Dazed and Confused...

[PocketMike]

Hi Everyone. I'm brand new to this forum; did some searching, but just got overwhelmed by all the possibilities for what I'm trying to do.

I've been playing acoustic guitar for over 30 years and want to start doing some computer recording with my Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop. I have a Shure SM57 mic and that's about it....

From reading reviews here and there, it seems that the Aardvark Direct Mix USB3 would suit my purposes but I'm looking for input. Right now the
USB3 is shipping with Cubase LE (which I also know nothing about) for about $230. This is the price range I'm hoping to stick to for hardware and software if at all possible. I've read on this forum that firewire is better than USB but, ithout a firewire port, that's not an option for me.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated...

Thanks!
PocketMike

 

[manning1]

a lot of these usb units coming to market are quite new.
so little "real road trip info". there have been successes but also some folks are having usb problems. you wont know properly till you try one. i dont care what anyone says. just because it works with one laptop , it might not with yours. on the otherhand it might . so the best idea is to make sure you can return it if it doesnt. if you want some help, i'm a computer engr with a daw.
the best thing is to try a bunch of demos of multitrack software on your laptop before getting the usb unit and see which works on it best.
it will also give you a good feel for which features suit your needs best.
you can try the powertracks software that i use with your on board sound card and see if you like it.(pgmusic.com). it gives you 48 tracks for 49 bucks.
nothing comes close for the price.
also if your a songwriter like me try band in a box from the same company.
its highly addictive. just try the demo. very popular with songwriters.
the next step i would advise is to evaluate potential performance of your inspiron in terms of speed and potential track counts.
if you download diskbench from prorec.com and run it and post your results here i'll try and comment and interpret the results. including any potential pitfalls. and make suggestions.
peace.

 

[PocketMike]

Thanks, Manning, this is really useful information. I've downloaded and run dskbench a couple of times, just to make sure that my results didn't vary much. Here are the results:

DskBench 2.11
(c) 1998, SESA, J.M.Catena (admin@sesa.es, www.sesa.es)
Timer Check = 1001 (should be near 1000)
CPU Check = 50.16 % (should be near 50.00 %)
CPU index (relative to Pro 200 MHz) = 4.992531
Open = 1 ms
Write = 18433 ms, 13.89 MB/s, CPU = 1.57 %
Flush = 34 ms
Rewin = 0 ms
Read = 16091 ms, 15.91 MB/s, CPU = 4.16 %
Close = 1 ms
BlockSize = 131072, MB/s = 3.82, Tracks = 45.43, CPU = 2.08 %
BlockSize = 65536, MB/s = 2.34, Tracks = 27.78, CPU = 2.30 %
BlockSize = 32768, MB/s = 1.22, Tracks = 14.46, CPU = 1.88 %
BlockSize = 16384, MB/s = 0.63, Tracks = 7.45, CPU = 1.99 %
BlockSize = 8192, MB/s = 0.35, Tracks = 4.16, CPU = 1.90 %
BlockSize = 4096, MB/s = 0.79, Tracks = 9.44, CPU = 3.18 %

I also downloaded the PowerTracks Pro demo; looks like a powerful little program.

 

[manning1]

mike - how old is this machine. ??
its not the worst ive seen, and youll be able to do some tracks.
but not a ton.
the hard disk drive at about 14 mb/sec is
just ok. for a decent daw it needs to double.
in the powertracks menu you will see a test for number of tracks.
please inform me what it says.
it looks to me like you need to ask dell if the internal hard drive of the inspiron can be replaced by one with a better transfer speed than 14 mb/sec.
also - do you have 512 ram ?
if you dont, its advised.
overall my analysis indicates that you can do quite a lot of midi tracks
(midi tracks dont need as much grunt as audio tracks), and more than a few audio tracks - but not a ton.
also the processor stat of 4 tells me that processor intensive effects plug ins could pose a problem on this machine if running a number of them.
hope this helps mike. and get back to me on the powertracks tracks teat.
also please tell me if your win xp.thnx.