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.. 





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