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RE: All-Laptop live?? (was RE: RE: A poll--shoes off?)



One last thing. Check out this site:

http://www.intel.com/products/notebook/processors/index.htm

Click on the various models and look at the specs around clock speed, L2
cache, etc.  Also, don't bee fooled by the Centrino/Intel Pentium M
Process clock speeds...they show as lower than the prior Intel
processors, but they are technically much  more efficient and exhibit
faster performance because Centrino uses a different technology.   They
can't be compared directly because Centrino works much more efficiently
than other Intel processors, in the way it allocates its processing
power, instructions, etc.

If you internalize these specs, then when you go to buy a PC notebook
with an Intel processor, you'll know what you are getting rather than
letting the idiot sales person try to lead you to one option or flavor
of the day, based on what their boss is asking them to push through the
pipeline at that particular time. 

You could go to the AMD website and look at their processor specs too.
I have a Compaq/HP consumer notebook - a Presario 2525US with a 2.4 GHz
desktop processor, Intel Pentium 4.  You'll know if a notebook uses a
desktop versus mobile processor, because they are noisy and the
notebooks are thick and heavy. I would avoid these.  I plan to
personally buy a notebook with a mobile processor next time. Quite,
fast, efficient...no fan noise getting into your recordings, etc.  

With my current notebook,  I am able to run two or three VST plugins in
ProTools and the Mobius looper VST with no problems.   And ProTools
sucks up some processing power too. If I ran my VSTs in something like
AudioMulch, it would perform better.   

I have a friend who  bought a notebook, but decided to cut corners on
the processor....I noticed a huge difference in latency and performance
with ProTools.  We both had notebooks with similar RAM, XP, and hard
drive configurations. The only difference was our processors.  It was
very interesting. On ProTools in the Playback Engine settings, I can run
my hardware buffer size at 256 samples with no latency.  He had to run
his at 128, but then when he started to record it would crash ProTools
once in a while....lower buffer size, less latency, but more risk of the
crash.  I found that 256 yielded no latency and no crashes for me,
unless I'm playing back a lot of tracks and mixing down...then I bump my
bufffer up to 512 where latency is not an issue because I'm not
recording. This prevents any sort of ProTools crash.  It's something
about how our two processors allocate resources for memory, cache,
processing, etc. I wish I knew the details, but the only difference I
could tell was that he was using a less expesive processor...other than
this, it's all a mystery to me.   Point being, I just won't cut corners
on a processor.

Kris


************************************************************************
**************
Krispen Hartung 
http://www.krispenhartung.com 
info@krispenhartung.com
View improvisational / real-time looping videos:
http://www.myweb.cableone.net/chagstrom2/music/kris-hartung/catalogue.ht
m#videos
Interactive tour of my gear: http://www.boisemusicians.com/gear.htm


-----Original Message-----
From: hazard factor [mailto:artists@hazardfactor.com] 
Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2005 2:43 PM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: RE: All-Laptop live?? (was RE: RE: A poll--shoes off?)


 With all the talk of programs, does anyone have any spec
recommendations for a PC laptop capable of live looping, and running a
few softsynths at once?

Dave Eichenberger 
http://www.hazardfactor.com