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

[Thomas Grill]

Hi,
the RME HDSP interface+breakout box seems to be a good choice. It uses a
firewire connection with a PCMCIA or PCI interface.
The price of $350 is only for the interface card, the bundle of
PCMCIA+Multiface AD/DA box (ADAT IO+8 analog IO) is 1666 DM at thomann.de.
Hopyfully, i get mine in about two or three weeks, then i can report on it.
Meanwhile, RME has released some "tech infos"
(http://www.rme-audio.de/english/techinfo/hdsp/notetabe.htm) where they
published their experiences with some notebooks. According to this the Dell
Inspiron suffers from a bug in its power saving mode. Apart from this it
must be an excellent notebook.
The other affordable firewire solution is the MOTU 828 which will not be
available for Linux and Windows support is bad.

Concerning USB soundcards, there are some (Midiman Audiosport Duo/Quattro,
Emagic 2|6, EgoSys and others) but as they are quite new, driver support is
far from being complete. It would like to hear some feedback from people
using any of these multichannel USB boxes.

greetings, Thomas

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ivica Bukvic" <ico at fuse.net>
To: "Andrey Savitsky" <savitsky3000 at yahoo.com>
Cc: <pd-list at iem.kug.ac.at>
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 4:00 PM
Subject: RE: [PD] notebook (PC) for creation of sound ?


> 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.
>
>  _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!?
> Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
>
>
>
>
>