[PD] notebook (PC) for creation of sound ?

Ivica Bukvic ico at fuse.net
Fri Aug 10 16:00:14 CEST 2001


Hello,

I've been using Dell's Inspiron 8000 very successfully so far. Personally, I
believe it is currently the best laptop on the market (obviously this is my
opinion, nothing more :-). You can custom-configure it down to every single
detail and it runs Linux out-of-box (except for one of the offered video
cards: Geforce2Go, since it came out only 4 months ago, so no distribution
had its drivers bundled, but Nvidia has a great Linux driver support so the
post-install config is relatively easy). As a soundcard it uses ESS Maestro
3i soundcard which is the best one I've seen bundled with a laptop (most, if
not all laptop soundcards come integrated into the motherboard). It has a
Line-in, Mic-in and audio out (Stereo), but the laptop itself also supports
SPDIF out. On the other hand, if this is not satisfactory for ya, you can
always get PCMCIA version of RME DSP (~24 channel, or somewhere around that
number) card, but I am not sure if the Linux driver for that one is ready as
of yet, and for that you got 2 PCMCIA ports. The laptop also has a firewire
port and if you need raw Cpu power for real-time stuff, you can buy it as
fast as 1 Ghz Pentium III (I used it on my recent performance of my thesis
work using live sound processing/interaction with a guitar and had
absolutely no problems whatsoever). Geforce2Go is also a real jewel of a
video card, being the only hardware T&L video card for the mobile computer
at this time, also utilizing 4x AGP (and Nvidia's drivers, although
currently still having a few glitches, have a tremendous performance in
Linux) and it really does wonders to Gem. You can also opt for a cheaper ATI
Mobility M4 card (also 4x agp with 32MB of video RAM), but this type of card
is extremely hard to configure for acceleration (using DRI), while its 2D
XFree config is out-of-box, so you might wanna consider getting AcceleratedX
with this one in order to get a good acceleration performance out of it
(commercial version of X that can run you around $100-120 which in the end
makes it more expensive solution than the other :-). In both cases you'll
end up with one heck of a system. If you need more info regarding this
system or have additional questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail me.

Ivica "Ico" Bukvic, composer
http://meowing.ccm.uc.edu/~ico/
ico at fuse.net
============================
"To be is to do" - Socrates
"To do is to be" - Sartre
"Do be do be do" - Sinatra
"Just do it!"    - NIKE



-----Original Message-----
From: Andrey Savitsky [mailto:savitsky3000 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 3:53 AM
To: pd-list at iem.kug.ac.at
Subject: [PD] notebook (PC) for creation of sound ?


hi

Is there anybody in the list who uses a notebook (PC) for creation of sound
?
I`d like to buy one for mobility but can not find any answer on the question
of quality of sound.
In specifications for some notebooks stands only "SBpro compatible stereo
sound" comment.
I dont know what does it mean, becouse it's just driver-standart, no more.
Would it be enough quality (of a soundcard) for making sound? Have any
experience?

Thanks.
Andrey.

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