Re: laptop for live music

["Kris Hartung" <khartung@cableone.net>]

I should have chimed in earlier....or can I hum in? :)  Some of you may 
have
heard a hum on some of the Y2K5 recordings I recorded, or you may have 
heard
it on the live stream, which I explained in an email to everyone. I have 
two
laptops: an HP Compaq nc6000, which is a commercial box and very stable,
fast, reliable, etc. And I also have an HP Compaq Presario 2525us, which is
not as robust as my nc unit, but I use it for all my live music 
performance,
with my VST host, VST effetcts, etc.  I only use my nc unit for streaming 
to
the web, but with one caviet, namely I have to run it off its battery and
not the powersupply. The power supply generates this annoying hum and
appears in everything I do while recording or streaming.  At Y2K5, my
battery got low a few times, every 2 hours or so, and I had to plug in the
power supply, which generated the hum. It is very distinct, and you can 
hear
it on some of the recordings, unfortunately.

Anyway,  for those of you that have been experiencing hum while using your
laptop to record, I was wondering if you tried running of the laptop
batteries. Also, I have this problem in my Presario as well, but in a
different context. When I record with mBox/Digidesign, I hear a hum if my
external firewire drive is plugged into the lapatop. This is rather
inconvenient because mBox performs better when recording to a firewire
drive, but I just record to my internal drive and transfer my completed
files to the firewire drive.

It appears that all sorts of devices can generate hum...it may not
necessarily be the laptop itself.

Kris

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Warren Sirota" <wsirota@wsdesigns.com>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2005 1:04 PM
Subject: RE: laptop for live music


> 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.
> >
> >
>
>