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Re: OT: MacBook buying advice? ("Pimp my RC-50")



On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:49 AM, Buzap Buzap <buzap@gmx.net> wrote:
> thanks.
>
>> Since you're saying you "want to get a Mac notebook" I won't argue
>> about what good work you can as well achieve with Windows boxes
> yep. no Win vs. Mac bashing please ;-)
>
> I guess the real question for me is if my RC-50 will keep me still happy 
>for a while.
> Now that I've gone the "Pimp my RC-50" way I have the following 
>situation:
> I'm really pleased with what I can do looping-wise. Yet, I need ca. 20 
>audio cables,
> 3 A/B boxes, several footswitches etc for audio routing. So, this is 
>quite annoying and I > > end up hardly taking this setup anywhere...

Ok, so then that is the issue! The convenience factor! The convenience
factor is not something to make fun of, I would say it's rather
important and should be taken seriously. Maybe you should look into
building a pre wired floor board that doubles up as a transporting
case? Bet no laptop can reproduce that snake pit noise anyway.


> Another important question:
> Is there any USB 2.0 audio interface a real alternative to Firewire 
>latency-wise? (probably 1-> 3 mono simultan. channels)

It's not that USB interfaces are not as good as FireWire interfaces.
USB is even a bit faster than FireWire400, when measuring data
transfer speed in a clinical situation. However, the gain in using
FireWire, rather than USB, is stability since its streaming
capabilities does not flicker with whatever other tasks may be
fulfilled by the operating system. If you look only at the technical
specification charts there are lots of "good" USB interfaces. The
question is rather how much you value the stability in audio transfer
while doing different things on the computer - like opening windows,
searching for files, opening applications etc.  If it's important to
you that no drop-outs should ever affect the audio streaming, then the
answer would be that there is no real competitive alternative among
USB devices.

But it seems some products with USB audio streaming improve with
recent models. When the Zoom H4 was new on the market I tested it as
an USB sound card and found it quite bad. Noise and drop-outs all over
the place. Unusable, unfortunately. But recently when visiting Andy
Butler I had the chance to try his Zoom Hz and it worked well. I
simply plugged it into one of my MacBook's USB ports. It worked well
right ahead under both OS X and Windows XP. On the Windows XP side I
looped Andy in Mobiuis while he was playing different flutes and other
ethnic instruments into the H2. I was really surprised, but the H2
worked brilliantly. But then I should have to mention that I don't
have the modern upgraded version of Windows XP. It's a plain Service
Pack Two install with none Microsoft upgrades what-so-ever taken. And
all non-audio hardware deactivated (no network card, no CD/DVD player)
so there's not much of a chance anything on that laptop might
interfere with the USB audio streaming. Maybe this says more about
audio laptop maintaining that about the USB 2.0 protocol in general or
the Zoom?

-- 
Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)
www.myspace.com/perboysen
www.stockholm-athens.com