Portable setup

[brycarey]

New to forum so if this has been addressed, sorry. I need to establish a portable system to compliment my studio. My setup includes the 828mkII and I am using Sonar on Windows XP Pro. What is the minimum laptop speed and features etc. as well as an xternal firewire drive to transfer recorded files back at the studio. Any suggestions/thoughts would be appreciated.

[westla]

Not sure how much info you'll get here. This is mainly a Mac and MOTU forum. My advice ditch the PC and get a Mac.

[brycarey]

I new someone would say that. Frankly I have way too much invested on the pc platform to go mac, so I am just looking for the best solution on the pc platform.

[westla]

I was (kinda) just kidding. I understand about arleady being so invested in a PC setup.

[chrispick]

I see the occasion Sonar user popping up on this forum from time to time. If you're patient, you'll probably be able to cull some PC user feedback.

My short, marginally-informed advice: I think most PC laptops available for sale today should be able to handle the mkII so long as you supply it with a healthy chunk of RAM (I'd say 1GB minimum) and output your audio to an external firewire. Someone else will likely have better, more specific recommendations.

BTW: I used Sonar on a friend's project a few months back. That app's really grown.

<small>[ June 16, 2005, 01:57 PM: Message edited by: heavypick ]</small>

[builder]

It kinda depends on the workload. How many tracks are you talking, effects?, VI's?

Not knowing any of these, I would think that anything over say 1.3 GHZ with 1GB ram + and a 7200rpm harddrive would be able to get you to record 10 tracks( 48k, 24bit) at a time (which is all the 828 can do without the ADAT or Toslinks), though it could probably hand more.

I have done 10 tracks 48k, 24bit with no problem on my 1.5GHZ powerbook with an 828mkii

Good Luck

[brycarey]

I would probably at the most need 16 tracks for most live applications. Any processing would be done on my main computer setup in the studio so I wouldn't be adding any effects etc. with the laptop.

[RobTalbert]

This is not directly on your topic, but I echo what WestLA said -- get a MAC. I am a long-time PC user and a technologist. I did several projects using PC and external gear in the 90's. After being away from the scene for a few years, I decided to update my studio at the beginning of this year. On the advice of some long-time MAC users I took the plunge, sold off just about everything I had purchased in the 90's on eBay and bought a MAC and a Traveler. It has been better than I had hoped - now I focus my time on music and production values, and not on solving integration and technical problems.

[Studio615]

If you are staying with the pc, then get a laptop with at least a gig of ram, the fastes internal drive you can, and at least a 2.6ghz pentium 4 or above processor. If you go with amd, get the fastest one you can. Get internal usb 2.0, and also get a pcmcia firewire card, don't use the 4 pin firewire in most notebooks. Don't go with a firewire hard drive either, the amount of data that the 828mkII puts on the bus is too much, there is no room for the data for the audio drive. Usb 2.0 with a 7200rpm drive works really well. Before I got a mac, I ran sonar 3 with a sony p4 2.8ghz laptop with 768mb of ram, and a 5400 rpm internal drive. It ran ok, but the xp part of the equation made me switch to mac. It is just too unstable, and at the worst possible time I had problems during recording sessions. If you can keep it running, it will be a great daw. Don't go below 768mb of ram, the more the better. You should realistically get about 40or 50 tracks going with the setup I described, that is what I got with a few plugins here or there. I have to tell you, Motu will give you DP for half price if you buy the competetive crossgrade, you just send them the front page of the sonar manual. It should cost you about $400. I have never been happier with my mac, it is absolutely 100% reliable. No problems whatso ever. Good luck.

<small>[ June 29, 2005, 08:11 AM: Message edited by: Studio615 ]</small>

[barnee]

be careful with the PC laptop...

If you choose a Windaws plateform, be aware that the leptop need Texas Instrument or Intel Chipset controller for the Firewire.

I'm looking for a combination of laptop+soundcard for months now.
The result is that I'm planning to buy a Powerbook G4 1,5Ghz 15" with 1Go Ram, and will probably upgrade the stuff with an external hard drive (7200).
And the soundcard will be the Motu Traveler.

I also have a desktop computer that is a PC.
I have a lot of plug ins on (that wont be on the mac).
What I expect to do with the mac+Traveler is to record sessions or concerts with 8 to 16 tracks...without any effects on it during the recording phase.
Then maybe I will use the Powerbook to mix and produce the sound.
But I think I might transfer the wav files to my PC then produce the songs (in case of 'studio' recordings) on it.
It depends on the power of the mac with the music software on it.

[phillyduke]

motu 828 mk2, dell inspiron 9200 laptop (PM1., Cubase SX 3.2.022, Iomega 7200 rpm 120 GB FW drive, Behringer ADA 8000 adat interface. Just last week recorded 16tracks at a local music venue. ran 2 snakes out the D/o's of the Midas board into the 8 analogue in's (with sensitivity set to +4--pro)of the Motu and the 8 analogue ins of the Behringer. Light pipe in and out between motu and behringer ( Behr set to slave)recorded at 24 bit and 44.1. maxed out latency in cubase ASIO driver to reduce overall system strain. went for 2 hours without a problem. used the stock dell FW port with the Iomega drive chained to the Motu......Duke