Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
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