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Church and H.O.W. – Forums for HOW Sound and AV - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Church and HOW Forums => Church Sound => Topic started by: chris harwood on January 09, 2013, 10:21:36 PM
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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figured a laptop would be overall more useful and no more expensive than a stand alone recorder, which would be out of date as soon as I bought one.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 if those aren't already out of date.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.
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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figured a laptop would be overall more useful and no more expensive than a stand alone recorder, which would be out of date as soon as I bought one.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 if those aren't already out of date.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.
I use a Lenovo T60p laptop to record 32 tracks over USB just fine. It has a Core2 Duo processor and 2gb ram
An i3 should be plenty of processing power for recording 8 tracks. Get aas much ram as you can and if there is an option for a solid state hard rive, it will help, but not required.
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I use a Lenovo T60p laptop to record 32 tracks over USB just fine. It has a Core2 Duo processor and 2gb ram
An i3 should be plenty of processing power for recording 8 tracks. Get aas much ram as you can and if there is an option for a solid state hard rive, it will help, but not required.
After eight excellent years of service, my MOTU 896 Original died around Thanksgiving last fall. MOTU no longer repairs these, so I was left with no choice but to buy a newer model. Angry at the abandonment of my investment, I looked at competitors products, but found nothing with 8 phantom powered XLR inputs in an affordable under $2K package that could do 24/96 sample rates.
Now this system worked perfectly with my Sony GRX560 laptop for eight years. No problems with firewire at all. Ever.
Reluctantly, I came back to MOTU with my tail between my legs, and bought the 896mk3 Hybrid to replace my Original.
Problem: the Sony laptop didn't even SEE this new MOTU, so although the driver's installed fine (after updating Windows XP to SP2 and then SP3), the MOTU acted like it was not connected. I spent 3 weeks on that problem, reinstalling everything, trying different service packs, etc. Something is different with the firewire on the new MOTU, as it is no longer detected on the laptop.
So I decided, since that laptop was getting long in the tooth, I bought a Lenovo W500 to replace it. Optimistic that my problems were over, and this having Windows 7 Pro 64-bit installed, I merrily installed the MOTU drivers, which went without a hiccup, plugged in the MOTU 896 mk3H and waited.. but nothing happened. No MOTU devices found. :-( I spent weeks on this little problem, but to no avail.
Finally, I gave up on the firewire and tried the USB capability. MOTU detected and fired right up! But I soon discovered the weakness of USB for realtime audio. The recordings it made had dropouts every few seconds. Even the pass through echoed audio was dropping out! I spent a week researching Win 7 tweaks for audio, and disabled everything. The biggest help was disabling ACPI Battery Device. That reduced the dropouts by 50%. But I was still getting dropouts.
Now my ancient Sony laptop with probably not 1/10th the processing and disk speed of the Lenovo was able to record multi-hour 8 channel concerts at 24/96 with never a dropped sample, ever. So why couldn't this brawny dual CPU core laptop with a drive that reads and writes 108MB/sec record without dropouts? I figure it must be the USB ports. I researched the issue and found that USB, unlike firewire, does not go directly to RAM--it passed through the CPU and a bunch of other stuff along the way. CPU background processes can disrupt the audio stream and samples get dropped.
I found that I could only minimize, but not completely eliminate the problem. I've gotten it down to one dropout per hour, but this is still unacceptable for classical concerts synched to multiple HD cameras. It's a very frustrating search to find a box that works well. Maybe the best thing is to buy a used MOTU 896 Original and go back to what works.
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Sounds like you could use a roland 8 track stand alone recorder or even a zoom r24 to do what you want without a laptop, the zoom can even act as an interface if you feel the need to record to a laptop.
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Sounds like you could use a roland 8 track stand alone recorder or even a zoom r24 to do what you want without a laptop, the zoom can even act as an interface if you feel the need to record to a laptop.
I have Zoom products and granted, they make nice cheap recorders, but the 96K functionality is no good because the actual response starts to roll at 22K and the s/n ratio is no good for what I'm doing.
Last fall, Google came up with nothing suitable while I searched for alternatives to MOTU. I was angry with them for abandoning my 896 and refusing to repair it due to it being almost ten years old (that's "old"?) and I looked for a competitor's product, but could find nothing with more than four XLR phantom powered inputs. So back to the 896 mk3 Hybrid.
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Will either of these work?
http://lexiconpro.com/en-US/products/i-o-82
http://lexiconpro.com/en-US/products/i-o-fw810s
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Sounds like you could use a roland 8 track stand alone recorder or even a zoom r24 to do what you want without a laptop, the zoom can even act as an interface if you feel the need to record to a laptop.
I'll check it out, but I've found most recorders of that nature only record 2 tracks at once. I'd like at least four and hopefully 8.
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I'll check it out, but I've found most recorders of that nature only record 2 tracks at once. I'd like at least four and hopefully 8.
If you are looking for USB connected interfaces, you could start here: http://tweakheadz.com/audio_interface_usb2_comparison_chart.htm (http://tweakheadz.com/audio_interface_usb2_comparison_chart.htm)
If you want reliability, go for RME, but they are probably out of your price bracket. The M-Audio Fast Track series are OK, and probably more what you're looking for.
We use a two-channel Lexicon at our church and it is OK but not great.
I can recommend that you buy a decent laptop, though. We have tried cheap ones and been driven insane by their inability to handle the simplest audio or video tasks.
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I can recommend that you buy a decent laptop, though. We have tried cheap ones and been driven insane by their inability to handle the simplest audio or video tasks.
You expect us to take the advice of a crazy person? 8)
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I'll check it out, but I've found most recorders of that nature only record 2 tracks at once. I'd like at least four and hopefully 8.
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.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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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Honestly I've used Win 7 with and without Aero and noticed zero difference in performance even under heavy load. YMMV, of course.
Probably depends on the system as the majority of the aero interface is offloaded to the GPU where possible. The CPU is still involved, but the workload may or may not be effectively offloaded. It's probably something to try and see what happens. I typically use a tool called dpc latency checker to see what kind of background load is on the system and watch for any periodic problems. It would be a good test to see just how much of a non-issue it really is.
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Probably depends on the system as the majority of the aero interface is offloaded to the GPU where possible. The CPU is still involved, but the workload may or may not be effectively offloaded. It's probably something to try and see what happens. I typically use a tool called dpc latency checker to see what kind of background load is on the system and watch for any periodic problems. It would be a good test to see just how much of a non-issue it really is.
I use dpcdat as well. Pretty good tool for free.
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I remember at my last job I ran without aero for a little while and it was actually distracting because of how the various tools we used showed up with the "classic" UI. Aero actually made it more user-friendly. And those machines weren't nearly the monster that my home PC is.
But, like I said, YMMV. You may see an improvement depending on your application.
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I use dpcdat as well. Pretty good tool for free.
In the sac community, its indispensable if you're going the DIY route over buying turnkey. Windows was not built with barebones real time performance in mind for the default user. DAW's can sometimes get buy with just upping the buffer size, especially when doing just mixing. It's a whole different story when you have to set it up for trouble free performance during a live event.
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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.
Firewire is going the way of the dodo and it's never been very reliable on a PC.
-Dan.
Yeah right.... There's no resale in a HD recorder like a Tascam, etc. A cheap laptop wouldn't need resale in mind either.. imo, that sounds kind of silly.
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Yeah right.... There's no resale in a HD recorder like a Tascam, etc.
Compared to what they originally went for new, no, the resale isn't great.
But you wouldn't be buying it new; you'd be buying it used. Buy it for $500-700 now and when you don't need it in a couple years, turn around and re-sell it for most of what you paid for it.
Your biggest issues with the standalone recorder would be size/weight and transfer speeds. I'd suggest finding a unit that'll allow you to transfer files via ethernet.
A cheap laptop wouldn't need resale in mind either.. imo, that sounds kind of silly.
Not only would your cheap laptop not be worth much of anything in a couple years, it may only be barely adequate the day you bought it AND you'd run the risk of going through all the typical computer-audio headaches.
-Dan.
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I have a PII computer at home and easily record 10 inputs at once. Not sure why a 5 year newer laptop with an i3 would struggle just for recording tracks. Plus I can use the laptop for other things. The Tascam HD has one use and a $500 unit is more than what I could spend on an inexpensive laptop. I'm experienced enough to know I don't need a blazing i7 with 16 gigs of RAM and a SSD operating drive and a 10,000 audio drive, hooked to a Lynx, RME or the like type of interface, JUST for recording tracks to be later transferred.
Any rate... Thx for the suggestions.
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You didn't say what type of connectivity you have. Do you have firewire available? If you do Presonus has a pretty decent offering. The FireSudio Project in the 300-400 range with 8 channels. If USB they only make 4 channel AudioBox 44VSL in the $300 range or the 18 channel AudioBox 1818VSL it being in the $500 range however it requires usb2.0.
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Firewire is going the way of the dodo and it's never been very reliable on a PC.
My understanding is that the royalties for implementing Firewire are much higher than for USB. That's a natural reason for Firewire (an interface superior to USB) to fall out of favor, just like Betamax vs. VHS.
Are there any audio I/O devices out there yet using USB 3.0?
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There's always Thunderbolt. :D
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I've always had reasonable success with Presonus products. I currently use a Firepod to record 8 live tracks at a time, and had chosen it because its Firewire interface. They won't break a budget, the pre-amps are decent, and my aging VAIO laptop can handle it with no trouble.
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try the focusrite product...for $150CA (scarlett 2i2) you can get at 2 x ComboJack, Ableton live, and Focusrite plugins, and will work with any other major DAW software. These sound GREAT!!!...
even if you want to just up into a 4 ch you can spend $200 and get the same other features...
http://global.focusrite.com/usb-audio-interfaces (http://global.focusrite.com/usb-audio-interfaces)