Re: Laptop Looping

[Mark Sottilaro <sine@zerocrossing.net>]

You can (and should) find the limits of any system. As someone who's  
owned every major hardware looper, after the bumps of the setup (they  
DO take more initial tweaking) the laptop has been the most inspiring  
music making tool to follow your instrument that you'll ever  
purchase.  It does take patence though, but the reward is worth it. I  
am the guy who's looking forward to plugging directly in, though.

Mark

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 24, 2007, at 12:50 PM, midifriedchicken@comcast.net wrote:

> Audiomulch seems to be PC only, correct? Ive come to the conclusion  
> that working with music on a laptop isnt for everybody. The constant  
> fear of upsetting the great and almighty CPU is very frustrating.  
> Everything you could ever  want is soooo close, but just out of  
> reach. Heaven forbid you ask too much of the great overlord CPU. You  
> are then punished with a mighty CRACK, BUZZ, SNAP! You are then  
> humbled back to your meager little virtual rack of effects and you  
> keep dreaming of that new, fast and very expensive computer you  
> cannot afford.
> Ahh, but the ugly and much maligned little red boxes never let you  
> down do they? Sure they come up short in many areas, but you soldier  
> on with nothing but your wits and a fierce determination to find the  
> allusive workaround that will let one machine work in a similer way  
> to another machine you once had, but loved. But IT came up short  
> too. They all do. They all do.
>
> MFC
>
>
>
>
>
> -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: Luca Formentini <luca@unguitar.com>
>> Hi,
>> I have been having the same issues when starting to experiment my  
>> "pc rack".
>> Three years ago I started to check how I could minimize my hardware  
>> rack
>> bringing as many as possible utilities in an audio card and a laptop.
>> The two main issues were replacing my two venerable Echoplexes and my
>> Sound Sculpture Switchblade.
>> For a few months I played with many sw loopers and after some severe
>> tests I decided to go with Mobius ( not a great discovery you may  
>> say ;-)).
>> Anyway,  the most difficult to replicate characters of my setup was  
>> the
>> very complex signal routing I was doing with the switchblade and  
>> having
>> the chance to control the most of it via midi.
>> I have been testing Bidule, Usine and Audiomulch.
>> Usine was interesting but still very raw and complex with no reason,
>> Bidule was showing me the peaks you are getting and Audiomulch seemed
>> the more stable, intuitive and simple.
>> It's two years I am looping with Audiomulch as a Vst host ( where  
>> Mobius
>> is hosted), powerful mixer/router/splitter and midi controlled brain.
>> I find the system very stable and light ( I'm on a single Centrino  
>> 1.86
>> Gb with 1 Gb or Ram) so that I am gigging and recording with it.
>>
>> I really suggest you to check Audiomulch, take into consideration  
>> we're
>> waiting the 2.0 release in a few weeks/months.
>>
>> Don't give up !
>>
>> my best,
>> Luca
>> www.unguitar.com
>>
>>
>> midifriedchicken@comcast.net wrote:
>>
>>> So the cpu spikes I was seeing on the activity viewer on my 1.5gig  
>>> PB
>>> seem to be caused by Bidule. I can't seem to replicate this behavior
>>> with any other application. Live 6 with SL actually works better.  
>>> The
>>> cpu spikes were creating dropouts and audio glitches that are
>>> unacceptable for live work. The flexible routing in Bidule is beyond
>>> cool, but the glitches make it unuseable, for me anyway.
>>> I tried raising the audio buffer on both Bidule and/or the  
>>> interface.
>>> But all that did was increase latency beyond playable levels.
>>> My laptop looping experiment has failed miserably. Maybe when I can
>>> get a faster machine I'll go back.
>>> I'm guessing in the Ambient genre its easier to hide the limitations
>>> because a lot of the sounds you would use are actually similer to  
>>> the
>>> glitchy clicks I was getting. Plus the latency is easier to hide  
>>> with
>>> all those delays. But for now, its back to the RC50 for my acoustic
>>> stuff. Live and SL are great for the electronica gig I have. I just
>>> wish Live had the routing flexibilty that Bidule has.
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>