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Looper's Delight
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My $0.02 One advantage the computer-based approach offers is immediate replacement of dead or lost hardware. Let's say the airline loses your rack. Now you're in trouble. Where do you find a PCM-42, a Vortex, and a Bitrman in 4 hours or less in Eugene, Oregon? You don't. But if you're computer-host-based, any CompUSA or Costco (or... or...) can replace your <insert favorite XYZ-effect here>. Better yet, a buddy or fellow LD'er in the region could loan you their laptop for the gig. If you are carrying a Firewire/USB audio interface in your carry-on, along with your dongles (if any) and a backup DVD or CD with all your audio apps you are pretty well set to recover from major loss. Of course you should have your setup dialed, and saved as a an appropriate disk image, along with any installers that you might need. And you should practice 'recovering' to 'other hardware' at least once. "Luck favors the prepared",... ask any recording engineer or support tech. Now, (OTOH) you should see my ridiculously over-sized rack. You see, I don't gig. FWIW, I use an iMac G5 with Logic, Live, lots of effects, and an EDP/Vortex/SE-70/etc... rack, so I have the worst of both worlds. I find it handy to turn off the whole computer side of things and focus on technique (I'm not that good of a musician, and having less to twiddle helps me concentrate on becoming a better one). Or I can turn on the computer and have fun tweaking. BTW: There are some cool LED-lighted USB keyboards out there, which are narrow enough for 19" rack trays (i.e. no numerical keypad). One other thought: I'd put more trust in the reliability of a hand-carried laptop than a rack-mounted anything. Rack-mounted computers are not designed for travel. Laptops are. The only caveat to this would be if you designed a roadworthy rack unit with serious shock absorption and vibration dampening. Most people tend to design rack units to be like tanks (extra strong and rigid), which is not what really protects the motherboard, CPU, etc. It's the isolation from the rigors of the road that saves the computer. Maybe start with a laptop, and 'science-project' it into a durable/roadworthy rack-mount chassis? Well, that turned into $0.04, at least. And the bargain bundle of acronyms... Ken -=-=-=-=-=-=-=- >Gee, I sense that just maybe you're a fan of dedicated hardware? :-) > >Travis Hartnett wrote: >> Nah--hard drives aren't designed to last more than a few years, the >> motherboard and power supply batteries likewise. > >Hard drive, debatable. Motherboard, nonsense. Batteries, yes. >Power cord, no. > >> A PCM-42 holds its value far better than any laptop running a PCM-42 >> emulator. > >Until it breaks. That emulator will run fine for the next hundred >years on increasingly powerful hardware. > >> "...runs Windows 95 as well as the day it was born." >> >> Left-handed praise if I ever heard it... > >My point here was that most people dispose of their computers not >because they stop working, but because they can't run the latest >software. Salesmen cart a laptop to "gigs" almost every day for >years. They get rid of them because they can't run PowerPoint 2010. >If you're willing to freeze your expectations, there's no reason except >hardware failure why you can't use a computer for more than 10 years. >Sure they break, they depreciate in monetary value. But they do not >depreciate in function. > >But I completely agree that laptops are not as roadworthy over the >long run as dedicated hardware without disk drives. If I were a >gigging musician I would be worried about them. And I agree that >computers are disposable. In some respects that's an advantage >because you can always move your stuff to a newer more powerful model. > >Jeff