Laptop for recording, Desktop for Mixing/Mastering?

[suntzu1982]

Okay guys, I finally made some purchases...and to say the least, I was smiling from 8pm until I woke up the next morning.

So here's my question. I bought a Dell Inspiron E1505, 1 gb ram, 5400 rpm SATA hard drive, with a duo core 1.66 T2300 chip.

So, after research I originally had planned to record on my desktop, since it is a slightly more powerful machine. Therefore, I shopped for laptops that would suffice for my studying needs. However, I believe that the laptop I bought would work for some recording.

So, my thought was to use the laptop to record off site, and then move everything onto my desktop to mix and master. Is this a good idea?

 

[Massive Master]

As long as the machine(s) can handle it (power, speed, RAM, etc.), it really doesn't make a hoot of a difference which machine you use for what. It's just a computer.

Of course, the interface is important and any additional hardware, etc., but the machine itself is little more than a place to hold ones and zeros.

 

[NYMorningstar]

I bought a Dell Inspiron E1505, 1 gb ram, 5400 rpm SATA hard drive, with a duo core 1.66 T2300 chip.

Get yourself an additional hard drive to record onto, internal or external, don't matter. Use the extra hard drive to record to only, no programming on it. You'll realize a huge difference in processing power.

 

[suntzu1982]

Even if this hard drive was a USB external? I'd rather go external since I'd like to switch back and forth, but the inspiron only has 1 firewire port and that'll be used for my firepod.

 

[JoeyPazera]

Get yourself an additional hard drive to record onto, internal or external, don't matter. Use the extra hard drive to record to only, no programming on it. You'll realize a huge difference in processing power.

and make sure the extra harddrive runs at 7200 RPM's, that will help a bit also

 

[irishfolker]

You can daisychain firewire up to a point. That may be a solution. I haven't tried it though, so take it with a grain or two of salt.

 

[suntzu1982]

I thought you were only able to daisy chain devices of the same type?

I'll search more for 'how to daisy chain', but so far, no specific instructions, if any one cares to illuminate.

 

[irishfolker]

I thought you were only able to daisy chain devices of the same type?

I'll search more for 'how to daisy chain', but so far, no specific instructions, if any one cares to illuminate.

Could be the case. Like I said, I haven't tried it. Please post what you find out. We'll all learn.

Jeff

 

[suntzu1982]

Okay...from what I can gather and extrapolate, here is the deal.

Daisy chain utilizes devices inputs and outputs so that the end device can have a combination of all the signals. Thus, a firepod has 2 EEE1394, one output to the computer and an input (for other firepods, for example.)

Thus, even with only 1 firewire port on the computer, signals from each firepod goes to each other firepod down the chain, and finally into the computer.

This same process can occur the other way, where an output signal is daisy chained to an end device, say headphones.

With this logic, I doubt that we could daisy chain a firepod and a hard drive because the hard drive could not interpret the signals from the firepod and vice versa. Furthermore, the computer couldn't use the same signal to control both devices.

That's too bad too. So, if anyone can tell me differently that would be great, but i highly doubt that.

So, that also comes back to my original question, Will a USB 2.0 hard drive (7200 rpm) suffice as the music-dedicated hard drive?

 

[irishfolker]

I checked with a couple of our computer experts here at work and they said there is no problem with mixing unlike peripherals on a single firewire chain. According to http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci212126,00.html, a firewire chain is like having everything on cards plugged into a single bus. I've got a firewire drive, a firepod and a digital video camera at home. I'll try a couple of them at once and see what happens. If you see a big cloud of smoke in Maryland, you'll know it didn't work.

Jeff

 

[KonradG]

Get yourself an additional hard drive to record onto, internal or external, don't matter. Use the extra hard drive to record to only, no programming on it. You'll realize a huge difference in processing power.

i have a usb 2.0 external and an internal with two partitions (one with windows[E:], the other with protools [C:])

am i in the clear if i record onto C: drive or do i need to plug in my external?

 

[suntzu1982]

Well, I would think that if you are trying to accomplish the 1 dedicated hard drive, you are better off recording onto the external hard drive. A partition is really just a virtual division.

The benefits of dedicated a hard drive to recording means that your recording files will not have to compete with any other resources when writing onto the hard drive. However, a partition still means that it is still 1 physical hard drive, therefore writing to your C drive will be the same if it was partitioned or not. The same PHYSICAL drive is still being used for both recording and other purposes.

 

[JasonBird]

One thing that you may consider, and i have experienced this myself. Laptops tend to be a little on the noisy side. RME has done quite a bit of research...http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techinfo/hdsp_notebase.htm
and basically there is digital noise induced. I have a dell inspiron 5100 and just got it all hooked up and running with Sonar 4 . I get noise when it's on the a/c adaptor, but quiet on the battery . Something to do with the switching power supply....something to keep in mind.

Jason

 

[dgatwood]

One thing that you may consider, and i have experienced this myself. Laptops tend to be a little on the noisy side. RME has done quite a bit of research...http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techinfo/hdsp_notebase.htm
and basically there is digital noise induced. I have a dell inspiron 5100 and just got it all hooked up and running with Sonar 4 . I get noise when it's on the a/c adaptor, but quiet on the battery . Something to do with the switching power supply....something to keep in mind.

Bad DC/DC board design, probably.

You can probably cure the problem by grounding the heck out of the interface. The easiest way to do that is to get yourself a 3-prong power cord and connect a 10 AWG wire to the ground pin. Connect the other end to the shield on an audio connector and plug it into an unused connector on the interface.

You might also be having problems because of dirty DC on the FireWire port. If that's the case, buy adapters to step down to 4-pin FireWire and back up to 6-pin FireWire, then use an external power supply for the audio interface.