Hi,
I have a dreaded Dell laptop that suffers from horrible audio performance because of some odd and misunderstood latency problems. It's notorious if you google words like Dell & latency, you'll find tons on this topic.

I'm not looking for a very specific model recommendation because it might not meet my requirements in terms of screen size, budget, etc...so rather a brand that has proved to be reliable with audio performance in general and that is dead quiet.
Thanks!

 

Last edited: Apr 26, 2022

Apple macBook Air(no Fan at all) or Pro. They stay dead silient and cool in contrast to any other Laptop with the same performance.

 

Last edited: Apr 26, 2022

Lenovo is the Answer:
https://laptopschamp.com/7-best-lenovo-laptops-music-production/

 

https://thehackernews.com/2022/04/new-lenovo-uefi-firmware.html

 

Apple MacBook Pro M1 16"
Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 5

 

The best durable laptops on the market are this Asus. One of the few companies that cares about cooling and assembling their laptops. Take an Intel CPU more powerful and you won't regret it!

 

I would love to try the Asus Zenbook Pro Duo with it's dual screen setup. The smaller screen above the keyboard looks perfect for placing your mixer on so you can adjust faders and pan pots by touch It's got pretty great specs as well! 10th gen i9, RTX 2060M, 32gb RAM etc. A bit to expensive for me right now though. Here in Sweden it's equal to $3500.

 

Last edited: Apr 26, 2022

Six months ago, I had a contract... and where all the money gone?

I succumbed to a MSI Creator Z16 laptop, 32Go RAM, 8-core i7 11800H, 1TB SSD, and an NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU.
Connection-wise, it haves 2 USB-A 3.2, and 2 Thunderbolt / USB-C ports (plus an SDcard port).

Explanations of my choice:

1°) I was looking for a laptop that can handle a lot of plugins and samples, for that I needed a lot of RAM => the choice of 32 Go RAM. The big majority of laps I found had only 16 Go or less => not sufficient for big projects. I plan to expand to 64 Go, when I'll have the budget (Uuuh... perhaps never? we'll see).

2°) The same laptop exists with a Core i9, but I chosen an i7, because I read a test of the former Apple Macbook Pro 16" equipped with an Intel i9, the test proved that this cpu is far from being exploited to a maximum, because of thermal issues. The 8-core 11th gen Core i9 demands a BIG and sophisticated cooling system to really express all its potential, so in the vast majority of laptops it is very limited in performance by thermal throttle. And I don't talk about battery here...

It's why in real life, laptops equipped with an 11th-gen i9 are not performing better than those with an 11th-gen 8-core i7. The situation seems to be different with the 12th gen of core i CPUs, it seems that Intel, piqued by the incredible perfs of Apple Silicon chips, have really made an effort to tame the temperatures. But of course, temperature-wise they'll never be as efficient as Apple's, due to the - relative - complexity of Intel chips.

3°) Now, why I chosen a laptop with Thunderbolt ports? Because my Focusrite Clarett 4pre audio interface uses thunderbolt instead of USB in the goal to lesser the latency... and it works absolutely fine! TB is really faster than USB. All my external SSD and HDD boxes are in TB too, to enjoy the maximum of speed.

4°) Another question you could ask: why choosing a laptop equipped with an NVIDIA discrete GPU? Because more and more modern DAWS and plugins make an intensive use of OpenGL or vector graphics (or any other equivalent graphic system) for their user interfaces... even windows itself uses the GPU, if available, to accelerates greatly the GUIs.

(A notable exception is Arturia, who persists in using thousands of pngs (per plugin) for the GUIs. It's really a BIG mystery for me. Someone have an explanation?)

Plus, some plugins / soft developpers have started to progressively use AI capabilities in the goal to offer exclusive functions... And all of that will demand more and more GPU resources, to accelerate all AI-enhanced operations. An NVIDIA RTX or a recent AMD GPU is recommended, to be future-proof.

5°) Now you could ask why I chosen a Windows lap instead of an Apple one? Simply because of the compatibility. In terms of long-term compatibility, Apple cannot be trusted, they have really disappointed me in the past when I realized that some of my beloved plugins, apps and scripts stopped working after an OS update, because of some stupid security measure, quarantine, codesigning, system library change or whatever incompatibility, the last being APFS, which is compatible with... nothing. This FS is so encrypted that making a simple (full) backup becomes a real pain in the ass. There is cases where after a crash, you found yourself completely stuck with an unbootable partition... Nice one, Apple!

To sum up: if you choose Apple, prepare yourself to change everything, all the time. And I really hate that. I need continuity and compatibility, it's why I chosen windows. If, one day, Apple decide to release LTS versions of their OSes, perhaps I will reconsider this decision. For now, I stick with windows 10.

6°) Result, 6 months after buying: I'm still totally broke , but I'm really satisfied by this 16" tactile laptop (always offline), not a single problem to report. (Main DAW: C12).

 

Last edited: Apr 26, 2022