Music Laptops

[alan-d]

Our music teacher would like to have laptops to loan to students with Sibelius installed.

I'm not sure what sort of spec to advise him on. I presume he needs a decent sound card and a reasonable amount of disk space and memory.

Any suggestions would be helpful, I'm not too clued up on music stuff!!

[powdarrmonkey]

For Sibelius, you need a good general spec machine. It's not over-heavy on sound, but it is quite an intensive app generally.

[Guest Guest]

Depends what you are using Sibelius for. If its real time stuff like recording from a midi keyboard then yeah you need a decent spec. If its just for messing about with the notations and general playback type stuff then a celeron will manage (just)

[dhicks]

I presume he needs a decent sound card and a reasonable amount of disk space and memory.

 

If you're recording sound through the analogue microphone input on a laptop you might get a lot of interferance. I used to use an external USB sound card on my laptop - you can get them from specialised music suppliers, or actually Argos sell them for something like £20 each.

 

I've just this minute got a catalogue through the post for http://www.music-technology.com, who sell specialised laptops for music-related stuff. These seem to cost around £850, but that includes a wodge of software. I don't know enough to recommend this company as such, I've just got the catalouge.

 

You might also like to look at something like Ubuntu Sutdio, a ready-to-go audio studio on a CD.

 

--

David Hicks

[john]

You want at least 1GB Ram and a Dual Core CPU for the latest Sibelius, and if your going to make the most of the sound libraries within it then I would go for more ram. Also it seems to have issues and run slow on AMD Dual Core PCs but prefer Intel ones, but I need to do more investigation on that but it seems to be that way in my setup.

[Morgan]

try the dell inspiron e series or the cheaper XPS they usually are resanobley priced and rode ready

[TronXP]

Our music teachers are using sibelius on Lenovo T60 laptops, I would advise staying away from celerons, and at least a 1gb of RAM. An external usb sound card can be useful but 90% of the time the onboard sound does for what our Music teachers want. (+ USB to MIDI cable)

[Ric_]

It seems to work OK on MacBooks too