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Serato setups

UnherdUnherd 1,880 Posts
edited June 2006 in Strut Central
So im about to take the plunge and cop serato, enough carrying crates around LES, my boy has a mac laptop we're gonna use, he's prob going to cop an external HD too, so basically, since Im not sure what kind of mac hes got, thought i'd turn to the soulstrut massive to see what people see as both the ideal and the minimum computer, as well as the ideal external hard drive. Assuming his shit isn't up the task, what should we cop. School me soulstrut....

  Comments

  • sonofsamsonofsam 680 Posts
    a g4 ibook is plenty, but if you've got the extra money, powerbooks are sweet... i've been running serato on a 12" g4 ibook with a 80GB hard drive for about a year, and i haven't had even the slightest problem (knock, knock, knock)... i had a compaq pc laptop that met all the minimum requirements and specs, and it locked up on me while i was working at a club... i bought the ibook the next day, and it's been great... i only use my ibook for serato, i don't have anything else on it, don't know if that makes any difference... sorry, i'm not much help in the hard drive department, i have two 250GB lacies, but i don't use either of them for serato (yet)


    * BUY THE AC POWER ADAPTOR!... it's only like $6 at radio shack, and it will save your ass in the event of a computer freeze... you can still play records while you reboot... i can't stress this enough, the time my shit locked up, it was a very uncomfortable 3-4 minutes waiting in silence while everyone was staring at me and talking shit
  • UnherdUnherd 1,880 Posts
    yeah, power adaptor sounds key,


    hows much did the ibook run you?
  • sonofsamsonofsam 680 Posts
    about $1200... they start at $1000, but i upgraded the hard drive
  • BrianBrian 7,618 Posts
    iBooks are perfect for dedicated Serato machines.
  • UnherdUnherd 1,880 Posts
    do most of you use internal hard drives? seems like external would be better, like a pro tools setup with system drive and music drive. what say you?
  • street_muzikstreet_muzik 3,919 Posts
    I don't own serrato but it's not quite the same as with pro tools. An external is important for recording audio in PT but I imagine using an internal to play mp3's is fine. You can probably play mp3's off a cd no prob. Might want some ram though.
  • AserAser 2,351 Posts
    internal is ok if you keep at least 25% of your drive free. If you dip past that point, performance will be affected. Going beyond 10% free space is NAGL.

    so in essence, if you must carry your entire collection while dj'ing, an external is a better option.
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