Which Win Notebook is recommendable

And I think that Korg has still a Celeron in the Kronos., :thinking:

I sold three months ago a powerful gaming notebook with i7 processor 11th generation and Windows 10 pro. After 6 months of fight to get it working with Reaper and Cantabile.
Energy management and driver interactions made impossible to have serious audio performance.
My windows NUC at home (i7 4th generation) works perfectly with audio.
My experience: new powerful windows notebooks can be a failure with Audio.
I bought 2 months ago a MacBook Pro with M1.
There is no comparison: now I have perfect audio performance, no fan noise and no compatibility issues. All my plug-ins run perfectly

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Did you continue using vst3 plugins or convert over to au?

While I personally have no preference of the kind of a plugin, but if you ever plan on moving your gig files from OSX to Windows you’ll have to replace and remap those AUs to VST2 or VST3 plugins. If you use VST2/3 only then you can open a gig file that has been created on a Mac or on a Widows computer anywhere where the same plugins are available.

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Another plug here for Windows. I use a Surface Pro 6 with 16gig ram and an i7 processor. I particularly like the portability and the small foot print of the Surface line. Windows on the Surface performs reliably and does all I want. I think Gig Performer is the secret sauce here due to its easy and powerful use. With GP there is no fighting - things hook up graphically. When using Forte all those years ago, it was very hard to set up without a graphics interface. I am pleased I bought into Gig Performer rather than Cantabile.

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I’m on the fence with getting an M1 Mac Mini.

My trusty little Lenovo with an i5 8250U struggles to handle real-time audio. Mixing in Reaper? No problems. But live in GP… clicks, pops, and crashes ahoy. I used it this week with a Yamaha Montage as the interface @ 128 samples. Something kept stalling, because I had to keep restarting GP as I couldn’t get sound to come back OUT the Montage. I blame Steinberg.

Are your plugins running Native or through Rosetta?

I use Komplete 10 ultimate; Vb3 II; Pianoteq (thank you community for the suggestion); UVI workstation sometimes; and a ton of Waves (for mixing). Arturia’s V collection is my next target… but alas… I have put the cart before the horse and must now buy a better horse.

M1 looks like a nice horse for $1200…

Some answers.
I am using VST or AU, I cannot see differences.
On GigP all AU are running well, while in LogicPro something is not working properly: for example currently SynthMaster as AU is running only under GigP.
I am using a 16 gigabytes RAM and 2 tera SSD MacBookPro: I wanted a real portable audio workstation with no limits, so I invested a lot of money, but I am really happy about results.
Of course most of plugins are running under Rosetta, but under GigP everything is automatic, I never changed a parameter: just build your racks and go.
I am really surprised everything ran so perfectly.
Very few exceptions: until two months ago only MassiveX was not compatible with BigSur but it could be today, I need to test again.
Full equipment by Arturia, Native Instruments, KV331, IK Multimedia, AAS, Surge, CherryAudio is running.
Only exception I was used to is Xpand from Air, but a new version is ready, I need to install and check.

Your processor is class U, that means it is designed for energy saving but not performance (“Mobile power efficient”).
but it may be possible to optimise it for better performance.
Have you already read and followed this excellent guide?
Optimize your Windows PC for the stage!

Having optimised my PC with this guide, I’m using a 2012 lenovo thinkpad with an i5-3320M processor with no problems on live.
My GP .gig files are reasonably loaded with about 20 rackspaces and around 20 plugins in each.

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Although gaming configurations are powerfull, they are built for different purposes - gaming.

If I needed to buy a Windows PC just for audio, I’d be very cautious and read many reviews, or try to find custom solutions (e.g. with quiet cooling, etc.).

One can find blog articles, forum discussions, such as:

or others.

Gaming configuration doesn’t guarantee excelent audio performance.

And when you finally buy a PC, there are lots of tweaks to set up so you have indeed a usable platform for real time audio.

Thanks @Hermon for sharing the link and your feedback :beers:

In this guide all gaming features are turned off, for example.

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My new Clevo is a Audio notebook, very powerful and works well; only the service is not performing.

I guess a good Apple cost double or more.

I lost 6 months fighting with that bloody MSI Windows notebook using all the tricks I found on line. Before that one I had one Asus and one Vaio. More than 10 years on stage with VSTs and window notebooks.
This last one was a nightmare but I was never fully satisfied.
My new MacBookPro gives me all the audio performance that I need. No fighting, everything runs the first time you use it.
I was totally against Apple only 3 months ago.
I changed my mind completely

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Just a little infos for the people which are facing Audi glitching with their Windows devices.

Generally to say; it depends for sure hardly on the load of plugins you have in your GP Rackspaces; I personally run two instances, one for instruments, with two „analog“ channels of my piano and the bass guitar and four midi channels triggered from my piano. This needs with my setup just up to 30% CPU without any problem. The second instance I use for 4 micros. For each I have several effects/plugins in a chain. This includes for each Nectar 3, which seems to need many CPU…(may I will change to other plugins).

Anyhow, the main info I would like to give to the people facing audio glitching problems- check your Batterie/ Energie settings! That makes a big difference. I just played around with that today; on „Balanced“ I had with „all“ plugins in use glitching; changing to High Performance (or Ultimate), this was gone.
I guess it has to do with the CPU setting in the different settings. (I optimized it even in the high performance and ultimate).
This for sure is as well mentioned in the GP Guide for the best Win10 Settings, but may it’s underestimated…
Good luck
Flodder

I own a “BMW”, no issue :wink:

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:crazy_face: :red_car: :+1: :+1:

:relaxed:
no issues with that with my MB as well :upside_down_face:

Of course it is mentioned, that’s one of the most important chapters :slight_smile:

Anyway, a special Windows event is coming later this month, perhaps we’ll soon be dealing with Windows 11. :slight_smile:

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And God spoke to me
“Smile and be happy it could getting worse”

And I smiled and was happy and it was getting worse … Windows 11

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We’ll see. :slight_smile:

The biggest impact right now suffer AMD Ryzen CPU users, as their performance can drop 15% (Windows 11 increases L3 cache latency to triple) or more (AMD stated that it found a bug that their core technology shifts threads over to the fastest core on a processor).

// I’m comparing differences Windows 10 vs Windows 11 for the possible update of the guide.

I had a very bad experience with a super gaming notebook one year ago. Super powerful and totally unable to play audio without glitching.
My suggestion: try Latency Mon before buying the machine. I suspect that very modern i7 Ultrabook have aggressive energy saving BIOS.
Models 3 years old were bigger and processors were slower, allowing continuous operation