What kinda laptop and what specifications?

[Imyan]

Hi,

I am completely new to home recording. Right now all I have is an electric guitar, a Roland Micro Cube amp and a Compaq Presario V3000 laptop.

The laptop runs with Vista. I can't hear my mic through my speakers. This means when I connect my guitar to the mic port of the laptop I can't hear what I'm playing through the laptop speakers. And I have tried everything possible to fix this problem, but nothing worked.

I was able to do this before on a desktop computer with XP running on it. It was a simple task with XP. Just connect the guitar to the amp and then take line out from the amp and connect it to the mic port of the CPU. And I can hear myself playing through the PC speakers while I record.

So I thought of installing XP on my laptop, but I found out that my laptop was exclusively designed to work with Vista. When I did install XP on my laptop, the sound card doesn't work. There was no sound at all. And again I have tried everything and nothing worked.

What I need is to be able to record my guitar playing with live playback or monitoring and then also be able to make my own backing tracks or drum tracks and then mix them all together to make it in to a song.

I think maybe if i get another kinda laptop all these problems will be solved. I'm not at all familiar with the technical names and specs of laptops or what ever else I might need to do what I want.

Can someone please suggest a good laptop or specifications or anything else I will need for home recording.

Thanks

[Charlie_M]

there are guys who make laptops just for audio...I forgot the names but google audio laptop and it should come up..maybe recording laptop is a better search term it has been a while since I looked. they are a little more money than best buy but you tell them your hardware and they will guarantee it'll all work.

[Imyan]

Hmmm... Audio laptops or recording laptops huh?

I will search for those on google. Its too bad I don't know anything at all about the list you wrote. describing your rig.

[Cailyn]

Maybe you don't need a new computer but should invest in a recording interface instead, like a Firewire solo. These basically act like a sound card and will probably solve most if not all of your problems. I haven't used a USB interface so I don't know how well they work. If you have a socket for a firewire connection, that's the way to go. You can then monitor through the recording interface.

Otherwise, Microsoft for a fee, will allow you to downgrade to XP (upgrade if you ask me). Then you need to locate the audio driver to install to make XP work on your computer.