Eee PC for multitrack recording?

Vagodeoz

Vagodeoz

One-Man-Band
Hi people.
Most of you are probably aware of Asus' 400$ laptop. It's supposed to be the most wanted laptop for the X-mass season.
Anyway, I'm wondering how usable it is for multitrack recording. Mixing takes a lot more resources, and that would be done in my desktop pc. It would only be for recording.
For now I'm will use a 2 track USB recorder. A standalone or my friend's Multimix 8 (Usb mixer).
But in the future I might get the Multimix 16 USB 2.0
With that one, every input is sent through USB 2.0 to the pc. You can record 18 tracks at once.

The specs for the little laptop are:
* 7" screen (cute huh?)
* 3 x USB 2.0 ports
* webcam included (woohoo!)
* built in sound card with microphone/headphone mini-plugs (and a built-in mic).
* 512 mb/1 Gb Ram (that should be enough right?)
* 4/8 Gb Internal flash memory instead of hard drive. (I'm not sure that's a problem. In the worst case I would still have 3 Gb to record. I'm also getting a 500 Gb USB 2.0 external hard drive in a couple of days)
* Intel Mobile 900 Mhz (I guess that might be the bigger, if not only, problem). I'm guessing that's a Pentium 3 equivalent?
* OS: Comes with Linux installed, but it says it's Windows XP compatible (wich I would probably use instead)
* Size: 22.5 x 16.4 x 3.5 Weights less than 1 Kg. With that tiny thing and my friend's tiny Multimix we are ready to record almost anywhere.



So what do you guys say? Do you think it will work OK for recording 12-18 tracks?
 
I would be pessimistic about recording 18 tracks consistently through a USB mixer and USB hard drive.

But you can be the first to try it out :)
 
My employer bought one for me and one for my assistant a few weeks ago. Well, OK, I persuaded them to let me expense them and bought them myself on the company card. We're just using the pre-installed Linux distribution. It does pretty much everything I need to do in my work and does it faster. I'm typing on it now, as a matter of fact. It is so much faster than my Gateway XP laptop (which has much better specs) that it's not even funny.

I would consider getting a personal one and trying out the Linux stuff for recording (stripping off the pre-loaded Linux and going with Ubuntu), but actually these days I'm mainly recording what little that I do on my Yamaha standalone, the Microtrack or my widetrack analog machines and not on a computer. It's easy enough to throw stuff over to the Mac for mixing. I guess another option on the 8G model I have would be to install XP, but with a Linux option for running Reaper on a Ubuntu distribution, I think I would try that first before going to XP.

OTOH, I love the idea of being able to use the Eee PC in the studio (and remotely) for recording, since it is so light, quiet and compact. I pretty much record at most 2 or 3 simultaneous tracks and not that many total tracks, so the idea of using a USB interface is not totally out of the question.

BTW, the Eee PC has totally renormalized my notion of how big a laptop should be. Here in my home office, I plug in a full-size monitor and keyboard and use the mouse, so it's operationally indistinguishable from a desktop, except of course that it's so much faster than an XP machine. When I'm roaming the halls of our State Capitol, it is such a relief to use a machine that weighs two pounds, rather than six!

Cheers,

Otto
 
Woah! Thanks a lot for the review!!!
I'm not getting the 8gig model, since you can't get them. Instead I'm buying the one with 512 ram and 4 gigs, and upgrading the ram to 2 Gb, and buying a 16 gb SD card to use it as a second hard drive, so I have 2 gb ram, and 20 gb hard drive :)
Internal flash memory was supposed to be fast as hell (way faster than regular hard drives), but how about the SD memory?
I'm also getting an external 500 Gb hard drive, but I wouldn't be taking that one everywhere I take the laptop...
For now I don't think I will be recording more than 2, or 4 tracks at the same.
But for the future, multitrack option is open, I think, especially with the 500gb Hard drive.
 
I found the system reqs for the Alesis Multimix 16 (the one that records 18 tracks)


Minimum System Requirements:

PC:
• Windows 98SE, 2000, and XP (Will have XP)
• 800 MHz Pentium processor or higher (Will have 900 Mhz)
• 256 MB RAM (Will have 2 Gb)
• 4,200 RPM hard drive for basic recording, 5,400 or higher for multi-track (Will have Solid State Drive and SDHC Card)


Seems it will work just fine with 18 tracks (if I ever need them)
 
I think there cool/cute and I thought about getting one for about a second, then thought hey, I'm thinking like an Apple dude (no offense {air book} to anyone) I don't NEED anything that small and that limited, don't get me wrong for live stereo recording it would fit the bill, but for about the same price you can get a little bit bigger 14" with greater capabilities.

With that said if you do get one let us know how it works out, I still might get one;)
 
ds21 said:
I think there cool/cute and I thought about getting one for about a second, then thought hey, I'm thinking like an Apple dude (no offense {air book} to anyone) I don't NEED anything that small and that limited, don't get me wrong for live stereo recording it would fit the bill, but for about the same price you can get a little bit bigger 14" with greater capabilities.
Click to expand...

Its strengths are that it is dirt cheap, tiny, and has virtually no moving parts (just the fan which comes on as needed). I've installed Audacity on mine (by crossing from the Debian respository) and I intend to use it for field recording, as when the fan is off it's entirely silent.

What would really be cool would be installing the Rosegarden sequencer on it, but that has too many dependencies to crossgrade safely, IMHO. I'd likely end up with some strangely broken hybrid of Debian and the native Xandros system. It might be a better idea to simply install Ubuntu on it, but I'm a little reluctant to do that.
 
jpmorris said:
Its strengths are that it is dirt cheap, tiny, and has virtually no moving parts (just the fan which comes on as needed). I've installed Audacity on mine (by crossing from the Debian respository) and I intend to use it for field recording, as when the fan is off it's entirely silent.

What would really be cool would be installing the Rosegarden sequencer on it, but that has too many dependencies to crossgrade safely, IMHO. I'd likely end up with some strangely broken hybrid of Debian and the native Xandros system. It might be a better idea to simply install Ubuntu on it, but I'm a little reluctant to do that.
Click to expand...

Sounds cool, I suppose if you already have a laptop this would be a nice addition, but I don't have one yet and I need a "little more" at first, and for about $100 more I'll get it, then I can think about one of these. Plus I heard there coming out with a 10" version(with upgraded CPU and maybe no fan at all), which would be more to my liking as my carputer has a 7" touchscreen, and I find it a little small for regular programs (of course my carputer is further away than what I would use a notebook) Anyway let us know how it does in the field, I'm especially interested in the screen size problems if any.
 
For purely mobile recording, it could be great.

But if you're going to start lugging a mixer around as well, it sort of defeats the purpose.

18 tracks? I dunno, you might find it's a wee bit underpowered. But for clean multitrack recordings, it really depends on how good the usb implementation is
 
just to let you know the USB mixer wont let you multitrack. All they give you is a stereo signal, and a stereo signal back from the computer. The firewire mixers will let you do full multitracking though.
 
BlackHawk: Not at all. They have 3 types of Multimix:

1) USB 1.1 (Sends and recieves stereo mixes)

2) USB 2.0 (Recieves stereo mixes and sends 16 individual channels plus stereo mix)

3) Firewire (Same as USB 2.0)


I want it for recording, not for mixing. And I think that particular mixer would work great on it, since it's a mixer and a multitrack sound card in one package for ultra portability (and it has the same AD converters as the allmighty HD24!!)

Also, the tiny laptop is not as sleeky as it seems.
It has a 900 Mhz processor underclocked to 630 Mhz to reduce battery use, but it's easily re-clocked to 900 (some people even take it to 1.2 Ghz), and it has 512 mb Ram (I'm going to upgrade both things, re-clock it to 850-900 Mhz, and get 2 Gb of ram).
I saw on youtube a video of an eee with NO UPGRADES (just 512 ram and 630 Mhz) running quake 4 and pro evolution 2008 at a very decent frame rate...
Maybe it helps a lot that it has a fast as hell internal drive, but it's tiny (since it's flash based)

I already ordered it, but it will take about 2 weeks before it gets to bolivia. Once it arrives you will hear (and see) a lot from it)

ps21: Don't get overexcited with the new 10" eee's. I have been researching a lot on this machines before I made my choice, and the new 10" will have WiMax, wich is a new (really expensive) wireless protocol, and it's going to cost about 1000$, wich slays the machine's biggest virtuosity: it's price.
Get the 4G model (400$), get 2 Gb ram (40$), re-clock it to 850-900 Mhz (zero$, just knowledge), and get a 8-16 Gb SDHC card (30-80$) to use it as an extra internal memory (since it only has 4g) and you are ready to go!

I also love that it comes with Wi-Fi, an internal webcam, and a SD card reader. I never really wanted a laptop until I saw this little baby :D
Also I don't really "need" a laptop, I just want to work sometimes outside the corner of my studio where my desktop pc is.
I will still use the desktop pc for the heavy work, but still in the EEE I can do 80-90% of the stuff I do on the 3 Ghz desktop (Including heavy gaming)

And I did found the touchscreen mod =) It rules!

Pd: I also might get a Bluetooth adapter and a Wii controller, to use it as a joystick for pc games :)
Can't imagine Zelda ocarina of time (for N64) played on an ultra portable laptop (pc) playing it with the (Wii) remote controller... Gaming can't get any better :P
 
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I have one of these little beasts - and yes, they are wonderful things!

Lack of FireWire is going to make finding a decent audio interface tricky - and I don't know how the light Xandros OS will take to any bespoke hardware and if there are Linux drivers for these things.

You can install Windows XP on it of course - so at least that would open up a few USB audio interfaces that may not have Linux drivers.

I wouldn't want to record anything with the internal soundcard, and I don't know how well this thing will multi-track. Maybe it'll be ok for stereo...

You'll definitly need some external storage if you want to try.
I've got one of those little Freecom 250GB Toughbooks - make's a great partner to the EeePC.

It's certainly not what these machines were built for, but trying it out is only a "sudo apt-get install audacity" away ;)
 
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