Netbook dedicated to recording ?

[LeSedna]

Hello,

I wanted to ask to those of you who record with a laptop or a netbook what is needed at minimum to handle a stable recording session.

My main concern is that no netbook (excepted one lenovo) has firewire. And almost no average laptop, like mine (an asus from 2 years ago).

My question is :

- in my case i have a profire 2626. Can I plug it with an firewire>USB adapter to plug it into an USB port ? Would it be a problem in term of bandwidth / speed of data transfer ?
- if so, is any netbook sufficient for recording of 8 or 16 tracks at once (im running Reaper). I mean, for those in the cheap range, with cheap, very cheap specs like 1ghz of CPU and 1goRam, 160go of crappy harddisks.
- if no, does that mean mobile recording with a firewire interface impossible with cheap/little laptops ?

Im mostly appealing to your experience in this field. I'm asking to myself if my asus can turn into the mobile part of my studio, coupled with an USB little external soundcard and occasionally running my profire for multitrack recording and/or live gigs. Or selling it to buy a netbook that would be really more practical to use.

Thanks

 

[dani]

laptops always suck for recording, because of their frequent, uncontrollable and silent CPU scaling. that said, if you're not running plugins or only a very few, it might be ok.

i can only imagine a netbook would be worse..!

thanks,

 

[mstone564]

Try getting a Syba ExpressCard 1394a to plug your Profire up to.
I'm sure most laptops have a PCI slot.

 

[Line666]

Nah, I don't even know if there is a firewire to usb adapter and if there is then I'd be hesitant to use it, especially with a laptop:- firewire is an asynchronous(independent) stream of information whereas usb requires communication with the processor, is sent in packets and therefore requires a much much larger processor overhead.

The thing about laptops is because they are so compact they have a lot of information running along the same section of the motherboard, this means that even if you do have a suitable firewire chipset on the laptop (unlikely) then for stability you have to disable all the shit that runs on the firewire bus as well, this can mean CD drive, ethernet, wireless, expresscard etc. I don't need to say that this is very inconvenient. My laptop has a Texas Instrument chipset built in, is avid certified and even I have problems if I dont disable these features; pops, clicks, dropouts.

Even if you install a TI chipset into an expresscard bus your still at the mercy of your cardbus controller as to whether it works well or not too, if you have something like a Ricoh Cardbus then expect it to shit its pants because the card wont circumvent the problem; a cluttered and badly designed southbridge on the motherboard.

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?langid=41&navid=54&itemid=36861

 

[DanLights]

Not that Im an expert at all, but I wouldn't recommend it. Netbooks IMO are not good for anything at all except checking your facebook, I highly doubt you could find one in an affordable normal consumer price range that could actually work for recording/mixing etc. Plus, how on earth could you mix on a 11 or 12" screen? I mix on a 15" and can't wait to go desktop. Unless there's a language barrier, at least in Spain those are what we call netbooks, the small little laptops made for checking your email and not much more

 

[LeSedna]

This wouldn't be for mixinng.
That would still be done on my desktop computer (hell I bought an i7 Pc especially for that aha). I just wanna record and nothing else, not even sure i would need a plugin.

So if I understood well, the best idea is to keep my asus (its a correct one, core 2 duo, 2go, 500go, 15'') and buy an USB 2i/o card (or maybe 4i/o) for recordings, an move my desktop if I need the 8 or more inputs of my 2626 with FireWire ?

So :
PC + 2626 at home or for solid recordings

Laptop + USB car for mobile guitar/voice/random tracking

?

 

[LeSedna]

for the record, adapters do exist. But im not sure they maintain the firewire protocol.

 

[Erik Monsonis]

I tried it.

forget about it, netbooks have too little CPU and RAM specs to even hold some tracks plus some plugins with max buffer settings.

I got my laptop stolen and a friend lent me his netbook while I was waiting for my new laptop and I couldn't even load my reaper mix sessions (it crashed). It was a brand new Asus netbook, really nice for what it is, but not for this.

 

[DanLights]

Yeah mat I think you should definitely do as you said last post, keep your laptop for any mobile recordings, a netbook will only give you unnecesary headaches

 

[Kazrog]

The more you deviate from an Intel compatible CPU and hardware, the less likely stuff like Reaper and VSTs are to work. A lot of it comes down to how they are compiled, support for various OS frameworks is usually needed for audio applications, etc. A native Linux / LADSPA setup _might_ work but you'd be far better off with a laptop.

 

[MarcusGHedwig]

There are some pretty ballsy 13-14" netbooks (not technically a netbook I guess, though they don't have optical drives) that I think could handle it - a customer yesterday was telling me he had just bought a Toshiba with those specs as well as an i7, so they're out there!

And if you can find one with an expresscard slot, then you can just get an expresscard FW adapter (I've used one on my laptop for 2 years with no problems), or if it's just for mixing, you can grab an inexpensive USB interface