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Looper's Delight
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Yeah, trying to figure the actual cost of a computer system for music can be tricky. My example of $3K for the PowerBook was based on the price of a 17" display model with the RAM maxed out. The base price for that model on the Apple Store right now is $2500, and once you put in the RAM and pay tax, you're not getting much change back from three large. Maybe one can get by with a smaller screen and slower processor, it really depends on how you're going to use it. I've grown used to the 17" display on my flat panel iMac which I use for ProTools, and whenever I have to go back to a smaller screen, it feels cramped, but of course it can be done. For my specific use, I'd also need something that's fast enough to handle both the looping and my tone-shaping, since I was trying to get rid of all that bulk and up my flexibility at the same time. I was figuring that I needed a lot of horsepower to keep my latency down while running a four-band eq, compression, reverb and whatever else, while keeping several instances of SooperLooper running glitch-free. I don't know what the minimum hardware is for that, but I'm sure that what I don't want to do is by the minimum necessary and then be stuck when a new version of my software looper comes out. If anyone out there is doing all their signal processing and looping on a laptop, I'd love to hear the specs of what they're using. And while, yes, you can use a computer for a bunch of non-music things, I can't assume in a cost comparison that the computer is already owned. On the non-computer side, I already own several mixers, processors, racks, MIDI controllers, etc, so for me personally the "cost" of a gig-ready Repeater based system would be... the cost of a Repeater. Not all musicians have a storage room full of useful musical crap they've accumulated over twenty years of playing, so it seems fair to list everything and let people figure out for themselves what they don't need to buy. Also, I'm not comfortable with taking my "home" computer, with all my personal email, financial records, family photos, etc out on a gig, so I'm not going to get much non-musical utility out of it. Regardless of whether or not one is comfortable doing that, you'll still have to pay the same amount of money to get the hardware for looping. If you've already got a laptop that meets the necessary specs, then it's a different picture, but it seems to me that's akin to assuming that one already owns a preamp, etc. Someone else has already answered regarding the lower cost of a Windows laptop, which isn't surprising, but I'd want to be sure that this is a proven-workable configuration for the audio tasks at hand. The huge variety of Windows machines versus the half-dozen Apple options makes it a little more complicated. And then you get the camp that advocates using ultra-rare "non-consumer" laptops which didn't seem to be much cheaper than a PowerBook. I don't have much experience with Windows laptops except that recently it seems that all my friends who bought iPods on my recommendation end up frustrated because they don't have firewire connections on their laptops (which was really surprising to me, since it'd been standard on Apple hardware for years), and sometimes don't have USB 2.0.... Again, it'd be great to hear from people with working systems that they regularly use on gigs and see what their specs are. TravisH On 1/5/06, Warren Sirota <wsirota@wsdesigns.com> wrote: > Hi Travis, > > I see how the math adds up. Interesting. It is true that computers, like > almost all electronic devices (vintage gear excepted) seem to depreciate >in > the real world at about 50%/year, and that software pretty much >depreciates > 100% the day you "drive it out of the showroom". The latter is mostly > because of the whole software protection/piracy mess which makes it >nearly > impossible to establish or transfer ownership in a trustworthy manner. >Sad > but true. > > OTOH, I don't know too many people who paid $2700 for their laptops - my > Powerbook G4 is not state of the art, but together with 1GB of RAM it was > about $1800, and while it's not as fast as main desktop pc, it is fast > enough for now (until I start loading up with plugins, I guess). You can > probably get a pretty fast Wintel laptop with a couple of gigs new for >$1500 > (just a guess). > > And - this point was made before, mostly - to be really nitpicky about >it, > the right way to calculate the cost of the computer is to calculate how >much > *extra* you had to pay to make the computer music-ready above and beyond > what you were going to pay for an email/word processing/web/(and possibly > work) computer anyway (which I assume is a necessity of life for anyone >on > this list). For me, that amount was $30 for the firewire card on my >latest > computer, and probably another $100 for extra hard disk space for audio > files, since I need a fast machine for work anyway. The audio interface >was > pricey, but I paid for that with the last computer and just transferred >it > to the new one. > > Best wishes, > Warren Sirota > >