Is this list of low latency laptops trustworthy?

I’m having latency issues (stuttering and jitter) when using Overbridge. I’ve concluded that my quite new Dell XPS 13 is worthless when it comes to music production so I wanna get a new dedicated music laptop. I wondering if the following list is a good way to find a reliable laptop? Do you have experience with any of the tested laptops? Is the test they performed something that would traslate to Overbridge use?

I haven’t seen that list before but it doesn’t surprise me that MSI and Clevo barebones (XoticPC/Schenker/Eurocom/etc) have very low DPC latency. I’ve fought with it for years, so have stuck with those 2 brands for my Windows music PCs.

I’d suggest getting a ‘gaming’ notebook, since those prioritize performance over power-savings.

https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Before giving up on your Dell XPS 13, it may help to:

  • Check to see if your Dell can use the High Performance power mode (if not, then get another laptop, not a thin-n-light ultrabook).
  • If it can, then enable High Performance, disable other power saving, all network adapters including BT, and retest. It may help to make sure your drivers are updated.
  • If that helped immensely, format the SSD and do a minimal Windows installation (get the iso on the M$ site) and auto-download the required drivers from Windows update. Don’t install the Dell bloat ware.

I had a similar ultrabook - an HP Envy 13. With a few tweaks, it could handle heavy Reaktor 6 sessions in my DAW.
Edit: removed photo.

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I think it’s reliable-ish. The thing is, there are a LOT of parameters that add to the overall latency, and I found that with a sound card with good drivers, you can still get a long way. Also, maybe try to disable your internet on your Dell and see the difference it makes. I had a pretty recent MSI with more than good specs, and it turns out my latency didn’t improve at all over my 7 year-old laptop on windows 7, it was maybe a little worse. Cutting the wifi did improve things though because the driver added a lot to the DPC latency.

DPC latency is the base latency of your system, it’s unavoidable but it’s not necessarily the worst thing, it just means you need a pc with better specs to make up for it.

If you’re looking at a laptop made for music, the main thing you want to look at, is the processor’s clock speed (number of cores is not essential).

Thanks! I’ve tried the high performance trick and lots of other things, and they seem to work for a bit and then back to stuttering. There is a known issue with ACPI.sys with that specific model of Dell so I’m giving up on it. I’ll check the brands you suggest!

Funny you mention it because my old laptop didn’t have any of the problems I have with the much newer Dell. I’ve tried the wifi trick also and it makes things much better but not good enough to be reliable in a live situation.

Do you have any specific suggestions for a music laptop?

Fine tuning your computer and Windows 10 for Music production can be a PITA!

Which is also why you can find a lot of lists like these. Before you buy a new laptop, you owe yourself to try them out. It’s something you’ll need to do on the new laptop anyways:

Good luck!

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Thanks for helping but I have followed the steps in all the links previously only with temporary results. The general latency is fine and much better but the spikes seem to be a known ACPI.sys issue.

OK

I hope you find a computer that works for you!

Let us know if you succeed :slight_smile:

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Sorry, but I haven’t gotten any other laptop since. My main recommendation would be base clock speed (the “boost” numbers are misleading and these settings can be unreliable), so something with an AMD Ryzen CPU would probably be cheaper in this regard.

The DPC latency list is a nice tool to check if the laptop has decent drivers though.

I have sworn to myself that apple won´t see any money
from me never ever again.
After not using a DAW for about 6 years I
decided to go with ableton again last year.
I bought an expensive high end PC-Laptop and was
shocked about all the shit goin on to get the system running.
I gave up after 4 weeks and bought a mac.
Not as perfect as I hoped, but at least I can work with it
from day 1 I have it.

Some Elektronaut summed it up quite well:
You can get a nice PC setup but you have to make your hands dirty…
“repairing” computer problems is my personal hell - lol
No apple fan here, but I like mac more than windows for music. If only they did their notebooks thicker and heavier…
with some normal connecters like my trustworthy old Lenovo I´m typing on right now…
For my macbook I ordered 2 original USB-C Adapters for 25 € each. Guess what: the mac only recognizes my USB stick/drive when I stick it to the upper right USB C slot and connect it upside/down.
what a nice joke.

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This list is a great resource, they keep it updated as they review new laptops:

I just picked up the new ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 which is way at the bottom of audio latency on that list, and it’s been great. Though it’s been doing double duty at video processing and gaming as well, so the price is quite high if it’s only for audio.

Otherwise the Lenovo Ideapad 5 or one of the Asus Zenbook series look like good options.

Thanks, I picked up the Lenovo Ideapad 5 at a good price so hoping that will work better than my Dell XPS.

glad i searched before starting a new thread. cheers!

Sort of the same, for me. I was already in DAWless mode, so I bought a fairly nice Chromebook and built a small but beefy Linux box to see if that pair could replace my dependency on Apple.

Good

  • Chromebook is great for vacations. I don’t want to lose $400, but losing a $400 laptop is going to put a smaller damper on my vacation than losing a $3000 laptop.
  • I managed to get an RTX2060 a year or so before the plague started, so had access to a fairly nice GPU for both gaming and a little CUDA investigation

Bad

  • ChromeOS is fine for basic stuff, but the lack of customization can be frustrating. I do not need a notification every. single. time. I make a screenshot.
  • I say this as a fairly rabid Linux fan, one who built his first kernel in '93, and hand upgraded his system from Slackware 2.0 until about '99: Linux is shit for audio. I didn’t put a huge amount of effort into making audio work, but I put far more effort than I ever put into my macs, and audio has never been good on that machine
  • People give you funny looks if you are a professional and show up with a Chromebook. I had a good story - I wanted to see if it was possible to avoid paying the AAPL tax - but I think this experiment hurt me professionally a little in the short term.
  • I don’t see much point in bringing a laptop on vacation anymore. Mobile experience is good enough that I can get by just using my phone.

I managed to go about 3 years before capitulating and buying a pretty nice Mac Studio. I’ve had an old 5k iMac all along, but it saw light use. I mainly kept it for continuity in case I decided to go back, which I have.

Just a quick comment to say my M1 MacBook Air has proved itself to be a fierce machine which handles music production faster than anything I’ve previously used. I am one of those procrastinating producers who will lazily flick between internet, other apps like GIMP or DaVinci Resolve while making music, and still have found my DAW to be smooth as butter. And that’s with using certain plugins which aren’t Silicon-native. Rendering/freezing tracks is really quick as well, especially compared to my trusty mid-2012 Macbook Pro.

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  1. After more than 20 years Windows still struggles with low latency. Incredible. It was the only reason I switched to Mac years ago. Didn’t have a latency or driver issue since.

FYI, no Apple fanboy at all here. Quite the opposite

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Is this really probably that Dell XPS 9720 3.5k would have such better latency than Dell XPS 9510 FullHd?

I mean, the 9720 is very low on the latency, which is good, and the Dell XPs 15 is very high. Is this really their respective latencies, or is this just a measuring error?

@Danon I’ve run LatencyMon on all my laptops and get slightly different results each time, so the average is a good indication of the laptop’s audio performance.

In the Dell XPS 9510’s case, it could be something running in the background. I’ve noticed that networking (WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.) can add significant latency. Also an outdated BIOS can too. (ACPI is another culprit).

Surprisingly, my dirt-cheap Walmart-exculsive Gateway laptop has very low DPC latency.

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That’s what I also see, my 8 year old MSi has latency around 40-120 like yourself, and never goes above 300-400us.

However I do have Dell XPS 9510, and it hoovers around 300-400us but often has spikes up to 80000us, which causes audio spikes.

I’m pretty sure it’s nothing not the drivers, because I done countless reinstalls and fresh Windows 1701 version has the spikes, they also appear in safe mode and in cleanboot. I was struggling to fix the spikes with IRQ tools and DPC monitoring software for 8 months now. I was not able to fix the dpc spikes, most of which come from ACPI.sys and storport.sys.

That’s why I’m asking, is it plauisble that Dell XPS 9720 has lower dpc than XPS 9510. I would buy it right this second, but I’m afraid the ranking may not be true and I will find similar dpc latency in the 9720 as well :confused:

I was windows my entire life, but latency issues finally pushed me to buy an m1 pro MacBook last year and it has been heaven. For music production I am never going to use anything else.