There are many wise and experienced people on this forum but I sometimes think the replies can be too complex. It is perfectly possible to take an off-the-shelf laptop, a USB or firewire separate audio/midi module and make music. I have a 2 year old Compaq Evo N800V (Win 2k) and an M-Audio Audiophile USB. I’ve done nothing to specially configure the laptop because it’s not mine, it belongs to my employer. Everything worked fine on installation. N-Track is stable. I am delighted with the audio quality. I have successfully recorded up to 12 stereo audio tracks, with plug-ins running I am still below 60% processor capacity. So why make life unnecessarily complicated? 
| Quote (TusterBuster @ Nov. 04 2004,04:06) |
| It is perfectly possible to take an off-the-shelf laptop, a USB or firewire separate audio/midi module and make music. ... I've done nothing to specially configure the laptop ... N-Track is stable. I am delighted with the audio quality... So why make life unnecessarily complicated?
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That's more or less what I did. Went to a shop, picked a laptop I could afford, ordered an interface, found that I didn't like it, got it back, got another one, plugged it in and started recording.
Ok, there was some minor tweaks with drivers and buffer settings, but basically system started working quite effortlessly.
However, some interfaces don't like certain chipsets etc. Therefore my adwise is: do not buy any interface to your computer without an option to return it if your computer doesn't work with it. Without trying it there's no way of knowing it will work.
Are you using V.4, or what version is so stable for you? I just got a new daw so that’s why I’m asking… low memory must have caused problems in my previous daw (192MB on XP) so it kept crashing N.
I use V.4 and I haven’t encountered crashes, except one minor thing: I seem to have some plugins for Video editing program (Pinnacle) and they are listed as effects in n-track too. If I accidentally choose them the program crashes - which is understandable.
I don’t do midi etc. Strict old school audio.
Hi,
Has anybody bought one of these DAWin 6400’s?
DAWin 6400
17" LCD screen, 64-bit, et cetera. Seems like a reasonable price. N-track is a 32-bit program. Any known problems with AMD or 64-bit and n-track? Is it quiet enough to put in the same room where you’re recording voice? One complaint I have is it seems to be Firewire 400 (ie, a 4-pin 1394a) and not 800 (9-pin 1394b).
Paul
I’m running N with AMD Athlon 64. No problems so far, at least ones related to the processor. And you can’t find even a 6-pin firewire interface from pc-laptops, all 4-pin. This is because of some conspiracy that microsoft wants to support usb 2.0 standard. Of course there are pcmcia-adapters that make firewire available to any laptop…
I’ve found the omnistudio to be a real nice unit for the moderate recording musician. Pristine sound and very flexible configuration wise. I’ve had no bandwidth issues yet…
Cruiser