole system to power off I guess as a safety measure - after I pushed the drive in all the way, it's been rock solid ever since, and this was about 7-8 months ago), and my point is that it was cool of him to give me the run-down on how to do the thermal paste thing free of charge, rather than just having me send it in again.

As for your question Mr. Bauder, I REALLY think the Livebook Studio is overkill; I'd much rather have the regular Livebook with the topped-out processor and 8GB of RAM; considering my current Livebook from summer '08 is still going strong with nary the performance hiccup (including the mixing of that Civil War Brass Band project and of course the EP), I highly doubt you'd run into any performance problems by not going with the Studio! Besides, you still need a sweet-ass amp and cab :D (and so do I :cry: )
 
I hate that people actually put the dual-core i7 into things... such a pain in the ass when you find out it's not a quad-core. :lol:


Honestly, I don't get how so many of you guys work on dual-cores so well. if this machine isn't for mixing, just mobile tracking, save the cash. Then again, 8GB of RAM on a machine that won't handle your mixing chain seems a bit overkill, unless all you do is softsynth work?
 
Yeah I figured that after seeing how you're laptop held up that the Livebook would definitely be sufficient. But of course, I always have to muse for the bigger, better, and badass ha. My Mac Pro is Intel, first gen of the Intel Mac Pros, and Reaper runs fine (save for a few hiccups). And yes, I did finally purchase it Marcus :D.
 
JeffTD said:
If you actually read that site, the i7 they use isn't a quad-core.
Click to expand...

Quad-Core Processor

1.6GHz Intel "Nehalem" Core i7 [6MB]
1.73GHz Intel "Nehalem" Core i7 [8MB] (+$600.00)
2.0GHz Intel "Nehalem" Core i7 [6MB] (+$1600.00)

LiveBook Studio delivers stunning performance with the next generation Intel "Nehalem" Core i7 mobile quad-core processors.
 
JoshuaLogan said:
Quad-Core Processor

1.6GHz Intel "Nehalem" Core i7 [6MB]
1.73GHz Intel "Nehalem" Core i7 [8MB] (+$600.00)
2.0GHz Intel "Nehalem" Core i7 [6MB] (+$1600.00)

LiveBook Studio delivers stunning performance with the next generation Intel "Nehalem" Core i7 mobile quad-core processors.
Click to expand...


Was reading the wrong link and updated my post accordingly, before you actually posted this.
 
So now the tricky part: If I were to go Quad-Core, is stepping up to the 1.7Ghz actually worth the $600? The way it's looking now, budget wise, it's either up to the next processor OR get the 8gb of memory. I know memory can be upgraded, but with only 2 slots it would mean totally replacing the 2gb sticks for 4gb sticks, which is annoying.
 
That was my original plan, that got sidetracked when I sprung for my Liquid Saffire. Then the question of what to do with my Mac desktop came up, and it got no real bites when I thought of selling it. I had a PC already "built" on Newegg, which was about the same price as the fully spec'ed laptops. When my dad mused that I sell him my old laptop for about $1,500, that covered about half of any new computer I wanted. But that would also leave my without a laptop, so I figured this was the way to go being I had an adequate desktop already. FWIW, the desktop PC I compiled is fucking brolic as shit :kickass:. This whole new computer situation has been consuming me for a few months now, and I'm hoping this thread will help bring me some closure so I can rest easy ha.
 
For buying a DAW laptop I would recommend going with Jim Roseberry at studiocat.com. Call him up and he will personally help you configure a fantastic machine at probably a better price. Rain seems to be the priciest option for DAW machines and honestly I don't get the impression that they are as knowledgable as Jim at Studiocat or Scott at ADK. Both of those guys are really great dudes.

The studiocat laptops have desktop i7s in them too, not the shitty mobile processors. And 1.7ghz is really lame if that is their top end quadcore. What do you need 8gb of ram for? Do you use tons of vstis and a 64 bit OS with the 64 bit version of Reaper? 4gb should be plenty and CPU is much more important.

Edit: check ADK first, they seem to have more options for laptops. Studiocat stuff is top of the line as is ADK, but there are a few cheaper options at ADK worth checking out. I wouldn't spend $3k on a RAIN laptop that isn't as good as a $2k machine from Scott at ADK...

www.adkproaudio.com
 
Hmm, yeah, I'm so used to thinking of RAM as generally making the more noticeable difference in performance, but I guess that's mainly for average everyday computing (read: multitasking), so when it comes to DAW work the processor is indeed more important; guess I'll bow out of this discussion since I haven't thought about computers since I bought this one, but yeah, all I know is RAIN has been fantastic with support and my computer works great, though the ADK/Studiocat stuff is probably great too!

legends_olmec1.jpg


"the choice is yours, and yours alone"

EDIT:

AdamWathan said:
Rain seems to be the priciest option for DAW machines
Click to expand...

Except that the cheapest Studiocat laptop is $2800? :loco: Not saying it's not worth it, but that's hardly a bargain (though the ADK stuff is indeed quite a bit less expensive)
 
FWIW I just spec'd out the equivalent of the top of the line RAIN machine over at ADK and ADK comes out to over $1000 cheaper.

17.3" display
i7-920XM Extreme 2.0ghz Processor
4GB RAM
320GB HD

Comes in at $2924 over at ADK and it will be optimized just as well if not better than the RAIN machine. Same machine at RAIN is $4099.

You can even get a better machine at ADK for $2648, with a desktop i7 processor (2.8ghz quad with hyper threading). I'm guessing the mobile i7 is expensive which is why the i7-920XM machine costs more even though it's less powerful.

Check this dude:
http://www.adkproaudio.com/systems/viewsystem.cfm?recordid=118

You can spec that out with SIX cores for STILL less money than the RAIN machine.
 
AdamWathan said:
Check this dude:
http://www.adkproaudio.com/systems/viewsystem.cfm?recordid=118
Click to expand...

Damn, good looks on that one. With the i7 960 3.2ghz quad and a 120gb SSD for audio it came out to around $3,200. Still expensive as hell, but par for the course I suppose. My buddy has found some similar consumer laptops for about half the price, but how trustworthy they are remain suspect. One thing I hate is how some of these sites don't give a complete 360 view of the laptop. Spec's aren't the only criteria in buying a laptop. If the case/ports/keyboard setup are whack than all bets are off. Time to do some serious contemplation.
 
keep in mind too that you can order most of the Rain stuff from places like best buy and sam ash and it costs less than what they have listed on their site

I got my Solstice through best buy and it was about $300 cheaper than what was on RR's site ... at the time. I also notice now that they've changed their processors for that machine so that may account for the bump in price compared to what I payed a year ago
 
Randyisgod15 said:
Damn, good looks on that one. With the i7 960 3.2ghz quad and a 120gb SSD for audio it came out to around $3,200. Still expensive as hell, but par for the course I suppose. My buddy has found some similar consumer laptops for about half the price, but how trustworthy they are remain suspect. One thing I hate is how some of these sites don't give a complete 360 view of the laptop. Spec's aren't the only criteria in buying a laptop. If the case/ports/keyboard setup are whack than all bets are off. Time to do some serious contemplation.
Click to expand...

Well the actual laptop case is going to be big, ugly and unsexy no matter what. Only way to fit high end components into a laptop and still have enough space for it to get enough airflow :/

Even Jim from Studiocat says himself that the best off the shelf laptops are MacBook Pros component wise for audio, even if you wipe it completely and install Windows on it (he's a big Windows dude.) So if you need it to be smaller and a little prettier, a new MBP is the best compromise available. I'm running Windows 7 on my MBP actually right now and it is fantastic, I'm tempted to ditch OSX altogether especially since Reaper is WAAAY better on Windows. I couldn't believe the difference running Reaper on the same machine on Windows vs OSX, totally ridiculous how much more responsive the UI is, it feels so much lighter and faster.
 
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