Laptop solution? Mine's working great, but...

Tau · Post by **Tau** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 2:03 pm

Hello to Planet Z! I've been a Scope user for just over a year now, and I would like to thank all forum members for getting me through the initial panic and puzzlement! I have spent many hours reading through posts here, and if it wasn't for planet z, I'd have sold my creamware ages ago, and would have missed out on a lot.

I have two Scope cards (6DSP+14DSP) running on my studio PC - this is a desktop Pentium D 3Ghz, on an Asus P5WD2 premium, with a Radeon X600 PCI-E graphics and 2 GB RAM. I believe that PCI-E is not the best option, because, in spite of all my tweaking, I could never get as much perfomance from my cards as I've seen reported on the forum - Masterverb test= 11, max usable samplerate= 48KHz, min. latency= 12ms. Besides, the CPU heats up a lot, and because of the design of the motherboard and the casing, and the size of the boards, the ventilation is not so efficient, and performance tends to go down after 4 hours of work or so. But it worked, and got work done.

Lately, I was asked to perform live at a festival, and because I don't trust my computer enough, I decided to experiment with my laptop instead. This is a 4-year-old Compaq Presario 2811 EA, a 1,6GHz pentium-m, with 776Mb RAM. I have fitted both cards on a 4-slot Magma PCMCIA chassis, and connected it to the laptop. Now, even though I get a lower MV count (6 at most), not only am I able to load any project from the other system, including STS volumes and large mixers, but I can also have the card running at 96KHz! I've had a 12 voice pro-12 playing @ 96k with just a bit over 50% DSP load! Apparently, I'm getting a much better Scope performance on the laptop!

My projects usually include a couple of VSTs (Absynth and Tera),8-10 stereo audio tracks in Ableton, with a few insert fx, all going to 3 ASIO outs, then mixed into a STM1632, together with the STS5000 and other cw synths, which are triggered live or from Ableton.

All this is working (almost perfectly) at 44.1Khz, 12 ms. latency, and I am impressed. I do get 90%+ CPU usage, and the graphics are really slow. So, I believe that, in order to handle the audio tracks and the VSTis better, and get an overall perfect performance, I will need a faster CPU, some more RAM, and a better GPU. It's time for a new laptop.

And that's where I need some help. I have seen laptops featuring dual-core CPUs and PCI-E graphics- does anybody have any experience with these machines and Scope-Magma cards? My dual-core PCI-E desktop doesn't seem to work well with scope, but I don't know if it's the same for laptops. Should I go for a single core Pentium m740 instead? Or Dual-core without PCI-E? Does anyone know of a proven working combination of scope, Magma and Laptop? I'm enjoying my current configuration, but could really do with a faster VST system. Are there any known modern laptops that won't work with Scope/Magma?

I thank you all for your time, and wish you all the best!

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 5:33 am

Hi, I was told recently that 14/15 dsp Scope cards don't support 96kHz at all, although I've not confirmed it. Maybe that's innacurate though if you have it working. Does your 14 dsp card have an I/O plate or is it an SRB (booster card)?

For info on a recent successfull Scope/magma/laptop combo, run a forum search for 'posts/replies' including 'magma' by author 'legros'.

Tau · Post by **Tau** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 6:50 am

Hi! Thanks for the reply. My card is a Scope Professional, with the Z-link IO plate (the other one is a Scope project). I never managed to get it working @ 96k before I plugged it into the laptop, but now it does...

I also did a search on the forum, but it seems that most laptops discussed are a bit on the old side... For what I see, my Compaq behaves pretty well, all I needed was a little bit more horsepower for VST, but without losing Scope performance!

I saw that Vaio/Magma result on the MV thread, but it seems that most vaios now are dual-core/PCI-E, or have shared memory graphics... The only ones looking good to me are the top of the range BX -Hi-res screens, 128 Graphics, 2,0 GHz CPU- but they cost a lot, especially at the risk of not working well with Magma (can't find what cardbus controller it has)...

Maybe I'll just try to find a faster CPU for my laptop... I already swapped its motherboard once, so it should be no problem...

But if anyone has any recent information on this, please let me know!

All the best,

T

bill3107 · Post by **bill3107** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 11:41 pm

a friend of mine (does not speak english so... not present on this forum) uses for gig recording and for his studio a DELL laptop with a magma that run 2 creamware cards (15 dsp+6dsp). As he explained recently, everything is perfect but he needs to be careful when using the P100/I100 reverb (he uses to load only one sonic reverb)from sonictimeworks as this reverb consumes - exceptionnaly - a huge bandwidth. And as we know, magma+laptop option does not give as much bandwidth than "traditional" computers. Just to say that DELL laptops are doing the job when it comes to magma+creamware+laptop system...

Jo

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 12:47 am

I saw that Vaio/Magma result on the MV thread, but it seems that most vaios now are dual-core/PCI-E

that's right, i picked mine up while the duos where just out and had serious thoughts about it. chosing the best magma/laptop/scope combination is like playing poker. marcuspocus has got a hp solution that can load 9 MVs before the dsps max out (a luna 2 and a pulsar 2) mine goes up to 13 MVs before asking for a registration (vaio VGN-A617B with 2 pulsar 2) and some dell laptops seem to perform well.

If you can get your magma case to the store and try a couple of solutions before buying, that would be best..

good luck

Tau · Post by **Tau** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 2:27 pm

Well, after doing a lot of thinking, I decided not to buy a new laptop just now... Besides, single-core machines are getting more expensive than dual-cores these days, so there must be something not quite right yet (a similar 17" vaio would cost €2600 with a 2GHz centrino, but €1500 with a 1,6 Dual-core? Suspicious...) And with latest machines coming without PCMCIA... a good laptop scope is going to be hard to find!

I decided to use my DAW for live work. It's fast and stable for audio, and hopefully will survive a couple of gigs. I do have a problem with heating, so I bought the Magma PCI controller, to put the scopes outside, but that was really disappointing: 4 MVs on 21 DSPs...

So here are my choices now: DAW and Magma - very good audio/VST, very low Scope performance; DAW with scopes in - very good vst and audio, good scope, but very hot, sometimes crashes; Laptop and Magma -limited audio/VST, decent scope performance...

If I have time to do some remixing, maybe I can make my projects more containable, so that the laptop can cope... that would be more sensible, I guess.

Maybe there could be a topic about what people do to their tracks to perform live... I mean, I'm not a real instrumentalist, I play a little keys and bass, and build tracks in my studio. This is my first live-act solo, and I wouldn't like to just go there and press play on the computer a few times, and pretend I'm actually playing. But to do all the synthesis live is quite overwhelming, as to the amount of equipment one would have to take. So I settled on a computer running Ableton and Scope, a very small Edirol 2-octave keyboard, a Waveidea bs3x controller, faderfox LX module, Radikal SAC-2K, and my trustworthy Korg Prophecy. If I use the laptop, I can fit these in three cases, that 2 people can carry. If I use the DAW, I'll have to bring a truck.

But I'll get there

Well thanks for all your answers, this is getting a little OT, but please, if you have or know of a laptop that works extremely well with scope (or extremely bad, for that matter), please let me and the rest of planet Z know!

Peace!

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 6:17 pm

heres an idea for a DIY project

http://www.ipctechnology.com/

sit down with a pen and some paper

or send them a mail.

Tau · Post by **Tau** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 3:39 am

Wow, that's a nice-looking machine...

Janni · Post by **Janni** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 7:16 am

Indeed!

Looks really cool!
Cheers,
Jan

PS: Same Problem here: HEATING
But I bought a 19" Rack, now there is space for cooling, but it´s too big and heavy to carry it alone

_________________
http://www.glitzergewitter.de

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Janni on 2006-07-21 08:17 ]</font>

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 8:18 am

imho the 'lunchbox-style' machines in Piddy's link are the way to go. They may even sell you the box and you can apply a micro atx board of choice.

cheers, Tom

Tau · Post by **Tau** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:15 am

I says there than it can use an ATX board, which means my own Asus could fit... Not sure if they sell just the case, but the USA is a long way to order stuff I could really use right now!! Besides, there's always customs!

But Piddi's idea "get a pen and paper" is another important part of this "link"... These boxes are quite expensive, and that case looks just like an old guitar combo I have lying around...

Thanks for the tip!

Cheers,

T

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:44 am

yes, as 'industrial items' they are supposed to be quite expensive. Those customers usually write them of the tax balance, so price doesn't matter as much as in private aquisitions.
But these items show up on eBay quite frequently (under the label industrial, portable or luggable PC).

I've recently seen an Intel BX equipped one (perfect PCI performance) selling for 160 Euro, though the display probably didn't match todays standards.

The embedded models with integrated touch sensitive display might be even better for live usage - if someone would implement a method (in the GUI lib) to nail the devices to a fixed position on screen...
you want to move a slider but instead drag the damn surface around

(it's even annoying with a mouse - my only true complaint about SFP, but one can't have all...)

cheers, Tom