AW: Laptop Looping

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

Kevin,

thanks for your very informative writeup. There are a few things I would
want to add here: 

> glitch, I felt like I had ARRIVED.  I dutifully used the 
> MSCONFIG utility to turn off non-essential services (don't 
> need to run a virus checker while music making, etc).

Didn't even know about MSCONFIG - I usually ran thru the registry by hand.
Another resource to mention ist musicxp.net, a website specialized on XP
tuning tips for audio applications.

> -- even used VST plugin compressor and reverb.  The only 
> problem was an occasional pop during playback while sizing 
> windows.  Not really a problem -- a minor annoyance.

I'm curios: did this problem get solved when you switched to the Fireface?

> 4) Live-looping and latency
> Well, I did some experimenting and found out that the reason 
> for the sloppy rhythm was system latency.  And, I found out 
> that the pops were due to an incompatability between the 
> Firepod and my video chipset!

About latency a sloppy rhythms: Per already mentioned that Cubase SX does
some kind of latency compensation, which is however optimized for its use 
as
a recording DAW, not as a live-playing tool. My rule when working with
Ableton Live (using VSTis as well as electric guitar running through 
Ableton
Live as signal sources) was:
        1. Never monitor the input signal (of the guitar), only listen to
the laptop's output signal (main or cue)
        2. turn off latency compensation in Live

A problem arises for the unexperienced player when using acoustic sources
(the hardest being singing, as you can't effectively combat hearing the
sources signal). I'm going to try attacking this with Mobius (also, as Per
mentioned).

About the pops: This seems to be a known problem with Presonus hardware
combined with specific Firewire chipsets (in the computer) and some graphic
adapters. A friend of mine who uses a Presonus Inspire interface had
addressed Presonus support about this very same problem. Their solution: 
add
a (PCMCIA) Firewire adapter to his computer and turn the internal firewire
adapter off. Problem solved. The German way - use your brains :-P

> PCI bus that is non-essential.  For instance, I disabled the 
> modem, wireless internet card, ethernet card, internal 
> soundcard, and a few other things.  Also, I reduced my video 

Disabling wLAN is especially important here, as some network adapters tend
to nearly lock up the system when they negotiate transfers with a new
participant. This is normally no problem for wire-based ethernet adapters,
as you usually will not find new networks when playing a live set, however,
this seems to be a big and well-known problem with wLAN adapters (Somebody
in the building might just turn on or off his router etc.).
Many laptops offer a hardware switch to turn off all wireless communication
hardware.

 
> 10) to be continued

Looking forward to it!

        Rainer (who still hasn't decided whether to get a new laptop or a
hand-configured rackmount computer)