How powerful a laptop required for high quality/hi rez audio playback

[Orb]

I am wondering if Amir or anyone else has considered just how powerful/spec a laptop needs to be to provide the best environment for iTunes/Amarra/etc, and also considering high rez (excluding lossy codecs).
To me this is relevant because there will be those who just want to connect the laptop as a source and visual control so quietness in this case can be essential; therefore heat dissipation/fan noise is critical.
In this case it would be using SSD technology.

So knowing what the least powerful processor would be ideal, when considering heat dissipation, whether notebooks would be equal to laptops in that context, and another benefit is potentially lower purchasing costs.
I appreciate other factors can be a consideration to purchase (USB and Firewire spec), but for now would exclude those.

Thanks
Orb

 

[DonH50]

An outboard sound card will be much quieter than any notebook I have ever seen.

 

[amirm]

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.

 

[garylkoh]

I read in a couple of forums that the latest Mac Mini with a SSD is the best sounding Apple platform for Amarra - assuming you mean the Apple platform since that is the only OS that Amarra runs on.

If you are in the Pacific Northwest, come and join the Pacific Northwest Audio Society as we are doing a group-build of a Firewire/USB/Toslink music server based around a Pentium Wolfdale CPU and Foobar. The Wolfdale series processors also have excellent heat and power management.

Another option is the HP Elitebook 2530p notebook which is still available on Tiger Direct for less than $620. This is the smallest notebook computer with both Firewire and USB ports, has the Ultra-Low Voltage processor which means that the fan almost never runs when just used as a music server, LED back-lit LCD display which means no noisy SMPS for the display, and both ExpressCard and SDHC slots for external SSDs for music storage. It's a great platform to build a music server out of, but I haven't managed to make it sound as good as a purpose-built music server like the one we are building now.

 

[Orb]

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

 

[Vincent Kars]

I am wondering if Amir or anyone else has considered just how powerful/spec a laptop needs to be to provide the best environment for iTunes/Amarra/etc,

This an easy one, Amarra runs on OSX only so consult the Apple store…

Playing Redbook audio is processing 600 Mb in 1 hour.
This is sleep mode for most PC’s.
If you look at the Guru plug (500 MHz ARM), this is enough to run Linux + MPD

However if you want to run iTunes say on Win7, obvious you can’t go that low without having the whole interface becoming sluggish.
If you want to use a PC for direct playback the demands by the OS and the media player are far more important than what is needed for playback audio only.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I read in a couple of forums that the latest Mac Mini with a SSD is the best sounding Apple platform for Amarra - assuming you mean the Apple platform since that is the only OS that Amarra runs on.

Did anyone have any explanation for why there would be any difference in sound between a Mac Mini and any other Mac, with Amarra or anything else?

P

 

[garylkoh]

A clean power supply, and very high efficiency - hence making the clean power supply even cleaner.