Reamote

[AndrewClaycomb]

I'm using a Toshiba laptop now and sometimes I will run into latency issues when doing playback with lots of channels of audio (50ish) and over 10 plugins. I've already maxed out my RAM to 2 gigs on my laptop and I'm now thinking about going the Reamote route.

I've got a Sony Vaio laptop with a slightly faster processor but less RAM (512mb). Right now it just sits as a printer server so I can print wirelessly, but that seems like a waste especially if I could take some of the load off my recording computer.

I read somewhere that it only works with a direct ethernet connection between the computers, but I also read that with desktops the connection has to be with a pci card. Onboard ethernet causes issues. Since I'm using laptops I can't use pci, and I'm soon going to be using a pcmcia card on my Toshiba for my firewire hard drives so my 2 Firepods can use the built in Firewire port by themselves. That way I can turn off the firepods and still use the hard drives. (That's another problem by itself)

Would it be a total waste for me to try and use Reamote with my extra laptop because I can only use onboard ethernet? I have to buy an extra ethernet cable and if it won't work I of course would rather save my money.

 

[Treeline]

Seems like a complicated thing.

Have you tried simply writing all your data files to an external hard drive? That would fix your resources and read / write conflict issues. If Reaper is loaded on the same drive to which it is writing data, you can see how the system could slow down; it might not be just your processor.

I'm experimenting with loading Reaper on a 2 gig thumb drive and running it from that; it looks to be faster than the laptop's internal drive but I haven't loaded it with work yet.

The only other thing I can think of is using plug-ins with aux busses and making sure nothing is on an individual track that doesn't have to be there. If that's not possible, try duping those tracks to new ones, harden them (record effect destrcuctively) and then mute the original tracks when you're mixing. If the plug in is recorded destructively on the duplicate track, you'll give your CPU a break when mixing it with others. As long as you mute the original (non-destructive) track, you'll run faster with more tracks activated.

 

[AndrewClaycomb]

I forgot to mention that I am recording to an external firewire drive. It's not a major issue with latency that I'm having, it's more of me trying to come up with a better use for my other laptop.

I did some searching on the Reaper forums and it looks like it wouldn't benefit me at all because the mobo uses resources to communicate with the other computer. Basically it would introduce more latency without taking a load off my main computer's cpu.

 

[disgruntled-inc]

Would it be a total waste for me to try and use Reamote with my extra laptop because I can only use onboard ethernet?

I remember reading somewhere that unless you are using an Ethernet adapter board (PCI/PCIe) that you really aren't gaining much of anything because your host processor still has to process all of the stuff coming over the network.

If I find the link to the BBS I read that on, I'll throw a link in here.