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Author Topic: laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.  (Read 14929 times)

Josh Daws

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Re: laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.
« Reply #10 on: January 10, 2013, 11:59:32 PM »

I submit for your consideration the Roland Octa-capture.  Tt's at the High end of you budget (I got mine for much less then the general asking price) http://www.rolandus.com/products/details/1127

The drawback is it requires AC power. 

Absolutely thumbs down on the fast track (driver issues from hell)  The mobile pre's are great ( i have used 2 simultaneously for 4 TK recording. 

Thumbs down on anything from Line-6  (driver / software from hell)

.... Juts one guys opinion.

take a look at the Focusrite Scarlett interfaces. they start about $150 for the 2ch $250 for the 8 ch...and they sound great, comes with ableton live lite, and also comes with a bunch of their plugins which will work with all major DAW software. but honestly IMO they do sound really really nice! :)

note i am a reseller of focusrite as the company i work for sells this line.
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Mark ☻Bass Pig☻ Weiss

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Re: laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.
« Reply #11 on: January 12, 2013, 04:25:21 AM »

Those Lexicons would probably do fine. Only concern is the USB only and lack of Firewire. The latter interface bypasses the CPU and goes directly to memory/disc (compare to DMA processing of disc requests over the slower compatibility methods). My FW was always reliable in terms of never having a dropout.


I've bought a muscular Lenovo W500 to supplant my Sony GRX560 (which worked a treat for 8 years with the MOTU 896 Original). I did countless events with that setup and it NEVER glitched on me, not even once. The Lenovo is easily 10X more powerful and has a 7200rpm disc with a 108MB/sec sustained record rate. IOW, a 'killer' system that rivals many desktops. But for some reason, USB cannot deliver an uninterrupted audio stream. And Room EQ Wizard's audio generator doesn't output a continuous signal. It's interrupted ever 330mS for 10mS, as measured on my lab's HP 3585A Spectrum Analyzer in one of the slower sweep modes where I can see and store the glitches and measure the intervals accurately. REW plays through the laptop's internal sound card flawlessly, but not through the USB connected device. Very frustrating.


I'm not that confident in this new setup, although I have managed to eek out a 50 minute test recording that had no glitches in it. But under very controlled conditions. Turned off the wi-fi and Bluetooth radios, disabled a ton of services, etc. It might suffice for concert recording. But I'd also like to use REW when I set up customers' home theaters. It's baffling how that generator function is chopped like that going out the MOTU.


The MOTU is nice in that it's got everything in one box. The less wiring I have to worry about, the less chance for something to get patched wrong. I have to manage a multicamera shoot, so the audio practically has to run itself. My old setup was trouble-free, leaving me to deal with the shot calls and handling the visual production aspects while the recording did its thing in a yeoman sort of way.
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TJ (Tom) Cornish

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Re: laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.
« Reply #12 on: January 12, 2013, 07:23:29 AM »

Those Lexicons would probably do fine. Only concern is the USB only and lack of Firewire. The latter interface bypasses the CPU and goes directly to memory/disc (compare to DMA processing of disc requests over the slower compatibility methods). My FW was always reliable in terms of never having a dropout.


I've bought a muscular Lenovo W500 to supplant my Sony GRX560 (which worked a treat for 8 years with the MOTU 896 Original). I did countless events with that setup and it NEVER glitched on me, not even once. The Lenovo is easily 10X more powerful and has a 7200rpm disc with a 108MB/sec sustained record rate. IOW, a 'killer' system that rivals many desktops. But for some reason, USB cannot deliver an uninterrupted audio stream. And Room EQ Wizard's audio generator doesn't output a continuous signal. It's interrupted ever 330mS for 10mS, as measured on my lab's HP 3585A Spectrum Analyzer in one of the slower sweep modes where I can see and store the glitches and measure the intervals accurately. REW plays through the laptop's internal sound card flawlessly, but not through the USB connected device. Very frustrating.


I'm not that confident in this new setup, although I have managed to eek out a 50 minute test recording that had no glitches in it. But under very controlled conditions. Turned off the wi-fi and Bluetooth radios, disabled a ton of services, etc. It might suffice for concert recording. But I'd also like to use REW when I set up customers' home theaters. It's baffling how that generator function is chopped like that going out the MOTU.


The MOTU is nice in that it's got everything in one box. The less wiring I have to worry about, the less chance for something to get patched wrong. I have to manage a multicamera shoot, so the audio practically has to run itself. My old setup was trouble-free, leaving me to deal with the shot calls and handling the visual production aspects while the recording did its thing in a yeoman sort of way.
just a thought - are you sure you're CPU or interrupt bound?  Have you tried recording to an external hard drive?  It's possible you're waiting on the spindle if you are just recording to the system drive.
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Keith Broughton

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Re: laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.
« Reply #13 on: January 12, 2013, 08:10:34 AM »

I recently picked up a couple of MOTU 828 interfaces (1st gen) for $100 each.
Nothing fancy, cheap and worked just fine for record/playback.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2013, 06:51:10 AM by keith broughton »
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Jeremy Johnston

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laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.
« Reply #14 on: January 12, 2013, 03:26:45 PM »

Just a thought on the w500 recording problem, turn the wifi OFF, even disable it in BIOS or device manager.  That battery ACPI and wifi I have found are the worst offenders in live audio via laptop stuff (I've built a decent SAC system on a Lenovo T60 that will run 16 channels in and 8 monitors out over FireWire).

Try disabling Wifi and retry your MOTU box.

Also try higher buffer numbers for recording.  If you don't NEED low latency for recording, that would ease up the load on the computer.

Just some ideas.

Jeremy
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Mark ☻Bass Pig☻ Weiss

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Re: laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.
« Reply #15 on: January 13, 2013, 12:13:32 AM »

Just a thought on the w500 recording problem, turn the wifi OFF, even disable it in BIOS or device manager.  That battery ACPI and wifi I have found are the worst offenders in live audio via laptop stuff (I've built a decent SAC system on a Lenovo T60 that will run 16 channels in and 8 monitors out over FireWire).

Try disabling Wifi and retry your MOTU box.

Also try higher buffer numbers for recording.  If you don't NEED low latency for recording, that would ease up the load on the computer.

Just some ideas.

Jeremy


I did indeed research this deeply and have in fact disabled ACPI Battery in device manager, which reduced dropouts by 50%, but not by 100% unfortunately.
Turning off wi-fi helped a bit more.
Turning off write cache and setting a large buffer helped maybe 10%.


My old laptop only had a 5400rpm drive and was pretty busy, but not saturated, and it never dropped a sample in 8 years of concert and other event recordings. My Lenovo has a MUCH faster drive, so the drive just blinks occasionally when data is being written.


But I cannot explain why REW's test generator outputs chopped sine waves. There's no disc activity involved, and it's just a simple sine wave generator. Works okay through the on board audio, but not through the MOTU via USB. That's a real head scratcher.
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Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

http://www.MWHDvideo.com
http://www.basspig.com The Bass Pig's Lair
http://www.ampexperts.com

Dan Costello

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Re: laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.
« Reply #16 on: January 15, 2013, 12:44:23 PM »

Looking for something bottom feeder, as I will only record tracks and then bring them back to the studio to work on.  So the laptop will just act like a tape recorder...figure an i3 or something. 

Also an interface... with at least 4 in/out  min.

figured a laptop would be overall more useful and no more expensive than a stand alone recorder, which would be out of date as soon as I bought one.  Already have everything else from mobile speakers to snakes to mics...   So no Tascam 24 track hard disk recorders.... if those aren't already out of date.

8 ins would be luxury and not looking to break the bank.  ...  $6 or 700 total maybe??

realistic goals?... and suggestions, especially the cheapie interface, since there are so many to plow thru.

Not for nothing, but your attitude is kind of silly. You're looking for a cheapo laptop and a low-end interface, but don't want to buy anything that's "out of date"? The things you're looking for are already out of date.

Take a look on ebay for standalone 24-track recorders (the rackmount ones, not the workstations). They'll likely work better than a cheapo laptop and they'll definitely have better resale value.

Quote
Those Lexicons would probably do fine. Only concern is the USB only and lack of Firewire.

Firewire is going the way of the dodo and it's never been very reliable on a PC.

-Dan.
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Jason Lucas

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Re: laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.
« Reply #17 on: January 15, 2013, 01:47:25 PM »

When it comes to what brands to look for with laptops, I tend to stay away from HP, Acer, or Gateway, based on this study (and some of my own personal experience): http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf
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George Dougherty

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Re: laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.
« Reply #18 on: January 15, 2013, 02:41:45 PM »

Looking for something bottom feeder, as I will only record tracks and then bring them back to the studio to work on.  So the laptop will just act like a tape recorder...figure an i3 or something. 

Also an interface... with at least 4 in/out  min.

figured a laptop would be overall more useful and no more expensive than a stand alone recorder, which would be out of date as soon as I bought one.  Already have everything else from mobile speakers to snakes to mics...   So no Tascam 24 track hard disk recorders.... if those aren't already out of date.

8 ins would be luxury and not looking to break the bank.  ...  $6 or 700 total maybe??

realistic goals?... and suggestions, especially the cheapie interface, since there are so many to plow thru.

Refurbished Dell latitude e5520 for ~$500 and the M-Audio Profire 2626 for $350-400.  Don't need a lot of CPU or even RAM if all you're doing is tracking.  I've got Win7 on mine with 2GB of RAM and can track 24 channels in Reaper to a 5400rpm HD with no problems.  The profire will do 8 channels analog at 96K and up to 18 channels with ADAT SMUX and SPDIF inputs.  A second Profire would net 16 channels at 96K.

Kill the ACPI Battery and Wifi as well as disable the wired network if you're not using it.  Disable any hyperthreading and Speedstep in the BIOS as well.  The ramping up and down causes major problems.  On the i5, I leave Turboboost enabled since it clocks up fast and stays there as long as the load is steady.  Turn off the fancy Aero interface in Win7. 

I run 3 Profires and the same laptop with a 2.5GHz i5 as my SAC flight rig.  I can push 80-90% CPU load with only an occasional dropout.
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Jason Lucas

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Re: laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.
« Reply #19 on: January 15, 2013, 03:27:56 PM »

Honestly I've used Win 7 with and without Aero and noticed zero difference in performance even under heavy load. YMMV, of course.
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There are three things I hate: Harsh highs, hollow mids, and woofy bass.

ProSoundWeb Community

Re: laptop and audio interface for mobile recording.
« Reply #19 on: January 15, 2013, 03:27:56 PM »


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