production setup for an old laptop

Discussion in 'Lounge' started by Plainview, Nov 2, 2021.

  1. Plainview

    Plainview Rock Star

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    I have a really old laptop in my work and I sometimes have free time I would like to make music , what would you install that have small disk space and as little cpu consumption as possible but still able to make full songs ? I though about flstudio 11 with valhalla stuff and sylenth 1 because it has a huge library of presets
     
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  3. halfman73

    halfman73 Platinum Record

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    Not that I've used it, but isn't Reaper pretty light?
     
  4. Plainview

    Plainview Rock Star

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    yeah but it doesnt have any built in instruments or samples
     
  5. quadcore64

    quadcore64 Audiosexual

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    Bitwig Studio 4 - included effects & instruments
    Reaper 6 - some basic instruments included as Reaper JSFX with more available through JSFX repositories.

    There are plenty of excellent CPU/Resource friendly VST/VSTi effects & instruments available. Both retail & free.
     
  6. Ad Heesive

    Ad Heesive Audiosexual

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    On very old PCs...
    - Logic 5 Platinum
    - Cakewalk various
     
  7. BEAT16

    BEAT16 Audiosexual

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  8. Olymoon

    Olymoon Moderator

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    What are this computer specs?
     
  9. Plainview

    Plainview Rock Star

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    4gb ram , core i3 , 256 gb disk space , windows 10 ltsc
     
  10. Olymoon

    Olymoon Moderator

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    OK, a month ago, I took a similar computer and prepared it for my keyboardist.
    It was a intel, but with mac installed. First thing I've done was to install Win7 a specific light version I have and use.

    Second thing was to select super light software, which included:

    - Reaper as DAW because it's not only light, but it has a very cleaver way to manage cpu consumption.

    And those vsti because they are light on CPU:
    - Xpand2
    - Surge
    - PG8X
    - DiscoDsp Discovery
    - Dune3
    - KV331 Audio SynthMaster
     
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  11. Ad Heesive

    Ad Heesive Audiosexual

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    But you said "really old" :rofl:
    Remind me never to buy an antique car from your dealership :winker:
    I have some old tiny netbooks (one lives permanently in my car) that have only 1GB of ram but still manage to reliably run Logic 5 and Sonar 8.5 and many midi-oriented (writing-focussed) packages - all on XP.

    Oly's suggestion to use Reaper has very many benefits,
    including transferring projects between portable machines and studio machines.
    More convenient than transferring just wav and midi files (from one DAW to different DAW)
    And there are of course thousands of decent old, low cpu instruments to choose from.
     
  12. Donut Nyamer

    Donut Nyamer Audiosexual

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    OP that's not that old. You said windows 10, I don't think you have anything to worry about. Use whatever you want.
     
  13. tori

    tori Platinum Record

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    Sometimes I really want to make a music pc from my 20 years old Windows XP Desktop (with 40gb HDD, and I don't know how much RAM... maybe 500mb lol), because le retro feels and I wanna try to really limit myself with really old 32bit plugins & maybe 5gb of old sample-libraries.... But I don't even have enough time to make music on my main PC ;_____;
     
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  14. Odious Blot

    Odious Blot Member

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    Throw Linux on that, something reliable and overall (compared to windows) lite like Mint, and REAPER. There are lots of free linux vsts for every use type (synth, EQ, Reverb etc.). There's a good chance your interface and midi keyboard will function fine and you'll have lots of full songs...
     
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