Laptop for Music Production

[Lollausen]

Hi I just bought an hp omen laptop, specifically the 15-ax000nl. Main specs are i7-7700HQ,the full quad core, 16gb of ram and 128gb of ssd. Will it be good enough for music production on ableton and the like? Will it hold up for live performances, or would I need to expand the ram? I plan out to switch the hard disk with another ssd soon. Also any other suggestions are welcome if anyone has any. I have already bought the laptop so that's done.

 

[CorsairSSC]

The disk size is a bit small if you're going to be working w/ voice samples and other presets. I would suggest getting an external drive. Otherwise, this computer is fine.

 

[GreyCatz]

I couldn't find any dedicated articles/videos on your HP Omen as a music production unit - probably because it's slated as an all-out gaming rig - but here are 2 resources that may help:

1. Go to YouTube and type 'Molten Music Production'. This guy uses Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, but he also does fairly extensive tests with Bitwig, Ableton, StageLight and a host of other music applications. This might give you an idea about typical hardware and OS-related issues when using these applications (he has a video on how to tweak Windows 10 so it won't disturb you with annoying notifications or cause stutter because of CPU drops).

2. http/technemag.com/best-laptop-for-music-production/
This is a link to an article on laptops for music production, and while your HP Omen isn't on the list it should give you some idea about the hardware typically required. The article pretty much presupposes a built-in 1TB HDD or SSD/HDD combo since an external HDD will hog a USB port that you may need elsewhere.

Cheers,
GreyCatz.

 

[Lollausen]

The disk size is a bit small if you're going to be working w/ voice samples and other presets. I would suggest getting an external drive. Otherwise, this computer is fine.

Well yeah it also has a 1tb hdd, but I'm thinking of switching it with a 1tb ssd, there's a relatively cheap one by ocz or crucial I think. Then at some point I can switch out the m2 drive with a higher capacity m2 I guess. Thanks for the advice though. Think ram could be an issue down the line? I don't know if it's expandable or whether I'd have to completely switch out the modules, guess I'll see if it comes down to it

 

[dnnykng]

Probably a bit late..but I use a hp omen ce004na i5 7300 hq quad core 1 tb SATA was 8 gigs ram but I upgraded to 16...I only ever use it for music production.i don't like games.but I run Ableton live and quite a few CPU heavy vst plugins..it's never crashed or blue screened on me and overall performance is good...you just got to make sure you configure it correctly and it will serve you well.