help!!! whats better?!?

[balta]

waw how i wish i could afford that the projectmix i mean. Just to come up with the money for an interface is so hard already ...

I have a great dilema.... (I'll try to post pics of my setup soon)

 the specs of my laptop are the following:
     *  Pentium 4-M
      * 2.4 GHz
      400 MHz (mainboard data bus speed)
      512 MB ram
      30 GB plus 20 GB from the external
 
 you think my laptop is enough to for a stable DAW setup? (my friend suggest to upgrade and add  more ram)
  because if so i will invest on a firebox
  (keep in mind i plan to bring my laptop setup to gigs so portability and soundquality is really important)

If not or not worth it , I'll just try to supe up this desktop computer here thats hardly being used (since its easier to upgrade a desktop over a laptop). So i guess I also have to upgrade the stuff there.
If i go with this track i'll probably try to get an Emu 1820M or since i wil disregard portability a delta 1010


  so do i go with my laptop and i assume spending less
     or
  go with a desktop setup?

appreciate the help guys !!

[balta]

sorry pahabol .. about the ordering can i use this www.philpay.com since i dont have a creditcard account ? Is it better? or should i just find a friend who has an account?

sorry .. i have never ordered from the net before hehe

[jplacson]

balta, with regards to your laptop specs... yes more RAM is better.  but the 2 key things to consider are:

1) laptop HDDs are slower... even those with the same rpm as their desktop counterparts.

2) your laptop (or even desktop) is only as good as your software stability.  you can have 100GB RAM and 100TB of HDD space... but if you have a crappy WinXP install, then you're screwed.  You need to do a clean install with the bare minimum number of drivers (always use the latest ones).  Some laptops are finicky about the sequence of driver installs... some prefer audio drivers first, others prefer video card drivers first.  It's a trial and error process.

That said. If all you intend to do is 2-channel recording, then your laptop is fine.  But if you intend to do more than 2... then it gets a bit messy.  External FW HDD... RAM... and most important... keep it a DEDICATED machine.  Try not to surf on it often since that really causes a lot of problems.

the Projectmix would choke any laptop out there without an external FW HDD.  1GB of RAM should be the minimum to consider for your sw to run comfortably.  You can scrape by with 512 or 768... but this will make post prod processing take really long.  But it can handle 2 channel recording.

[balta]

thanks so much sir for the clean and helpful advice! galing

so u think i should still pursue my laptop? (if i get to buy the ram my laptop will get 900+ ram will that be enough?)

yup my laptop is dedicated only for music production it doesnt get online much.

so i should reinstall the windows xp? Im not really an expert on this should i ask an expert to help me out or is this something i could do on my own?


a friend suggested this http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Ozonic-main.html
a m-audio ozonic
since he says i'll be using my laptop for live .

what do u pro's think?

[KitC]

What exactly will you be using the laptop for?

If you will just be tracking, do you intend to record more than 2 tracks? A usb 1.1 audio interface will not cut it if you intend to track more than stereo in/stereo out. Either get a usb 2.0 audio interface, firewire, or a pcmcia soundcard.

John is right about HD speeds. You need a fast HD if you intend to multitrack or stream a LOT of samples from HD. Additional ram is only important if you are using ram-based samplers or romplers that load to ram.

The Ozonic is a usb 1.1 audio interface/midi controller. If you intend to use your laptop as a synth, it better have a really fast cpu, and if you're streaming samples, a 7200 rpm HD and lots of ram. Softsynths and samplers are not for the faint of (giga)hertz - I have brought a 1.8 gHz machine to its knees just playing 4 notes on a sampler. (Then again, those were very PHAT notes).

Have a go at musicxp.net on how to optimize WinXP for music.

[mariuo]

i think you'd need at least 1.5gb of ram, and an external hd. plus you'd feel so much better knowing that you still have plenty of space hehe

[balta]

thanks so much guys. I'll post again later i'll research more and check up on the specs of my pc

think you'd need at least 1.5gb of ram, and an external hd. plus you'd feel so much better knowing that you still have plenty of space hehe

is 1 gig of ram enough? since i am adding ram to my laptop which would cost me 2,500+ pesos.  i have a 20 gig external gig . But isnt it slow to use the external for recording stuff??

I'll be using the laptop for recording solo stuff so i guess no drums xo 2 inputs should be ok...

I need it also for live purposes because i will use the laptop for ableton live and reason for sampling.

[jplacson]

As Kit said, RAM is only important for apps that use RAM based samples.  For recording, it's your HDD speed/bus that matter.  For straight forward tracking, even 512MB won't be choking... but your HDD will.  The difference of 1GB and 2GB for tracking... mildly noticable... if you have spare cash..go ahead.  But you're better off spending it somewhere else for now.

Spend on a 3.5" Firewire HDD.  A 2.5" FW drive is just slightly faster than a 2.5" UBB 2.0, so don't bother with a 2.5" FW.

Remember that sampling/midi based computer music has different requirements than a multi-track/recording computer.

[balta]

wat is a decent HDD speed? I'll try to post the specs of my laptop's HDD when i get home. Hope it has enough power

[jplacson]

5400 is the minimum you should be running.  4800rpm laptop drives will choke... specially if they're almost full.

For externals, almost all 3.5" drives now are at least 7200rpm.  Get a Lacie if you can, the D3 line it has all the connections.. USB, FW, FW800.  Capacity all the way up to 500GB last I checked.

[KitC]

Seagate makes Momentus drives that run at 5400; they also have a Momentus that's rated at 7200 but I haven't seen any locally available and for the same amount of money you pay for a 200 gig 3.5" HD, you usually get 60-80 gigs for laptops. Hitachi makes a 7200 mobile HD (7K100 - 60 gig), some are available locally (maybe at  pcevotech.com) although I haven't been able to verify this.

An alternative is to get an external USB 2.0/FW HD enclosure that can accept standard IDE/SATA 7200 rpm 3.5" drives - make sure you have the right ports on your laptop. No Lacie's available locally, I'm afraid. You will also have to factor in a UPS because you don't want power to die while writing to an external HD.

[jplacson]

Kit, Lacie's are available locally... our office buys them for our Macs.  I think we get from Sencolink.  We have 5 D3s for back-up

[KitC]

Kit, Lacie's are available locally... our office buys them for our Macs.  I think we get from Sencolink.  We have 5 D3s for back-up

Kewl!  My bad... I avoid mac stores like the plague ever since Jobs pulled the plug on clones.

[balta]

i just checked it my harddrive is 5400rpm . is this is this ok?

So portable hardrives like the FW you mentioned is faster than a normal hardrive thats already in the pc?? Isn't it slower since it uses FW or USB as a connection??

I have a portable hardrive and it is kinda slow i mean compared to accessing the stock hardrive of cpu's

[TheHunter]

These are basically mixers with internal firewire interfaces to your pc. Similar in function to usb mixers but with more channel capability. The Phonic Helix shares a troublesome trait with the Mackie Onyx FW mixers, i.e., The tap going to the FW interface is located after the trim pot but before the eq. Onyx owners complained that they wanted Mackie's 'British eq' to be part of the recording chain but the Onyx could not allow you to change the tap point. The Phonic shares this trait.

Are there any user review of Phonic Helix FW here in this forum? I am considering to buy one soon for home recording and gig.

[TheHunter]

Does anybody knows which website I can find review of this Phonic Helixboard FW? I been searching the net for a while but no much review I can find.

[KitC]

Actual user reviews can be found here.

[TheHunter]

Kit, thank you for the link, I think I remember reading this forum before but was not convincing. The negative comments was from the guy that haven't use this board however good comments from the user which is to well verse with Phonic, like a Phonic S...hmmm

Anyway, I'll keep searching and pretty soon I will decide which system I have to use.