Oh oh oh…
Perhaps I’ve been lucky? I got a Toshiba, because them and Sony seemed
to be the only companies that build in Firewire ports standard in the XP
world. A friend (who’s very good with computers, but does not use them
for audio) told me I’d be able to do the Firewire to PCMCIA card… but I didn’t
believe it. I knew there’d be crap.
Inversely, I think my
Toshiba’s own audio card using the ASIOFORALL driver sounds like crap compared
to the cheap M-Audio Firewire Solo card.
In hindsight, I wish
I’d gone the Macbook Pro route, even though I’m pretty happy with the
Toshiba. Man XP is a clunky, crappy dog compared to the Mac… in fact, if
Mobius… I’ll shut up now. ;)
M
-----Original
Message-----
From: Krispen
Hartung [mailto:khartung@cableone.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 3:59
PM
To:
Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: Re: Small, Hand-Sized Battery
Powered Mixers
Hey
Kris,
I know
this may sound crazy, but why not just get an audio interface that has built
in mixing? The Focusrite Liquidmix I mentioned looks very interesting
and if you buy one from Sweetwater they’re including an additional DSP card
for no charge.
*************
I knew someone would ask this.
:)
Well, the truth is that until I
get a mac, I am utterly frustrated and disgusted beyond freakin' belief with
compatibility and performance issues that I'm experiencing with audio
interfaces for my notebook pc. If I didn't work for a major company that sells
PCs and didn't have to work on one 60 hours a week, I'd through them all out
the window. I can't even begin to think of how many hundreds of hours I've
spent in my lifetime trying to resolve issues with PCs, tweaking registries,
changing bootup options, startup programs, settings burried within settings
inside drivers, etc, etc...it now seems like complete madness and quite
frankly a sickness. I demand a refund on my life from Bill Gates and
IBM.
I started with the Indigo IO
cardbus interface. No complaints except that it is line input only and has
only a mini plug input/ouput). Still a great little unit with very little
latency.
I tried an M-Audio firewire unit
with cardbus to fireware adaptor. It was a total distaster and IRC conflict
between the adaptor and anothe piece of hardware. Not
resolvable.
I tried the EM-U cardbus
interface. Another total disaster and problem with their driver and MAX/MSP.
Then I went to the Eidrio
UA-25 USB interface. It works great, but more latency than I prefer,
and again the driver sucks and doesn't give me enough buffer and vector
size options to run some high powered patches in MAX/MSP.
Totally nuts. So, yesterday, I
yanked everything out, installed the ASIO for All driver and I'm pluging my
mandolin and headset mic (separately, hence the need of a small mixer) into my
notebook's soundcard. Wonderfully simple.
The crazy thing is that using this
ASIO for ALL driver and the Intel integrated High Definition Audio system
inside my ThinkPad sounds better than any othe other prior solutions I've used
with next to nothing for latency. Imagine that? I'm convinced most of
these companies making audio interfaces couldn't build a decent audio driver
without compatibility problems if their lives depended on
it.
And I hear now that with mac, no
one has these problems because they have their core audio and force everyone
to comply to their standards so that users don't have to suffer as a result of
so many diverse driving coding standards across the
globe.
----- Original Message -----
-----Original
Message-----
From: Krispen
Hartung [mailto:khartung@cableone.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 3:15
PM
To:
Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: OT: Small, Hand-Sized Battery
Powered Mixers
I am looking for a decent
battery powered mixer that is about the size of my hand, just to mix line
level and mic levels into my laptop sound card. I have been investigating
options for a day or so and have reviewed products from ART, Rolls, Nady,
Eiderol, Maplin, Samson S-Mix (not battery powered, unforunately),
etc.
Any experience with any of these
small type mixers? I don't need EQ, just ability to mix and with
clean, low noise results.
Right now, I have narrowed it
down to:
