However, it's a different story with laptops, where Windows 98 has a history of causing glitches that can't be easily resolved except by raising the sound device's buffer size, and hence the latency. If your laptop features a Synaptics Touchpad it may be worth disabling its animated tray icon to achieve the lowest audio latency.Many musicians still run Windows 98SE on their desktop PCs, where it can still be a stable and reliable OS if properly optimised. For others it has replaced the desktop machine altogether, and combined with a USB music keyboard provides a mobile (or at least portable) studio in a box. For some the laptop is a second machine, sometimes used in isolation, and at others linked in some way to the main desktop PC to provide extra processing power. However, that hasn't stopped plenty of musicians following their dream of being able to make music in the garden or on holiday, to record live gigs, and even perform live without having to drag around a van full of flightcases.
Here's what you need to consider if you're thinking of going mobile.Īs I explained way back in SOS January 2001, buying a PC laptop to make music can be a hit-and-miss affair, with the possibility of audio interference, insurmountable clicks and pops, graphics problems, and otherwise lacklustre performance with MIDI and audio applications.
The attractions of making and recording music on a laptop computer are obvious, but choosing a laptop can involve you in performance compromises and compatibility problems.
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