Anyone tried the Dell Studio 15 with the Rane 57?

I need a new laptop to run Serato with my 57. The Dell Studio 15 has caught my eye specs wise, and the fact it has an optional backlit keyboard.

MacBook users: Please refrain from posting smug messages. I know the MacBook Pro has the backlit keyboard, however also costs twice as much. Can we please keep the discussion on the studio 15 and laptops of a similar price range.

Well it seems as though I posted a little too early before I did enough research (I personally dislike it when other people do it). It turns out that the Dell studio 17 and 15 have latency issues resulting in cracking a popping noises during playback (which as far as a can gather is not related to USB dropout, but rather issues with the actual signal processing and latency issues with the laptop its self . From what I can gather there are some workarounds however they themselves are not without glitches either. It appears as though Dell is trying to rectify this problem as we speak with DJ Quartz leading the charge in trying to help with the work arounds however it still appears unresolved for the time being.

The thread on the issues can be tracked on the Dell tech forum:
en.community.dell.com and en.community.dell.com

and is also being tracked on the Native Instruments forum:
www.native-instruments.com

Hey I have an inspiron 1420, a little older but it works flawless with the 57. The reason I went with it was my macbook is 13 inch and looks ok but only 2 usb. The 14 inch is a perfect size; 15 is a little big to be luggin around, and plus this inspiron has 4 usbs, can't ask for anything more.

I purchased a HP dv6500 series a year ago as it had more features and all the specs were better than the Inspiron. As it turns out the HP has USB dropout issues despite the specs being WAY above serato minimum requirement s. In retrospect I should have probably gone with the Inspiron as it was cheaper and appears to run serato better. After trying a million work arounds I have given up on my HP DV65000 and sold it. I was originally looking at the Dell studio 15 (especially the option of a backlit keyboard) however as it appears it is also not without problems which are still being rectified. The Dell studio also requires work arounds to make serato run well which I am really sick of doing… I just wanted a laptop which would WORK minus the cost of a macbook. I have since purchased a used Asus M51sn which works really well with everything maxed-out and the USB buffer set to the lowest setting.

yeah sometimes you don't need the best of the best or the most expensive. I paid $550 for my dell and have been extremely happy

Just curious Rubix, but any idea what that Studio 15 with latency issues was running as an operating system? If it was Windows Vista, or Windows 7 that is now coming pre-loaded from Dell, that could be the issue right there. I too have seen the specs of the Studio 15 and am considering a purchase, but I would immediately downgrade to Windows XP upon receiving it.

From what I can gather, it was BIOS issue rather than a operating system issue. This means that you'll get dropouts with XP,Vista & Win7 it doesn't matter. I'm not sure whether this issue has now been rectified with a new BIOS update or not. I think you need to do a fair bit of tweaking for it to run Serato properly and will come at the cost of some wierd side-effects such as if you set the computer to 'sleep', it won't 'wakup' again, you need to restart. I don't know much more, I settled for an Asus M51 instead, I wanted something that would work straight out-of-the-box, this is why I got rid of my HP DV6500.

If you're seriously considering getting a PC laptop to run serato have a look at this thread: www.scratchlive.net

it's everyone's take their laptops and how they stack up with serato. I think it's must go-to before you cough up the big $$$ for a piece of equipment which doesn't work 100%.

I've been fortunate up until now... i've had NO issues with any versions of Serato on both of my Dells, an Inspiron 1505 and an even older Inspiron 6000. Now that i'm trying to make to move to SL-Video, I need a laptop with a good Video card onboard, and had my sights on that Studio 15 :( Grrr....

Why do you think the Mac users are so smug? Mac doesn't compromise on many / any of their components which is one of the reasosns why they are so expensive. It's such a luck-of-the draw when it comes to PC laptops whether they will do everthing you want them to do. The funny thing is that there are a number of cheaper PC laotops such as the Dell Inspiron that will run serato better than their 'premium' models such as the Dell Studio and the Dell XPS. You really can't go with that's on paper, I learned that the hard way.

I wish I would have read this first. I have been using my Dell Inspiron 6000 for about a year now with no issues. Last weekend Serato froze on me during a Wedding. Luckily I managed to go to my emergency backup IPOD to load the next song and rebooted Serato. Everything went fine after that. I blamed this on having the minimum requirements on my Dell Inspiron. So I decided to upgrade to a Dell Studio 15. I stick with Dell because I manage a Wireless Network and the techs/engineers use Dell in the field. Their laptops get abused but keep on going.

My Studio15 came with Win7, major problems in recognizing my Rane57. I loaded re-loaded Vista. I have been researching forums for the last few days and tried all the suggetions. Here are the noticable issues which I believe are the same as with Rubix wrote:

I hear popping/cracking noises as I play the songs: Never noticed them before
When I hit browse, the visual display of Serato freezes for about 1-2 seconds, music still plays.
When I search for song in my "all" section with each letter I type or backspace the Serato Display freezes a bit
If my external HD is plugged in via USB I can not close Serato. I get a "not responding" message.
My setup is:
Dell Studio15: Dual core processor, 2.1, 320G hardrive, 4memory
Rane 57
Pioneer CDJ's 800mkII

Get in touch with Dj Quartz, he's here on the Scratchlive Forums. He's been leading the charge in most of the foums elsewhere in getting Dell Studio laptop to work with serato properly.

Here is an update...I downloaded a new bios from Dell released in November. Everything works now and I am running Windows 7

Hi Rubix, I recently bought the SL1 and am experiencing some latency issues, I though maybe you could help me out since you had the same computer that I have right now, the HP Pavillion 6500. Did you do anything to get it working right??

*Sigh*

Unfortunately there is nothing you can do in order to get the DV6500 to go below a latency setting below 4. The dv6500 is a machine which was never built to run SSL. I did EVERY single tweak in the book. Too many individual things to list, but believe me I’ve done them all. From mundane such as reducing the number of screen updates in SSL, and turning off wifi and every other non-useful app. Through to formatting the system with NOTHING but SSL + music collection and terminating every single service in services.msc whilst still keeping XP stable. Right through to setting up SSL as a new windows shell (i.e. eliminating explorer, desktop, start menu, all add-ons, services…. EVERYTHING) except for SSL. I got CPU usage down to <12% with SSL running and 2.7GB of my total 3GB RAM still available and STILL usb dropouts occurred with a usb buffer < 4. This is just not acceptable considering SSL only requires a 1.5GB single core processor and 1GB RAM…

The HP dv6500 has usb hardware issues which will not permit minimal usb latency without dropouts. It is also a real pain in the ass to downgrade to XP as the drivers are like hens teeth to locate. You will need a different system for SSL. period.

Check out this thread: www.scratchlive.net it is where SSL users discuss/rate how their laptops stack up with SSL. From what I have read the Dell Inspiron laptops (even the older ones) are cheap and run SSL well. You could probably sell/trade one second hand with equal specs for around the same price as your dv6500.

Thanks Rubix