Computationally, any laptop which has been released in the last five years is sufficient for audio playback. I am a fan of Intel Core i3/i5 series due to their much better power management as compared to older Core 2 series. For a machine dedicated to audio, core i3 is plenty powerful and then some. I would load it up with more RAM as to reduce probability of disk access. 4 Gigabytes should be good.
I am not sure what distinction you are using between Notebook and laptop. Do you mean large desktop replacement laptops versus smaller notebooks? If so, the former might have some kind of digital out so if you don't want to use a USB dac, that might be useful although it likely will not be very clean from performance point of view.
If you are using SSD, I would turn off paging, as with this fixed application you would not run out of memory. And use Windows 7 to reduce chances of "garbage collection" in the SSD which changes its access pattern. If the LCD backlight is not LED, I would turn off the LCD as to shut off its high voltage inverted for the CCFL bulbs (although this would naturally occur if you are controlling it remotely).
I would assume as Don mentions that you are using outboard DAC as I don't know if there is any laptop with decent analog audio fidelity.
These are some of the things I can think of.
Thanks all for the responses.
Yeah the laptop would only be for storing the files and application to control-stream the album/track to an external DAC; either Firewire (using Mac with Weiss Int firewire to DAC) or Asynchronous USB.
Basically I am using a digital integrated (Devialet D-Premier), so this is what got me thinking.
Especially as for some reason there is a lot of suggestions in the audio world/other places as well recommending what I felt were waaay over the top in terms of specified laptops (near top processor,etc).
I appreciate other factors include memory capability of both the physical laptop/notebook and also the OS, and on top of this the behaviour of the application that could cause memory leeks,etc, oh and critically the specification of the firewire-usb.
So in reality Amir, it is possible to go for a very efficient lowish mhz processor?
If that is the case I would think the lesser spec notebooks (by this I mean the products that are below traditional laptops), and wondering how long before specs of say iPads/etc are high enough to be used instead of playing music back from a laptop.
I appreciate this model is not the norm (that maybe a server-client device-device to preamp), but it is simpler especially when wanting to avoid WLAN (have my engineering reasons in this instance, AP conflict from others, transmitter power setup,autorate correction,etc).
Anyway I just got curious about what spec is required and as Gary mentions small notebooks and maybe in future higher spec IPads or equivalents.
And I thought this would be a good time to ask as you never see any recommendations on what is the practical minimum for optimum playback to an external dac.
Thanks
Orb