Best Laptop method slive and recording?

[Gerry G]

I was using an ASUS low end duel core rated at about 1.6 per core (badged as a 'Mobilite'. It was fine but the screen cracked and ASUS wants lotsa roubles to replace it.

My new ASUS has a ricoh chipset in the firewire dept which is supposed to be a poisoned chalice but seems to work ok on multi-tracks in Reaper. I have the new MOTU drivers running under Vista which are supposed to introduce mucho latency but I have not tested scientifically yet and it seems ok for the short term.

Ideally I could 'farm' the effects (and maybe the samples) out to a second laptop or an older desktop but would this be more trouble than it is worth using Reaper?

Laptops pretty much mean firewire or does anybody have a SATA port operating with a sound module or maybe with an external SATA drive?

I chose a 5400 RPM drive smaller drive(250Gig) as it is relatively manageable but maybe somebody is getting ok results using a faster or larger drive?

[sstillwell]

Totally depends on results and requirements.

If the firewire chipset is working for you...don't change it. TI works great pretty much every time, but even though others like Ricoh are hit and miss, they DO occasionally work correctly. Congrats, you just won the firewire lottery. :P That being said, if there's a PCMCIA slot on it, you could run an RME Hammerfall HDSP if you JUST GOTTA have the lowest latency. The latest drivers from MOTU do appear to have added a safety buffer and removed the lowest (32 sample) latency setting, but if it's sufficient for you and sounds okay, then let it go.

5400 RPM drive isn't fast, but I've recorded full CDs for bands remotely on one (on an Acer laptop with Core Duo 1.5 GHz - not Core 2) and didn't have a problem. It was only about 18 tracks total, but it worked fine.

Faster is better, but at some point better becomes "good enough for me", and going beyond that point is purely optional.

Scott

Originally Posted by Gerry G

I was using an ASUS low end duel core rated at about 1.6 per core (badged as a 'Mobilite'. It was fine but the screen cracked and ASUS wants lotsa roubles to replace it.

My new ASUS has a ricoh chipset in the firewire dept which is supposed to be a poisoned chalice but seems to work ok on multi-tracks in Reaper. I have the new MOTU drivers running under Vista which are supposed to introduce mucho latency but I have not tested scientifically yet and it seems ok for the short term.

Ideally I could 'farm' the effects (and maybe the samples) out to a second laptop or an older desktop but would this be more trouble than it is worth using Reaper?

Laptops pretty much mean firewire or does anybody have a SATA port operating with a sound module or maybe with an external SATA drive?

I chose a 5400 RPM drive smaller drive(250Gig) as it is relatively manageable but maybe somebody is getting ok results using a faster or larger drive?

[Gerry G]

I read somewhere that all parts of laptops are a trade off and that the faster 7200 drives came at price of heat (read fans starting up and high revving to cool the machine down)

Somewhere else I read that very large drives could get slower as there was more "seeking" to be done by the optical reader. Not sure if that is correct.

I was heavily disappointed when I got this home and checked device manager to see a Ricoh 1394 firewire port however it seems ok; if a bit flimsy. That can be cured by heaps of gaffer and a firm surface.

Lower latency settings on the old MOTU drivers were great so I may add the lite XP version to another partition. Apparently you can do this without cleaning out the Vista partition as long as you keep 'sub partitioning' a clean partition and there is one on good laptops.

You can get lower latency readings by increasing the sample rate but does anybody know if this costs you in some other department?