24/96 and low latency recording on a Laptop

[jcschild]

HI,
Dell will not work especially at low latency
you need a lpatop with TI chipset firewire. Dell has Ricoh as do 99% of laptops off the shelf.

Mac
HP (higher end)
ADK
Clevo

all have TI chipset

RME and Motu will give you low latency nothing else will.

Scott
ADK

[armageddon]

Thanks, I didn't know that. I'll look at the other brands.

Okay, If I was to dump the GuitarRig 2 low latency requirement, would I still need a TI card?

[OafyC]

What about a firewire ExpressCard in a Dell? Could save a bit of money going that route.

[jcschild]

HI,
no matter what a laptop for pro audio use must have Texas Instruments firewire.

if not

1) many interfaces wont even be recognized
2) if they are they will not work below 512 buffer
3) 48k is a struggle 96 would be near impossible.

its not the software your using but the lousy chipsets in most consumer laptops
the issue is they are all trying to be the cheapest in doing so they cut corners everywhere possible.

nor do they expect the laptop to actually be used as a workstation.
most are designed with the traveling biz man in mind who is doing word/excel on a plane.

pro audio is extremely taxing on a system as we are attempting to get near real time performance. its actually worse than video editing.

as far as adding a TI based Express slot card NO.

its like trying to put 8" water pipe worth of water into a 1" pipe.
you cant take a bad chipset and make it good by adding the better chipset to an already poor one.

at best your interface will become recognized (when it didnt) but low latency will be now where to be found.

this from my website

Issues with the majority of new laptops.

Not all laptops are created equal. While they may appear to have the same specs (processor, memory, harddrive), the performance for Pro audio is drastically different.
Most name brand laptops will NOT work for Pro audio as they are plagued with resource allocation issues, IRQ conflicts and poor BIOS.

Contrary to popular belief no one makes their own laptops. In other words Dell is made by someone as is Apple, Gateway, etc.
There are 9 or so ODMs (manufacturer's of laptops) in the world.
Clevo, Quanta, Compal, Mitac, Asus, MSI, Twinhead, Uniwill/ECS, Arima, Movita.


While this has to do with both Intel and AMD I will confine this to Intel as AMD Laptops are underpowered.

Intel Core 2 Duo, and Santa Rosa (core 2 duo with 800 fsb)

1) Chipsets: The main chipset is the Intel 945 PM/GM (GM indicates onboard video) and 965. And this is not the issue. The Chipset issue is what is being used for the Cardbus(if it actually still has one), memory card reader, modem, network, Firewire, or what's called combo chipsets (everything on one controller).

Ricoh: (Asus and others) a lot of incompatibility with audio interfaces and general poor performance.
ENE: (compal and others) same as above, the Cardbus is horrid. Usually with Via Firewire. The Via Firewire does better than Ricoh.
Realtek: now found on several laptops, not just as audio, but audio, card reader, Cardbus, modem, Firewire.
Texas Instruments: Firewire and Cardbus (again Cardbus is gone from most new laptops). The chipset to have!

2) BIOS: most laptops are 512k some are 1 meg, where a desktop will have 4meg- 8meg.
This is probably the biggest issue. The BIOS for the most part is responsible for IRQ and resource allocation. A small and poorly written BIOS is what causes so many things to be lumped onto one IRQ.
ACPI handles this.
Microsoft developer site

With laptops you have “hot swap” devices (cardbus, Express slot and more), and this adds to the issue. Understanding that resource allocation is memory based (name space and virtual memory), a small BIOS has a hard time allocating space for all potential product IDs.

Add to that we now have PCIe even more BIOS issues arise.
More from Microsoft.

“Insufficient bridge resources appear when the platform BIOS cannot assign appropriate PCI-bridge resource windows during POST. Systems supporting hot-plug PCI devices are particularly problematic. When a PCI device can be hot-plugged behind a PCI bridge at run time, it is impossible for the BIOS to ascertain during POST how large a bridge resource window must be to accommodate a device. Additionally, a PCI bridge device might be hot plugged in certain situations—for example, in generic docking solutions that connect through CardBus adapters”

“””The previous scenarios are exacerbated with the emergence of PCI Express. PCI Express defines many bridge devices that are used to represent ports, thereby making complex bridge hierarchies more prevalent. Additionally, PCI Express hot-plug will be widely used in desktop and workstation client systems, so hot-plug scenarios will not be limited to large servers.

“” So small BIOS means less ability to handle ACPI steering and resources in “virtual space”

3) Expectation of ODM: Most laptops are NOT designed to be used as workstations. The vendors never expected this. Laptops are designed to be light weight, have long battery life, and be used mostly by business people on the go, or typical home user surfing the net, playing music, and so on. Therefore they program the BIOS in a careless manner.

Here is more about how its left to the individual ODM to program the bios.

“””The rules for the above programmable ranges are:
1. ALL of these ranges MUST be unique and NON-OVERLAPPING. It is the BIOS or system designers responsibility to limit memory population so that adequate PCI, PCI Express, High BIOS, PCI Express Memory Mapped space, and APIC memory space can be allocated.
2. In the case of overlapping ranges with memory, the memory decode will be given priority.
3. There are no Hardware Interlocks to prevent problems in the case of overlapping ranges.
4. Accesses to overlapped ranges may produce indeterminate results.
5. The only peer-to-peer cycles allowed below the top of memory (register TOLUD) are DMI to PCI Express VGA range writes. Note that peer to peer cycles to the Internal Graphics VGA range are not supported.”””

Taken from Intel's whitepapers Here

A few manufacturers put more thought into it. Again the more expensive Texas Instruments chipset is a good indication that there was consideration for use as a workstation. The BIOS will be a bit more open and better programming as well as usually larger. The more different chipsets there are internally the more likely they will have their own resources, as opposed to everything in one chipset. So that about covers the less obvious (hard drives, memory etc)

Scott
ADK

[armageddon]

Thanks for your reply!
I have another question concerning the TI-chipset. I'v read that the Sony iLINK firewire connection is TI OHCI compliant. Does this mean that the VAIO notebooks have proper firewire implementation?

[jcschild]

HI,
Some Sony's have TI! however they other issues.
(too much IRQ sharing for one)

Scott
ADK

[armageddon]

My god, it seems like a jungle to find an appropriate laptop!
Thanks for your help.

Okay, how about a Apple Macbook NON-Pro with a Core 2 Duo 2,16 and 2GB of Ram? Would that be enough?

[OafyC]

Originally Posted by jcschild

HI,


as far as adding a TI based Express slot card NO.

its like trying to put 8" water pipe worth of water into a 1" pipe.
you cant take a bad chipset and make it good by adding the better chipset to an already poor one.

This does not make sense. ExpressCard slots operate at PCI Express x1 speeds. On desktop computers no one worries about what the built in chipset is because you should always use a dedicated PCI or PCI Express card. Why should it be any different in Laptops? At the speeds ExpressCard operates compared to Firewire, the comparison would be reversed, 1" worth of water into an 8" pipe.

The ExpressCard slot firewire card WILL NOT EVER interface with your built in firewire. It's not like you stick the card in and it sends your firewire signal to the built in firewire chipset and then to the system chipset. You know better than this as a system builder.

There may be other factors that make a more expensive laptop better, but Firewire should not really be the dealbreaker.

Until someone (who is not biased by the fact that they sell the product being recommended) proves me wrong, I will stand by my opinion.

ExpressCard is NOT like Cardbus. Back with cardbus the data had to go from the card, to the cardbus controller, and then to the chipset. With ExpressCard it goes from the card over a PCI Express line directly to the system chipset. Cardbus itself wasn't that bad, the RME interface that directly interfaces with cardbus rather than Firewire doesn't do too shabby a job.

[jcschild]

HI,
i am glad you are so smart!

on laptops
the express card slot is NOT a direct connect to the north bridge.
the Express slot has to connect to a controller chip.
its just a physical reworking of the cardbus slot and is still connected to the 3rd party chipset.
EG: Ricoh, ENE, Orange Mirco (02R) or TI chipset

in fact i quick look will show that as far as windows is concerned it still calls the "Express slot" the Cardbus. in device manager.

there are 5-7 utilities that will show your internal connections

1 is Sisftsandra.

therefore adding a TI based chipset will have little to no effect.

yes i sell TI based laptops but i also listed others who do.

we went thru over 20 shells before we finally found ones that worked.

dont you think i tried adding TI based cards?
FYI you can scour the forums and see litterally 100's of posts (particularly Dell)
where people have tried it.
until you have tried it dont debate it with me.

Sheesh

Scott
ADK

[armageddon]

Did some research and I'll probably go for the Macbook Pro together with a RME device.

[MrT]

Originally Posted by jcschild

HI,
Dell will not work especially at low latency
you need a lpatop with TI chipset firewire. Dell has Ricoh as do 99% of laptops off the shelf.

Mac
HP (higher end)
ADK
Clevo

all have TI chipset

RME and Motu will give you low latency nothing else will.

Scott
ADK

I just got a Dell Vostro 1500 which has yet to arrive. I just saw all this firewire chipset info.

I wasn't planning on using this as my main workstation (mostly will be for my photography) but I was hoping to be able to record and maybe mix with it while on the go. That being said I paid about $700 for it and feel like I couldn't get into a decent "TI" based chipset system with similar capabilities for anywhere near the same price. And I would really love to buy one of your fancy ADK laptops but I tihnk I gotta keep what I have.

So my question is: Would there be any way that you are aware of (since you said you did extensive testing with this) to get this system to work well enough to mix songs with or even get a little tracking done (maybe 8 channels max). I generally use Audition 1.5, Wavelab, Fuity Loops and Reason. If you could let me know what worked the best in your testing (models of interface and settings) I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks

[jcschild]

HI,
you might get lucky @ 1024 buffer.

Scott
ADK

[MrT]

Originally Posted by jcschild

HI,
you might get lucky @ 1024 buffer.

Scott
ADK

gee thanks... I think that was the type of question that could have gained or lost you a customer. Guess which you just did.

[SFTPH]

I've seen a few posts about Kats wanting killer mobile rigs w/ cheap Windows laptops. IT AINT GONNA HAPPEN. Buck up and spend the money on a quality computer.

[jcschild]

Originally Posted by MrT

gee thanks... I think that was the type of question that could have gained or lost you a customer. Guess which you just did.

ok what ever man. you asked if the Vostro would work i answered your question.
its just the facts.
there a huge amount of forum postings about Dell and particularly the Vostro
most of them very negative.

you will be lucky to get it to work @ 1024
Scott
ADK

[manning1]

T.
cant we all just be nice to one another in this crazy world ?
from what ive seen on here and visiting on occasion the jcs site obviously
his company does one heck of a lot of testing of different daw approaches/configs/solutions.
and obviously has an impressive rosta of clients.
just saying...i think this type of detailed work and research
should be respected. tis only fair.

to the OP....armageddon....
you have two choices.
do your own in depth research and test out your daw software and chosen sound device
on various laptops to nail down your optimum buying decision,
or consider a company like jcs.
one thing to be aware of is....the laptop market is in such a constant state of flux
that a particular laptop config might work for a friend or colleague of yours,
but might not for you.....possibly because your useing a different sound device/software/set up..
and/or sometimes there can be subtle changes made at the manufacturing level of the lap that
you might not be aware of.

good luck.