Laptops vs. desktops

[Nick the Zombie]

I switched over to exclusively using laptops a few years ago and haven't regretted the decision a bit. I rarely run into issues with not having enough horsepower, and when that does happen the freezing functions of Live and Logic are both more than sufficient to keep me going. Bottom line is that portability is a must for me since the environment I'm writing in is pretty important. Nothing like being able to pick up and go to my favorite coffee shop or the park to write.

[leedsquietman]

you can get the UAD Expander box with firewire like the Duende Mini or Liquid Mix etc. This is not as many plugins as using 2 or 3 PCI(e) cards but offers some flexibility, especially if you freeze/flatten etc. Besides, I'm more than happy with my Sonalksis Essential mkII bundle which I consider in the same quality range as UAD - they don't emulate specific vintage hardware like UAD, but with the right settings, can do similar things and sound great.

[creature]

When I am working on music I generally tend to use my desktop (quad core beastie). When I am working on sample libraries I normally work on my laptop in the lounge as I wont be pushing the machine as hard generally. My laptop is quite old though, single core jobby, but works fine for what I use it for.

[philBass]

what firewire chipset is the Lenovo running ? Look in Control Panel Device Manager IEEE1394 - it is probably Ricoh, Via, Agere or O2, or 'generic' - if it is TI that explains why it's running better, but a TI chipset runs better than any of the ones mentioned before - significantly better in some cases.

It's a Ricoh. Seems to work okay. I think my problem is the plugs are drawing too much CPU.

[philBass]

Based on what I'm reading in these posts it seems like I should be getting better performance. Can somebody give me some tips on how to test my system performance with Live to determine where I'm coming up short?

Thanks,
Phil

[nebulae]

^ do the performance test. Also, if your OS is WinXP, optimize it for audio using MusicXP.net.

[leedsquietman]

Seriously, RICOH is a really poor FW chipset and even though your EchoFire is working, it would probably work much better under a TI chipset - problem - you can't really replace this because it's likely that your whole PCI Expresscard/Firewire/SD card etc is on one integrated circuit, so even if you bought an external expresscard with a TI firewire chipset, you may only get negligible benefit.

Example - my 5 year old Dell Inspiron laptop, pentium 4, 3.2 Ghz single core with FW chipset could stream 70 tracks with plugins *some tracks frozen to save frying the CPU* no problems. The TI chipset coped with my Alesis IO14 no probs.

My Core2Duo under the internal soundcard with ASIO4ALL can do that and more because of it's processing power. However, the same FW interface with the inbuilt RICOH chipset needs more latency, then when you get to about 12 audio tracks it starts to break up, stereo goes to crap and some tracks come in mono, others don't come at all. It's a real PITA. BUt given that there are not many good USB2 interfaces out there, and given I record bands sometimes, so 2 XLR/combi ports doesn't cut it, I have to work around this by creating different versions of the project, submixing some so I can add more tracks, and then at the end, import all the extra tracks into the final master project and switch to the internal card with ASIO4ALL to mix, because that can handle the load with no issues. This scenario also makes it difficult to use stuff like the Presonus interface mentioned by SubFunk, because Presonus will not support anything except TI and VIA (and Agere on a Mac only) chipsets - the interfac might be great, but when it's bottlenecked by a cheap circuit then the results will be similar to the Alesis and possibly worse (Alesis will still try and help you with a RICOH chipset, although they recommend against it).

[Nick the Zombie]

Seriously, RICOH is a really poor FW chipset and even though your EchoFire is working, it would probably work much better under a TI chipset - problem - you can't really replace this because it's likely that your whole PCI Expresscard/Firewire/SD card etc is on one integrated circuit, so even if you bought an external expresscard with a TI firewire chipset, you may only get negligible benefit.

Example - my 5 year old Dell Inspiron laptop, pentium 4, 3.2 Ghz single core with FW chipset could stream 70 tracks with plugins *some tracks frozen to save frying the CPU* no problems. The TI chipset coped with my Alesis IO14 no probs.

My Core2Duo under the internal soundcard with ASIO4ALL can do that and more because of it's processing power. However, the same FW interface with the inbuilt RICOH chipset needs more latency, then when you get to about 12 audio tracks it starts to break up, stereo goes to crap and some tracks come in mono, others don't come at all. It's a real PITA. BUt given that there are not many good USB2 interfaces out there, and given I record bands sometimes, so 2 XLR/combi ports doesn't cut it, I have to work around this by creating different versions of the project, submixing some so I can add more tracks, and then at the end, import all the extra tracks into the final master project and switch to the internal card with ASIO4ALL to mix, because that can handle the load with no issues. This scenario also makes it difficult to use stuff like the Presonus interface mentioned by SubFunk, because Presonus will not support anything except TI and VIA (and Agere on a Mac only) chipsets - the interfac might be great, but when it's bottlenecked by a cheap circuit then the results will be similar to the Alesis and possibly worse (Alesis will still try and help you with a RICOH chipset, although they recommend against it).

This whole post was an education for me as I've never thought much about FW chipset problems. I remember reading some complaints about Apple switching to cheaper FW implementations over the last couple generations of Macbooks, but didn't really get into the gory details of how it all worked. Thanks for the practical explanation here.

- Nick

[philBass]

Seriously, RICOH is a really poor FW chipset and even though your EchoFire is working, it would probably work much better under a TI chipset - problem - you can't really replace this because it's likely that your whole PCI Expresscard/Firewire/SD card etc is on one integrated circuit, so even if you bought an external expresscard with a TI firewire chipset, you may only get negligible benefit.

I tried out a SIIG PCIMCIA card that has the TI chipset and it seems like the performance is about the same, maybe slightly better, which would seem to confirm your thoughts on the topic. Too bad these laptop manufacturers choose to cheap out on the Firewire support...makes compatibility a real pain. I'd love to go to Mac, where it seems these issues are more worked out but $$$$ prevents that. A honkin' large Windows desktop with a PCI interface might be the medicine...probably will wait 'til Windows 7 comes out.

Thanks.

[adventurepants_]

This scenario also makes it difficult to use stuff like the Presonus interface mentioned by SubFunk, because Presonus will not support anything except TI and VIA (and Agere on a Mac only) chipsets - the interfac might be great, but when it's bottlenecked by a cheap circuit then the results will be similar to the Alesis and possibly worse (Alesis will still try and help you with a RICOH chipset, although they recommend against it).

Have you got a link/reference for this with official info from Presonus Leeds?

[leedsquietman]

http://www.presonus.com/media/pdf/hardw ... bility.pdf

Although they seem to have revised this document since I last looked because they don't expressly condemn ricoh chipsets anymore, although they do condemn NEC chipsets.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/mes ... ead.id=788 this guy makes a reference to presonus advising him to avoid ricoh chipsets.

[adventurepants_]

http://www.presonus.com/media/pdf/hardw ... bility.pdf

Although they seem to have revised this document since I last looked because they don't expressly condemn ricoh chipsets anymore, although they do condemn NEC chipsets.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/mes ... ead.id=788 this guy makes a reference to presonus advising him to avoid ricoh chipsets.

Presonus are not saying at all that their gear will not work with other chipsets (except NEC, we hates itsss) , only that they have tested/approved the Agere/TI/VIA ones. Its also important to note that there are several different TI chipsets and they have only approved one specific revision.

Ironically i get about the same latency under Win7 with my firebox on a dell lappie that has Ricoh, that i do under Win7 on a desktop that has a TI PCIe card. XP performance on the firebox on the desktop is much better. That said, a user does need to understand the nature of shared chipset resources on laptops, and I only get decent latency on the lappie after disabling all other devices on the shared controllers (ie DVD,Wifi,BT,Card reader).

But, Presonus do not officially support win7, and probably never will write new improved drivers for 7 for the older interfaces.

[leedsquietman]

Like I said before, This document has been revised because it did include Ricoh and O2 chipsets as being unsupported. Perhaps the lawyer saw this and didn't want to risk litigation, or perhaps RICOH themselves demanded it be removed, but it formerly advised against RICOH and 02.

On their forums, they also discourage usage of the Ricoh chipset and that is not just my opinion. Look at the KVR and gearslutz forums and you will find this is a standard problem. I also have a Dell XPS with a Ricoh chipset and it definately doesn't not work as compatibly with my firewire card (which is not Presonus). Not just a bit, but A LOT of difference. I'm absolutely over the moon that Adventurepants' Presonus interface works OK on his RICOH chipset, and doesn't have the endless frustration I'm going through.

http://www.podcomplex.com/blog/is-a-ti- ... -audio-pc/

From the Focusrite tech support website
FIREWIRE CARDS
If you have been through all the above steps and are still experiencing dropouts/connection problems with your Saffire regardless of buffer size or what software you have running then the problem may be down to the Firewire controller or port on your laptop. If the FW ACTIVE and/or LOCKED LEDs on the front of the unit keep flashing this is another sign that there may be an incompatibility with the firewire card.

At this stage, it is worth considering the purchase of a Firewire Express card (or PCMCIA). We recommend Firewire 400 only cards from a known brand dealer such as Belkin, LaCie or SIIG. Avoid Firewire 400/800 and Firewire/USB combo cards and try to ensure that your card has a Texas Instruments or VIA chipset.


I have never heard anything bad about any specific TI firewire chipset, and certainly none of the manufacturers websites I visited said we recommend TI chipsets but avoid the xyz TI chipset. I visited RME, Presonus, TC Electronic, Echo (who co-developed the last TI FW chipset), MOTU and Focusrite.

ANother post from the Presonus Forum, where a MODERATOR puts down the RICOH chipset.
http://forums.presonus.com/showthread.php?t=7183

Need I go on - because you know I will if I have to

[adventurepants_]

Like I said before, This document has been revised because it did include Ricoh and O2 chipsets as being unsupported. Perhaps the lawyer saw this and didn't want to risk litigation, or perhaps RICOH themselves demanded it be removed, but it formerly advised against RICOH and 02.

On their forums, they also discourage usage of the Ricoh chipset and that is not just my opinion. Look at the KVR and gearslutz forums and you will find this is a standard problem. I also have a Dell XPS with a Ricoh chipset and it definately doesn't not work as compatibly with my firewire card (which is not Presonus). Not just a bit, but A LOT of difference. I'm absolutely over the moon that Adventurepants' Presonus interface works OK on his RICOH chipset, and doesn't have the endless frustration I'm going through.

You dont need to convince me of anything, I do this for a living. Benchmarking, troubleshooting and methodical testing is second nature to me, and it took me a long time and a lot of tweaking to get the Firebox playing nice with the Ricoh chipset (including several controller drivers from other motherboards). When I started down the Ricoh journey the Firebox was clicking and popping, and rebooting itself constantly. I look at it as a challenge and I like to make broken things work if at all possible.

The opinion of a moderator on the Presonus board means nothing, especially when he is in sales, and not even working in IT for Dom's sake. Much of the advice that tech support gives out has nothing to do with the technical capability of the device, but what they are prepared to support publicly to keep support costs down. They want to restrict support to the best known working chipsets, for end user/support's sanity. It is by no means a definitive list on what combinations can work.

But as I said, it now performs stably, ive DJ'd with that setup several times for 7-8 hours at a time with no issues. (except the time the drunk lady pulled the firewire cable out but thats another story). The latency is a fair bit higher than the same firebox plugged into a PCIe TI card, but it is useable and stable.

Im not even arguing with you, I agree that the Ricoh chipset is sub par, but it does work with the interfaces ive tried, only after an enormous amount of work to get there. Im also not saying this to gloat that mine is working and yours isnt, but rather to point out that tech support is often in the business of minimising the support base and costs, rather than trying to help everyone get things working.



(and to pre-empt anyone baffled why people work so hard to get some PCs working)



get a mac

[adventurepants_]

this page also might be helpful for other people trying to get their firewire device playing with 7:

http://www.hasslehaas.com/music-town/pr ... windows-7/