Yet another laptop and soundcard live setup thread.

[Chriszat]

Greetings everyone,



First of all: I’m a 24 year old French musician that has been making music on computers for more than 8 years now. Hello world! Here is my first post on the forum, even though I’ve been reading it for some time. I hope you won’t mind me asking directly for help and advice – I know it’s quite impolite, but I really need you guys.

I’ve been doing some research regarding which laptop and soundcard I should purchase, I’ve been asking musician friends and I’ve been reading a lot of similar threads on this forum but my mind is still not clear and I’d love to have the opportunity to expose my own situation.

Okay. I have a project which is basically: vocals / cello / laptop (maybe I’ll have a synth too). I’ll play my music via the laptop and the great Ableton Live, the singer will sing with, most probably, her own hardware effects (reverb, delay) and the cellist will also play with its own hardware effects (loops, disto)… BUT, occasionally, since we’ll experiment, the cellist might go through my laptop so I can tweak his sound on my own in a particular way. The singer might too. Maybe the two of them at the same time… and this might include VSTs. Let me be clear: this special tweaking could only happen through my laptop, it could not be replaced by hardware.

This has CPU and latency consequences that make the choice of the laptop and soundcard very important (and difficult, especially because I have a limited budget, of course).

I’ve been observing that most “laptoped” live performers tend to use a Macbook. Is it just a trend, or are there some real advantages in purchasing Apple products for this? Yes, sorry, this must have been discussed over a thousand times. I know the question is sensitive and I’ve been reading that both PCs and Macs have the whole pros and cons package, but I would be pleased to read your opinion on this regarding my situation anyway. (Brace yourselves, infinite fights are coming!)

From what I’ve been reading, a quad-core, 8GB of RAM, a SSD hard drive and a blowjob would be paradise city. Yes, I know, this is a lot but… How much would it cost? (Without the blowjob I mean)
The live acts would be its only use, although depending of my level of nomadism and habits it could become, idealistically, my main day-to-day producing machine (VSTs, sometimes 60-tracks projects) as well as my live instrument. But nothing else, I promise. I promise!!

The most important points: maximum stability and MINIMUM latency (which will mostly have to do with the interface I guess, but still).

Let’s have an example of a midrange machine: a friend is selling a Macbook Pro 13”, bought in September 2011, Core i5 2.3Ghz, 8Go DDR3, regular hard drive (not SSD) and an AppleCare warranty until sept. 2014 for 1000€ (1300$). We are far from the quad-core, it’s not even i7 but… would that do the trick? The 8GB of RAM are there at least, and I could add a SSD…

Well, all in all… what would YOU choose?

Ok, let’s focus on the soundcard now. I’ve been reading those names on here: Focusrite Saffire PRO 24, Mackie 1402-vlz3… or MOTU and RME that seems the best choice regarding low latency. Which model? Regarding what I’m doing, what would you advise?
Also, from what I’ve been reading here, I know some of you do their own sound mixing in case of the sound guy is not that good or doesn’t care that much about you (that happens), and just hand out a couple of cables. I might want to do that occasionally, depending of the venue, so it should be included in the whole choice.

Well, that’s it for now I think; I truly hope you’ll find time to discuss this.


Regards,
Chris from Paris

[Faldoe]

Hey Chris,

I'm in the same boat as you, hope you figure it out. I have a similar thread here where a few people have chimed in and offered their opinions...

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176617

[brianyeeaahh]

i use the novation nio. it's cheap probably 150, small and i've been using the same unit to perform and dj for about 1.5 yrs and no problems with it. 2 inputs, rca and xlr/1/4 inch, 2 sets of rca outputs. though i know they were not making it for a second, but i think it's back

[Chriszat]

Hey Faldoe,

Thanks, been looking at this thread actually, quite interesting. I guess the RME Fireface 400 would be the best choice but, my god, it's expensive (800€) - I mean regarding my budget, because the price is fair for what it is.

That being said, I found it second hand for 550€ so, after all, why not... or I could get a MOTU Ultralite, which is around 500€ or 250€ second hand and resell it later when I have more money and experience to "deserve" to use such an interface.

But this doesn't fix the main laptop problem, which is actually what troubles me the most !


brianyeeaahh : seems nice but I have a similar interface now and need something a little bit stronger. Thanks for your input though.

[pepezabala]

macbook and motu ultralite here, was going well but since a couple of months I get sudden silence, seems that the firewire port of my macbook is kaputt. I had latency of 14ms more or less which is OK, but if you do looping this can somehow add up with each layer and suck.

you probably want to get a quadcore if you buy a new laptop nowadays. the used one you described seems OK, but in a couple of months you will find that you have a machine that is from the past, and hate yourself for buying it each time you come across the limitations (which you can reach easily by using certain plug ins or instruments. always. but a quadcore has probably twice as much power as a dualcore i5).

so either you save for a new macbook pro or you get a similar windows machine and do all the tweaks necessary for audio use. many people say that this is not any worse than working with osx, but maybe a bit more tweaking required.

[chris vine]

I love my Fireface 400 - it was one of the best investments I have made.

But, think about this (as I have have been): Firewire is basically being phased out on Laptops. I am a PC user and will at some point have to upgrade hardware to 64 bit, lots more RAM quad core etc - and now express card slots are also on the way out, so am worried that the FF400 is eventually going to be redundant too.

So if there is no way around this, you might want to look at a USB or Thunderbolt (do they exist yet?) audio interface.

RME = good.
Macs = nice hardware, but too expensive and as someone in a recent post said on here to some else who was moving over to MAc from PC: "your third party plugs won't migrate though, so prepare yr anus" LOL on that.

[Chriszat]

pepezabala, yeah that's pretty much what I was fearing. The quadcore seems to be the only smart investment now, buying an i5 will only push the issue away for a few months, especially if I start using it as my main producing device.

I saw a quadcore MPB 15" on the refurb, 1500€, but with the upgrade to 8GB of RAM, maybe the SSD, and the insurrance... I'm gonna have to eat rice for the rest of my life. Good thing I went vegan... I'll have to enter in contact with people that actually chose to pull their act with a PC and hear a little bit more about this whole tweaking action.


Fellow chris, what you say is interesting. Didn't considered the phasing out of the Firewire at all... Mmmh mhmm. Will look it up.

Regarding the whole PCtoMac VSTs problem, ahah yeah I saw that post too. Made me laugh. I just though that some equivalent VSTs can exist and do the same as the ones I used on PC, this will just need some work on my former tracks. Thought this is a good point... But, hey, isn't the problem the same regarding the 32bits to 64bits switch ? I heard that a lot of VSTs doesn't work on 64bits, which means that this is going to be a hard time for a lot of anuses all around the world.


Thanks to you two.

[chris vine]

yeah the 32 to 64 bit vortex is another orifice spinner probably
particularly if your fave vintage (;-P) VST got discontinued back in the 200x etc

[Faldoe]

I love my Fireface 400 - it was one of the best investments I have made.

But, think about this (as I have have been): Firewire is basically being phased out on Laptops. I am a PC user and will at some point have to upgrade hardware to 64 bit, lots more RAM quad core etc - and now express card slots are also on the way out, so am worried that the FF400 is eventually going to be redundant too.

So if there is no way around this, you might want to look at a USB or Thunderbolt (do they exist yet?) audio interface.

RME = good.
Macs = nice hardware, but too expensive and as someone in a recent post said on here to some else who was moving over to MAc from PC: "your third party plugs won't migrate though, so prepare yr anus" LOL on that.

macbook and motu ultralite here, was going well but since a couple of months I get sudden silence, seems that the firewire port of my macbook is kaputt. I had latency of 14ms more or less which is OK, but if you do looping this can somehow add up with each layer and suck.

you probably want to get a quadcore if you buy a new laptop nowadays. the used one you described seems OK, but in a couple of months you will find that you have a machine that is from the past, and hate yourself for buying it each time you come across the limitations (which you can reach easily by using certain plug ins or instruments. always. but a quadcore has probably twice as much power as a dualcore i5).

so either you save for a new macbook pro or you get a similar windows machine and do all the tweaks necessary for audio use. many people say that this is not any worse than working with osx, but maybe a bit more tweaking required.

so are you saying that a MBPro with i7 and 8gb of ram will not suffice

[Chriszat]

Good question. Anyone ?

[chris vine]

mbp i7 and 8gig ram should be fine for anything

[Faldoe]

I'm encountering all kinds of confusion. In addition to whats in this thread, also whether firewire 400 is faster or better than usb. USB 2.0 can hit 480mbs but not constantly whereas firewire can do a constant 400mbs

Are there true firewire 800 interfaces available? If so, do they all cost an arm and a leg? Is the RME Fireface 800 firewire 800 or just 400 but with more features than the 400?