RE: laptop for live music

[Warren Sirota <wsirota@wsdesigns.com>]

My experience was that, while doing a multitrack recording, every few
minutes all tracks being recorded would have their signals replaced by a
horrible buzz. I think it's because the firewire and usb shared the same
interrupt (not changeable), but I was never sure. I tried using a firewire
on a PCMCIA card instead of the built-in, but that did not help.
Unfortunately, I didn't figure all this out during whatever period I had to
return the unit. I had to abandon the piece of crap for audio purposes.
Fortunately, I had other uses for it.

I don't know how you could know this in advance about a particular model of
computer. Like I said, my desktop PC runs Windows, and it does audio
perfectly. I'm guessing that my experiences are not the norm, but this
incident - and one other experience, not related to multimedia - have got 
me
off DELL for good. I do not wish to start flame wars (in fact, I *don't*
believe that the Apple UI and OS is necessarily superior or inferior to
Windows - I use both); however, with an Apple, at least you know that all
the hw is compatible, while PCs are built from a widely varying component
and motherboard assortment (to an extreme), which naturally leads to more
uncertainty in the way that the components interact.

Best wishes,
Warren Sirota


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gary Lehmann [mailto:hqr@cox.net] 
> Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2005 1:55 PM
> To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
> Subject: laptop for live music
> 
> 
> I will need another laptop sooner rather than later, as 
> latest versions of software require something more powerful. 
> The Dell I have used creates hum on the digital 
> audio--Warren, is that your experience as well? Gary 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Warren Sirota wrote:
> <snip>
> On the PC side, I have a DELL laptop that is poorly 
> engineered for audio, despite being marketed as a multimedia 
> laptop - it has never worked consistently. 
> 
>