Ableton Forum

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 6:10 pm

what are you going to get, mbreaks??? The sweetwater???

Ryan

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 5:03 am

Anonymous wrote:what are you going to get, mbreaks??? The sweetwater???

Ryan

Here's the short answer: Alas, no. Either a Eurocom Impressa D470V or Acer Travelmate 250PE.

Here's the long answer: Feel free to ignore.

Despite offering what appears to be a good product, the Sweetwater music laptops aren't really worth it due to my situation. Being in Canada, I would end up paying full tax, provincial and federal on the computer, which costs $2700 US. With the exchange rate added too, that pushes the costs into the "I might as well get one of those damn expensive PCs anyways" range.

I won't settle for less than a gig of RAM. I used that much in my old powerbook, and since Live 3, have been launching breakbeats, cuts and fills from legato mode in Ram, and I love it - I wouldn't be a good breaks guy if I couldn't do that, now could I?

Anyways, I am lucky enough to have some serious PC gurus for friends who can tweak the BIOS and strip down XP for me, so I don't have to pay a Music PC specialty company for their "expert installation" service. The plan is to have a machine that:

1. NEVER TOUCHES THE INTERNET. period.

2. ONLY RUNS SIX APPLICATIONS (not including SAFE VSTs and VST instruments): Live 3.0, wavelab, Reason, Final Scratch 1.5, Fruityloops and Cubase SX 1.02. Ok, seven - I might need the calculator maybe... but I won't even get office XP, or explorer.

3. IS PORTABLE ENOUGH TO BE TAKEN ON A BICYCLE (loaded in a backpack I guess, or in a gig bag with my remote 25)

4. OUTPERFORMS THE MAC G4 POWERBOOK 1.33 MHZ I CAN'T AFFORD.

5. IS POWERFUL ENOUGH TO REPLACE THE FOLLOWING: Synth (with vocoder) drum machine, sampler, mixer, mastering processor; all at once.

6. HAS THE FOLLOWING: 1x PCMCIA slot, 1x 6-pin firewire port, 1x CDRW internal, 2x USB cables.

So, number one requires a second computer. done, the boss (I mean loving female cohabitant) has one for that. That takes care of all the apps that aren't covered in number two.

number three limits me to either laptops, or shuttles (xpcs) with LCD monitors. The rackmount option is out, I had an epiphany and I am getting rid of all my rack gear. The laptop's advantage over a seperate LCD, mouse and keyboard is ease of set up - less cabling to worry about at a gig. Also, the PC must come from Canada, and preferably out of Province, so there's no customs fees or Quebec sales tax. Hence, no Sweetwater PC.

Lastly, points 4, 5 and 6: If I am going with a power machine to take the whole set over, then it's gonna be a badass. 2.8 GHz P4 with HT and a Meg of L2 cache. Yah, I know Live doesn't support HT, but I have been assured by some people I trust that it will help with running VSTis, Live, Fruityloops and particularly Finalscratch 1.5 (now out for XP!!! yes!!!) all at once. Oh, and for this, a 17" screen to boot.

How am I gonna pay for it? Up for sale soon on ebay will be a Micro Q, Korg MS2000, Access Virus, Numark PPD9000 mixer, some electrix effects, two patchbays, and more. Oh yeah, and the Mac powerboook. I already just got rid of the Drawmer DC2476 mastering processor for $1250 US. F*ck it, I'm goin software baby, but I'm replacing a LOT of gear to finance it. Believe me, I came with an inch of going for the AMD Athlon, but figured if Ableton won't optimize for the G4, they're probably not going to put out a 64 bit version of Live!

So, the decision was to buy from a canadian PC retailer online, www.directpc.ca. They sell fairly no frills stuff but then again, I am assuming that any computer I buy is only going to last so long before I upgrade it - therefore, since they depreciate so quickly and I will constantly be a mere one or two steps behind the "must have" technology curve, I plan to dump PCs annually. Since these machines are cheap compared to their specifications, but come with a two year warranty, hey - resale value shouldn't be too bad, and they should last at least one year.

The only other thought I had was the Acer travelmate 250PE. It's a P4 Tablet PC, the only one I am aware of in existance. I like the idea of touching the Live interface on the screen. I know you can only touch one thing at a time, but for launching clips with a 2 or 4 bar global quantization, it shouldn't be too much of a problem... I just haven't found any Canadian retailers for them yet. If I don't find one by Friday, it's a EUROCOM Impressa D470V from Directpc.ca...

montrealbreaks · Post by **montrealbreaks** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 5:07 am

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 5:55 am

sounds like a well thought out plan. fwiw, I have tons of graphic, CAD. and music software on my pc laptop that I'm on the net with all the time (with norton anit-virus), and haven't experienced any problems related to having lots of apps and internet. I used xp tuning tips at www.musicxp.net, and got great info on the ins and outs of all background processes (and which you can safely tun off) at www.blackviper.com.

Sure, its safer to keep it simple, but just wanted to say I've had one year plus with no probs related to net or tons of program apps.

Ryan

Mbazzy · Post by **Mbazzy** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 8:01 am

Montreal,

Also have a look at this for trimming purposes : http://www.litepc.com/index.html

[ Only heard good things about it around musicians - always forget myself to do it .. ]