Notebook DAW setup - success story

[Cheez]

I've always worked on my desktop for music. Got a notebook for a while but never got the time to really move my desktop setup onto the notebook - one reason is the fear that it will not work as well as I hoped (higher latencies, instability, slower performance etc).

Just want to share a success story - after I've finally tested my machine.

Specs:
Acer Aspire 1710, P4 2.8GHz
1.25GB RAM
External firewire drive (Seagate 120GB, 7200rpm)
Soundcard: Echo Indigo IO
MIDI: M-audio Midisport 1x1 (USB)

My plan is to have a portable setup to run mainly softsynths and softsamplers and also do audio recording. I plan to move everything to a portable setup eventually.
As some of you might know, I use Gigastudio 160 a lot. My desktop setup has 1x7200rpm IDE drive and 2 x 10,000rpm SCSI drives. Because Gigastudio streams samples from harddrives, the number of polyphony will depend on the drive speed (seek time). Moving to firewire drive at only 7200rpm is one concern for me. Also my firewire is 1394a (400) not 1394b (800) - there's the possible problem of transfer speed that will affect performance.

The other concern is the USB midi interface. My old interface is parallel - there are reports that say USB are slower than parallel.

I tested my system yesterday and much to my surprise, I am getting the full 160 notes polyphony from Gigastudio (when I play glissandoes up and down the keyboard multiple times, there are no clicks or pops at all) with no noticeable latencies. If I have GS3, I'm sure I can get 200-300 notes polyphony without any problems. My softsynths also give a near 0 latency (almost un-noticeable - probably about 3 milliseconds).

That changes some of my thinking:
1. external drive at 7200rpm is sufficient for most music applications (GS taxes hard drive more than audio recording) - no need for 10,000rpm drives
2. USB midi interfaces nowadays have very low latencies and the old school of thought (that parallel is better) is not true.
3. a portable setup can be as powerful as a desktop setup if configured and tweaked properly.

So, I'm moving entirely to a portable setup. And because I dual boot my notebook, I'm also using it for all my other applications like Microsoft Office in a separate boot partition.

I have not tested audio recording yet. For recording, I'm using an external USB 2.0 harddrive (Seagate 7200rpm). I have no time to test it - will have to wait a while before I get the time to perform more tests on recording.

 

[iansoh]

congrats! have fun with your new toy!

 

[bongman]

Demands of the new Millennium musician

For the musician in this new millennium, not only does he needs to know
his profession, he must always be at the IT frontier to deliver his music with the best gear.
This profession must upgrade to IT musician.

 

[AgingYouth]

woah, doode. With your specs, I think you can do anything with it!!!

1.25GB RAM... woah...

 

[Cheez]

Not really. Most people running Gigastudio have at least 1.5GB RAM. Many have 2GB.

 

[sound_designer]

forget pc, get a MAC to do some serious audio n video editing..!!!

 

[Cheez]

forget pc, get a MAC to do some serious audio n video editing..!!!

Gigastudio does not run on a Mac.

 

[lowjk]

forget pc, get a MAC to do some serious audio n video editing..!!!

Are you aware that a dual Opteron/Xenon is more powerful than a Dual G5 setup?

http://www.carillondirect.com/clnweb/performance.jsp?country=UK

 

[sound_designer]

a pc can be so much more powerful than a mac dudes.. but whole thing will comes down to professional software..
R U AWARE DAT MOST PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS WORK BASED ON A MAC... ?
n poor pc user has their machine keep crashing on them..?
common letz face it... i do have lotsa fr using pc as well... n they do is sob n complain when their pc crashes on them all the time...
do u actually read international reviews n all dat bro..?
n yeah try to convince a pro suite to have their mac replace by the best pc in the world dude...!! hehehe...
mabye they will... but for microsoft n internets application..!!!

 

[soft]

molecules_sx, you just want to tell others that Mac is good? Ok, point taken.

Cheez has setup his new system and he is sharing his findings with us. I thank him for his generosity.

If you want to share with us your encounter with Mac notebook and the stuff you can do with them, you are welcome to post a new thread.

 

[lowjk]

a pc can be so much more powerful than a mac dudes.. but whole thing will comes down to professional software..
R U AWARE DAT MOST PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS WORK BASED ON A MAC... ?
n poor pc user has their machine keep crashing on them..?
common letz face it... i do have lotsa fr using pc as well... n they do is sob n complain when their pc crashes on them all the time...
do u actually read international reviews n all dat bro..?
n yeah try to convince a pro suite to have their mac replace by the best pc in the world dude...!! hehehe...
mabye they will... but for microsoft n internets application..!!!

Yarn, then tell me why Hans Zimmer, beside using a MAC, also uses a PC to run Gigastudio. Perhaps, you would like to find out if his PCs having been crashing on him.

Don't forget the PC base is bigger. Even if 0.000001% of PC and MAC crashes, you will hear more complaints from the PC users by virtue of the much bigger user base. This gives the impression that PCs are unreliable.
This is made worse since there is more pirated (and hence less stable) software for the PC than for the MAC. So tell your friends, stop using pirated software, reformat, install with original software and install a good firewall and anti-virus.

I'm not for or against MAC but would like to point out the old argument that MACs are more powerful than the PCs has been dead and over for the last 2 years or so.

And do you actually read anything at all...
The reason why the MAC is so prominent in professional studios is due to the rise of ProTools in the late 80/early 90s when there was no other good alternative to a professional digital audio recording system.

The studio owners are hesitant to change to another system so they just kept upgrading whatever Digidesign threw at them. But this does not mean that the MAC is infalliable. If you think that MAC is so perfect, perhaps you would like to talk to Mr Glenn Skinner.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec....htm?session=3076c0006cc95b49124aeff5f6d84660

Bottomline
1 bad PC doesn't mean all are bad.
1 good MAC doesn't mean all are good.

 

[sound_designer]

well, issit juz protools... hmm... wat abt video editing suite dude.. they dun use protools... n wat bat 80% of the most famous composer...
well.. yeah the issue abt either mac or pc is better is dead long ago...
anyway... u seems quite heat up aite.. relax mannn....
dun get too personal...!!!

well yeah i have some pirated software... even on mac.. it doesn't crash on me.. sweet sweet... hehehe
but those main ones are original anyway.. like those logic, spectrasonic, native instrument.. etc etc.. alot more..
n money spend at least abt 12 k...
n even a guy who claims to be a 100% original like urself is keen...
n to make it worst u wun even pay a good 400 bucks for all these programs dat worth more than 10 k... U MUST BE ONE OF THOSE WHO CAN ONLY GO FOR THOSE IN PASAR MALAM PAYING 10 BUCKS FOR A PROGRAM...

well, get alive dude... R U TELLING ME ALL OF SINGLE PROGRAM IN UR PC IS ORIGINAL....?
dun make everyone here laugh dude...!!!

 

[sound_designer]

oh yeah not forgetting downloading mp3s n all dat as well dude...
datz piracy too... this is how the the world in this century works man..
face it... as much as ppl try so much to avoid piracy .. but it is juz too tempting..!!
n yeah, this happens to most studio in singapore too bro... all of us juz share wat we have... ooppsss... i guess u're not in the circle...
alright enough said.. MR ALL ORIGINAL GUY LOWJK... hehe..
u have fun...!!javascript:emoticon('')
cheers

 

[Cheez]

Oh no! Another Mac vs PC debate! Didn't know that we'll head down that track!

I was a Mac user. I must say that the Mac is very stable and I love it. Don't know much about video but for music, people go for it mainly for stability and not getting the dreaded BSOD ("blue screen of death") of the PC. Power and speed wise - both are comparable. Anyway, the bottle-neck nowadays in using plug-ins and hard-disk recordings does not lie only on the processor speed but the amount of RAM and the hard-drive speed.

So why do I use a PC eventually?
1. GigaStudio - can't run on Mac.
2. I was able to achieve high stability. I believe many people don't get the stability of their PC because they have too many other programs running in their system. For a DAW to run optimally, it MUST be dedicated and run nothing else. My notebook DAW runs absolutely nothing else besides Logic and GigaStudio. I use XPlite (a nice little program - free version available) to strip my Windows from internet explorer. I don't mean just unchecking the explorer in the Windows uninstall utility - it totally removes any trace of explorer in the system. My normal PC Windows takes up about 2GB of HD space - my DAW Windows partition takes only about 500MB (rest of stuffs that's unremovable by Windows are removed by XPlite).
3. Cost. To get a 2GHz G5, I could get a few PCs rackmounted, each loaded with VSTis and networked by LAN to give me a VST farm - more power. Or I could use that money to get more samples.

So in conclusion - I like Mac and I would like to have one. But each has their own preferences and limitations.

 

[fibredrive]

geez molecules_sx...u got a beef with lowjk? u dun have to be purposefully antagonistic here u noe...take it easy man. dun get personal. its a public forum. respect others' viewpoints la...

u love macs so much go marry one la....

kekekeke...

 

[lowjk]

geez molecules_sx...u got a beef with lowjk? u dun have to be purposefully antagonistic here u noe...take it easy man. dun get personal. its a public forum. respect others' viewpoints la...

u love macs so much go marry one la....

kekekeke...

That's because I blew the whistle on him.
He wanted to sell some software, and I assumed that they were original. But he was evasive about their status until about 3 e-mails down the road.
I called off the deal.

He claims that I can't afford $400 to buy all his software.
But I offered him $850 for 4 programs which I had assumed to be original.

 

[fibredrive]

so des neh...

just read the thread regarding that issue. understand understand.

 

[zenguan88]

ur notebook run on P4 2.8GHz ? intel duo core?!

but i thought notebooks cannot upgrade processor speed? how did you do that? i am CONFUSE!!! pls enlighten me pls.

i wanna get this
HP DV9014
intel duo core T700 (2.OGHz)
Ram : 1024MB ( gonna upgrade to 2GB )
its 17 inch
HDD : 240GB ( buying seagate external HD storage instead )

not using internet on it.

do you think with this i am able to do my recording with low or no latency?

i am actually very worried about this now cos i ask many of the salesperson and they say the processor speed cannot be upgraded.

 

[teraslasch]

waD DA.. a year old thread dug up.. :lol:

 

[zenguan88]

at least i read thru past forums ! hahas but i really wanna know the difference how come cheez could get so high a processor?! and cheez mind telling us how much that machine cost you?