PC laptop for Ableton rig?

on my Asus UL20a with 2 gb ram and an Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 running windows 7, Ableton's graphics seem to lag.

i bought the ul20a a couple years ago with the intent of a lightweight, midrange gigging laptop running REAPER, which is agile compared to how bloated/resource hungry LIVE seems to be.

i am considering throwing a copy of windows XP on another partition and increasing the ram to 4 gb and trying again.

i am also considering simply buying a new laptop strictly for gigging, as the UL20a has become my general life computer.

can any computer people offer me preliminary advice here?
cost is a consideration but not an issue

I had an old Toshiba laptop with similar specs, except it was running the dreaded Vista as opposed to 7. Once I left the bitrate at something ridiculous without realising and it made everything lag. I'd check that first mate!

Otherwise I will say Mac. Simply because since investing in one, touch wood, I've had zero issues and I've literally never had a platform that's so stable. Afterall, there's a reason you see so many DJs using them live... for Live.

Otherwise I will say Mac

this is very much a last ditch option, but i will take the used market into consideration. any particular model to recommend?

edit, the reason why i am not as concerned about stability is because i'll very likely NOT be using many 3rd party vsts in ableton, only built in FX and REAPER's vsts. i've heard the only thing that makes PC ableton less stable than MAC ableton is 3rd party vstis, which is often instability's culprit in any DAW platform

Nym wrote:simply buying a new laptop strictly for gigging, as the UL20a has become my general life computer.

if you wanna do it, do it right.

might be advice you've heard a thousand times and even given as well - but whatever route you go (you can't really go wrong), just find the way that makes it work.

my experience is that i got a dell laptop in 2004 and have gigged with it extensively since then, and it has only crashed maybe once or twice. i always used an external soundcard - a cheap m-audio deal for plugging into a dj mixer. i turned off my wifi. i installed very minimal stuff. i replaced hard drives often. maxed out memory. found software that was reliable above all else (djdecks <3).

my thoughts are that the less going on - the better. and that can be interpreted in many ways.
for example, if you are playing back ableton tracks live - with plugins and instruments and samples all over the drive, and live input - i think you're asking for trouble.
you could bounce certain tracks down - scale back the fx for a 'live' version (just use some sends instead of per-track).
another thing i dont think people think about is control data. all that controller data + jitter adds up.
point is - maybe the best investment you could make, instead of debating which is 'better' a hp or dell, would be to re-work your tracks to fail-safe live versions. let the mpc take a lot of the weight - but just dont necessarily try to go on stage and act like you are in the studio.

seriously, i imagine for each brand or style of computer there will be just as many proponents / haters - the key is going for reliability (generally $ will spell this out) and then totally formatting it and giving it purpose from the get go.

consider getting a nice turntable case, and mounting a lot of necessary connections in it. show up with box, open box, plug in very few things, and go.

Nym wrote:

Otherwise I will say Mac

this is very much a last ditch option, but i will take the used market into consideration. any particular model to recommend?

edit, the reason why i am not as concerned about stability is because i'll very likely NOT be using many 3rd party vsts in ableton, only built in FX and REAPER's vsts. i've heard the only thing that makes PC ableton less stable than MAC ableton is 3rd party vstis, which is often instability's culprit in any DAW platform

The only reason I said Mac really is that's all I have experience with other than the old Toshiba laptop I mentioned. Although to be fair that lasted me a good few years! If it's just lag then any of the current series of Macbooks should see you right. I've never really managed to get the Ableton counter past 20% on this and I'm always layering up several FX per track.

Although what Tapedeck said is great advice too. Perhaps use the Ableton "freeze" function to keep things a little more live-friendly?

awesome post, tapedeck. thank you.

a little more information, since you bring up a lot of great points:

* as i mentioned, i will be using extremely minimal FX, mostly built-in ableton FX.
* i will be using at most 1 or 2 ableton synth VSTi as a live instrument.
* LIVE will only be used in the clip/scene mode (i think it's called the arrange view?)
* the show will be based off triggering mostly sample clips from the launchpad and playing live stuff from the MPC.
* if necessary, like you say, i'll export stuff to the MPC and have LIVE trigger MIDI clips out to it instead of housing the samples in LIVE.

all in all, it should be fairly lightweight - there's a lot of sample material involved, but most of that stuff i can simplify down to shorter loops to be retreated/triggered from the launchpad. the real power consumer here is LIVE, which

LIVE will also be playing MIDI clips into the MPC multi

just replying real fast here without thinking too much....
but it sounds to me like what you want to do can be pretty easily converted to mpc only?

i guess im wondering what ableton is bringing that your mpc is not? that's probably a good question to ask - just like ram management, try to make the different pieces as full and efficient as possible.
i dont know, maybe its just me being a masochist, but everytime i think 'damn i cant do that with my mpc'...it just drives me to think differently, chop differently, simult differently, etc, and i end up learning new things about the machine.

that being said, once you answer what it is that ableton brings that the mpc does not, set the pc up with that in mind, and leave as much work on the mpc as possible.


edit: thinking about this a bit more - i probably am being a little too masochistic in this approach ;]
but i would NOT NOT NOT trust ableton sending midi!!! it seriously fails in that!! the mpc is the best sequencer ever made, if you use it for one thing please try to get the seqs in the mpc!!!

good question

i guess im wondering what ableton is bringing that your mpc is not? that's probably a good question to ask - just like ram management, try to make the different pieces as full and efficient as possible.

quantized clip triggering (pre-select which clip plays next) and selection. i cannot play all of the layers/drums etc of my music by pads alone. i can't be trusted to drum along to my own songs without audible error for too long. ableton will help me combine live performance (pad percussion, drum solos, melody triggering, vocal sample clips) with DJing parts of my songs that i cannot perform.

unfortunately, for the type of thing i'm trying to do, i cannot do it entirely in the MPC unless i wanted to sit back and hit play.

the MPC cannot master/drive the boat in this setup. ableton and the MPC will not be synced. the MPC's sequecner will not be running at all. everything being triggered off the MPC will be either a oneshot triggered by fingers or a latch style looping phrase triggered by midi clips from Ableton.

less is more. the setup includes laptop, MPC, quattro, a little behringer mixer, and the secret weapon. i may eventually work a mic into the mix (pun intended, will need another mixer to power the mic).

Funny you say that LIVE is resource hungry as it runs extremely efficient.
Takes a lot of effort to even get it up to 10% of the CPU.
I wonder if part of your lag is being caused by integrated video?


Me personally I will never go back to Apple except for my iPad2 and iPhone since they are recreational.
Apple always ends up costing me to much $$$ by forcing me to do unplanned upgrades of my other software and plugs.

Currently WIN7 and i7 just runs flawlessly.

Nym, make sure your laptop doesn't allow you to upgrade the processor.
I have a Gateway NV55c that had a P6100 processor.
I just maxed the RAM at 8G, hard drive up to 500G and processor up to a i5 for a very minimal cost.