Anyone use Cubase with a Windows laptop?

[tspnyc]

I play solo acoustic guitar and sometimes sing. That is about it. I have no need for midi, no need for 76 tracks. I got into Cubase because friends have used it for many, many years. I rarely use more than 16 tracks and that is primarily four microphones recorded four different times. I use Cubase SE because I really do not need more than that.

It works great, which is evident by the fact I join this forum about once every three years.

Now I may be going laptop. Does anyone use Cubase with one of those USB or Firewire boxes? Are there any issues with Cubase doing this?

I use the Aardvark card, which has a breakout box that has four excellent mike preamps. I can only find one company that makes an adaptor that would allow me to use a full-size PCI card like that with a laptop. It costs $989.00.

Does anyone know if it is possible to record FOUR tracks from such a USB/Firewire box into Cubase? The only ones I have seen imply there is only two-track stereo Ins from the box to the computer. I need to record with two stereo pairs of mics!

Should I give up hope of moving to a laptop?

Thanks!

 

[Carter]

I use a laptop with my mobile rig and I do not have any problems, I use a Presonus Firestudio (Firewire interface) that has 26 IO and Cubase SX3. I can record as many tracks as I like. I would stay away from USB interfaces. Maybe mosy on over to some websites that sell gear and see what your options are,

 

[TelePaul]

It's easily doable. Carter uses many inputs which is cool, but a firepod would give you 8 good quaity pre-amps (provided your laptop supports firewire) but after that, it comes down to processing power and ram.

 

[tthcore]

I use the mobilePre and Cubase sx3. I also have FL studio. I run both on my laptop and have no probs at all.

 

[tspnyc]

Thanks!

It is VERY frustrating. Things either have 2 xlr imputs and cost around $300 or they have 8 or more inputs and cost way more than I can afford. I need 4.

Your posts got me searching in the right direction. The only one with 4 so far is this one from Alesis. Anyone have experience with their products? Is this going to be poor quality compared to the Firepod sort of product?

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/prod...-14-Input-FireWire-Audio-Interface?sku=246030

 

[TimOBrien]

USB was designed for mice, keyboards and attaching temporary items like digital cameras and backup drives. You won't find many devices with more than 2-channels because it gets dodgy quickly the way it's implemented on various computer (i.e. cheap).

Firewire was designed specifically to replace SCSI as a fast drive solution for video and audio production (and video is MUCH more intensive than audio).

I've been using Cubase on an XP laptop with a Motu828mkII daisy-chained to a Glyph firewire drive with ZERO problems.

 

[Phildo]

Yep. I'm using a (now relatively ancient) Toshiba M40 with a Tascam FW1082 which gives me up to 10 simutaneous inputs and acts as a control surface too. The whole system is remarkably stable, considering it's PC-based.

 

[Nick98338]

HP laptop... Presonus Inspire 1394 interface... firewire... Cubase LE... all works just fine.

 

[Obi-Wan zenabI]

see my sig ..... that 1.7 is in a laptop. It has a 4 pin fw input, but since the cable and the card were the same price, I bought an HP pci FW card and run no problems, 8 tracks.

It took a while for me to get everything set up correctly, but it's cool now.

Get a nice FW interface like the firepod-- you will appreciate the extra inputs someday. Otherwise, the firebox is cool.

 

[anppilot]

Cubase 5 on a win xp 1.8 mhz w/1gb ram.

 

[brzilian]

SE 3 on a Gateway MX7515 (Athlon 64 4000+, 1Gb RAM) connected to a Mackie Onyx 1220 with Firewire card.

 

[jochanan]

I've got a gateway, 1.6ghz with 2g of ram. I use it solely in the studio. I love it. I do have XP stripped down to bare bones, but that's because I like it running as fast as humanly possible.

I run two Presonus Firepods chained together. No problems that could not be remedied by some simple tweaks.

When I'm recording all 16 tracks at once in SL3, I only use up about 15% of my CPU.... This thing's great.

 

[li10]

a mixer and a USB or firwire interface should do fine... then there's no need for you to get a decent soundcard (I don't think anyway... is there?).