Cooling systems are better, there's more flexibility for upgrades later on, and a better ratio of bang to buck. You can certainly get powerful laptops, but the advantages of a desktop system are multitudinous. Doing multitrack audio editing and effects in real time requires power to spare. I don't keep a close eye on new CPU benchmarks, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but - isn't the A6 a netbook-class low-wattage CPU? Mobile CPUs have come a long way, and they're perfectly adequate for what 90% of people do with a computer. But I'm guessing you're working with more than reverb and EQ.Īt first glance, my gut feeling is that your hardware simply isn't powerful enough. While you may be able to get a high-end model that can do its own reverb and EQ, this only "reduces CPU load" in the sense that you would disable those effects in Ableton and do them in the sound card instead. To address the original question - No, a new sound card by itself won't reduce CPU load. The gold standard, if you can afford it, is the RME Babyface TC-Konnekt, Presonus, among others have offerings at intermediate prices.
You can find alternatives from the likes of E-MU, Berhinger, Native Instruments and ART among others. I started out with Ableton and Traktor with an M-Audio Fast Track Pro. You could also use the inserts or a spare channel pair to add external effects if you wanted. Of course this will not take the load off Ableton directly but there is scope to add effects. Other manufacturers offer similar suites. I have a MOTU Ultralite and it has reverb, 2 compressors and 7 parametric EQs which can be applied to any of the I/O channels(10i+14o) and mix busses ( simultaneously. If you don't have one already I think it must be difficult because if you cannot hear the incoming cue track before it hits the main outs you are going to risk getting train wrecks on a regular basis.Ĭontrary to what someone has previously suggested many audio interface type of soundcards do have DSP processing carried out by a special chip on the device.
Quote Windows: 2 GHz Pentium® 4 or Celeron® compatible CPU or faster (multicore CPU recommended), 2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended on Windows Vista and Windows 7), Windows XP (home or Pro), Windows Vista or Windows 7, sound card (ASIO driver support recommended), DVD-ROM drive, QuickTime recommendedĮither way, if you have an expensive software tool such as Ableton you really owe it to yourself to get hold of a multi-channel audio interface.