The laptop I recently purchased was going to be used primarily for work (cad and engineering software) and games, but now I'm wondering if it could be used for recording music as well. Here are some of the specs:

Pentium 4, 1.6 Ghz processor
512 M, DDR Ram
40 G HD (24 G available)
16x cd-r drive
Crystal WDM audio

(2) USB 2.0 ports
(2) PCMCIA adapters (Texas Instruments)

IEEE 1394 Bus host controller (whatever that is...)
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers (I have no idea what this is either!)

Microphone line in
Line in / audio in

The big question would seem to be, how could I use this machine to record music? The music will primarily be band demos and my own stuff.

It seems I would need software (n-tracks seems to be a decent place to start), but how does one get from live audio to computer? What other gear do I need? What's the signal path? How does this all hookup?

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions!

The main piece of gear you need is some kind of audio interface. Since you already have USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 (FireWire) ports, you have many options.

Tascam makes some nice control surface/audio interface boxes that look like mixers.

MOTU has an awesome digital audio interface for FireWire.

Those are good places to start.

Sounds good to me. I'd recommend getting a USB audio interface like the Aardvark USB3 or Tascam US224, and an external 7200rpm firewire drive to record the audio to.

The internal HD at 4200-5400rpm isn't fast enough. With this setup you'd be able to record 2 tracks at a time, and play back about 24.

Thanks for the info! I'm going to wait on getting an external drive so firewire seems to no longer be an option. My older/slower desktop could record 2 tracks through the stereo line in so I'm hoping my laptop can handle the same.

Considering my soundcard isn't specifically for audio recording, would there be much difference in quality between these two setups:

Microphone-->Tascam US224-->laptop USB port

Microphone-->mixer/preamp-->stereo line out-->laptop stereo line in

Yeah, because the audio inputs on a laptop are not designed for the bandwidth of a high fidelity audio recording. The quality will be nowhere near as good.

Your quality is only as good as your weakest link, and the laptop's inputs are the weakest link.

Check out the new Digi 002 system... looks really sweet! FireWire based control surface and I/O that works with ProTools LE. Just announced today!

It's a little pricey at US$2500, but it's a full integrated system, which can probably scale nicely to a full-blown professional ProTools setup.

$2500 is list though, hopefully retailers will scale that down a bit. I agree, it's probably the best non-PCI/cardbus solution out yet. Very cool!

Also, with the 002, you get the 32 track version of Pro Tools LE.

hummm...what ever happened to the good old days? Im in a band now and researching (that's how I came about this site) how to make a simple live recording with my new laptop. Remember when the boom box came around with that little bitty hole for a mic and most of them handled recordings of live garage bands back then with no buzzing? Yes, I know it was a very cheap and simple recording and sounded like it to but that is all Im looking for now and that boombox is 15 years in the garbage.

I don't expect my laptop to record at studio quility just something I can record and play back. I did give the built in mics (2) a 1st time try though and it was as if someone was blowing a whisle 2 inchs away form the mic. Big Buzzzz! Is there any way to get rid of the buzz? I tried to find a mic level to turn it down but there wasn't one. The record bar that displays volume input was not in the max zone only maybe half way if that much. What can I do with out spending oodles of money on a simple present day recording? Back to the old tape deck boombox? Come'on. Don't tell me. I'll try sticking a cardboard box upside down over this laptop before I go back to tape. If that doesn't work I'll try stuffing the box with pillows (which would sound realy dull Im sure). Any second hand avice out there? Thanks.

Using the computer's internal soundcard or the computer's external microphone generally results in a very poor recording. I ended up using a Tascam US-122 with quite pleasant results. You could probably find a used one for a decent price.

thanks for the advice rbjamming