R: [PD] [1/2 OT] Laptop audio interface choice under Linux
Davide Morelli
info at davidemorelli.it
Wed Aug 30 15:51:38 CEST 2006
> Unfortunately none of these interfaces looks like the right
> one for me. The Presonus Firebox and the Terratec Phase x24
> could be ok, but I was rather looking for something like the
> RME Fireface 400 - To put it differently, I'm not sure if
> these two cards have the same sound quality and reliability
> as RME or MOTU ones. If anyone use them, please tell me about
> the results you get.
I'm very happy with my Terratec Phase 24FW but I can't compare it to a RME
because I never owned one, so I can't tell you if it's as good...
> The main problem is to find a laptop on which the Linux
> installation won't freeze after launching x11. On the one I
> have currently, no distribution could be installed. I believe
> I have to add or remove something to x11.conf but there is
> very few information about it. In the past I have used Red
> Hat and CCRMA at
> 2.6 ms latency (Shuttle XPC) without any problem.
>
I have a very cheap laptop: HP nx6110, celeron M, GMA900. no problems at
all, FC5 recognized everything and with a little effort I also have a
dualhead 3D accelerated setup (so I can patch while GEM windows is running
fullscreen). also ubuntu runs just fine on it. I suggest looking here before
buying: http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/
> > Be aware that is still somehow experimental.
>
> Does it means, that I may get sound drops and variable
> reliability ? I need a simple setup, but as professional as
> my former Yamaha hardware sampler (1995)
> :) This machine had a polyphony of 64 btw, which is quite
> hard to get on a laptop (considering that latency has to be
> inferior to 5 ms)
It means that jackd sometimes crashes when I do strange and CPU intensive
things, for example I am working on a flext external that does a lot of
things in a different thread: sometimes when I run the separate thread jackd
aborts.
Normally, once you have correctly configured jackd and the firewire port
priority, you don't have xrun.
I don't think you'll have problems using it as a sampler, nontheless you
might want to wait freebob to be "stable" and included in the official jackd
distributions before using it on stage..
More information about the Pd-list
mailing list