fireface and laptops?

[manning1]

DON S.....my comments follow......
from diskbench notice the write speed of the drive at 6mb/sec.
right there is a bottleneck that i think is an issue.
thats slow. bear in mind also that windows has to do its thing.
SO if you have windows OS plus your apps and tracks on that same internal 5400 rpm drive you can get "contention" occurring. ie: the application and the OS contending for resources. this is not a trivial matter.
my recommendation is to still think about an internal hard drive upgrade 7200 rpm.. but as i said i would consult a tech support guy on the best suitable drive.
i should say in advance - sometimes - technology being what it is , solutions are a compromise often.
samplitude is an excellent program. i use its younger brother called magix music studio and got 20 tracks even on systems
that were below recommendation just to see if it would run !
so i know the magix folk write excellent code.
also out of interest what does pyramix do ?
i dont know much about it. is this for transferring files tween pc and mac ?
also on the firewire external issue i would contact rme,
and see if they have some special solution i dont know about to accomodate both their sound solution and the lacie.
conceptually in the pc world...and this is what i run on a amd tower....i put the win OS on one small 7200 rpm drive on its own channel, and my audio tracks on a seperate 7200 rpm drive.
being on seperate channels is good because of the contention issue i mentioned earlier.
peace.
ps - if ya got anymore q's just ask.

[Don S]

Manning,

Thanks so much for the response. If this machine is a dog, I'll certainly trade up for an AMD64 laptop. I need a field recorder that will write 24 tracks to a DAW. It seems you don't have much hope for this Toshiba.
Pyramix is DAW software designed for editing classical music. It's made by the swiss company "Merging Technologies". They teamed up with engineers from Nagra. It's becoming poular here in NYC. It sounds absolutely amazing. I've done AB comparisons with Samplitude and Protools. The differences are NOT subtle.
Oh - the internal drive is partitioned - is that also bad? So, am I understanding this correctly, a 7200 internal will write faster than a 7200 external on the FW chain?

Don
PS - Sorry Mathijs

[manning1]

Don S....
frankly i wouldnt pull the plug on the notebook you have right now for a couple of reasons.
1. amd 64 processors are still quite high priced, and as ive worked for computer manufacturers; what we used to do is bring out the new tech at the high price (to repay RD costs) then step down the price to the mass market. then really lower the price
when we brought out the next tech big thing.
2. if you can wait a bit (maybe being happy with an internal drive upgrade) this amd 64 laptop market is going to be a big thing(its already taking off) and likely more notebook vendors will enter the AMD64 segment. thus leading to competition.

you might even - if you shop around (but ask tosh tech support)
be able to put a 7200 rpm 8mb cache drive in the notebook.
the 8mb is a nice to have. on desktop systems it works well for multitrack audio.
an interesting site to visit isnotebookforums.com i think it is.

if were me i would see what i could do to the current notebook,
with a view longer term to A64. then when you go a64 later
you could do what i do. i have one machine for surfing the net,
(which you could use the current machine for) and later the A64
as dedicated daw (plus home finance etc).
i personally use two amd towers and am still waiting for the
notebook market to flush out further.

disclaimer,,,as i'm often asked this. i have never had any business relationship with amd. i just like their processors
as a user computer engineer and daw user.

ps..that pyramix looks interesting. if you want some interesting free digital audio software check out some of the programs at
hitsquad.com. a plethora. if you ever want an interesting songwriters aid check out band in a box sometime.
peace.
ps...another reason not to spend big money is i expect further ramp ups in processor power over the next two years.
but we will see.

[manning1]

also don i would also ask pyramix tech support about the amd64
notebook market. this will give you an additional check to what i'm telling you, your software vendor can be an important resource in this fast moving market. probably they - if not already done so - will be looking at acquiring A64,
because it will make software compile faster than on a standard older system. usually the cycle is software developers are some of the earliest adopters of new processor technology because they need the speed for programming. then it trickles down to end users.
peace and i hope ive been of some help.
ps - also watch for price drops after xmas.

[manning1]

oh ps....i forgot. imho partitioning . i dont bother.
partitioning is way overblown imho.
you can just set up different folders on a hard drive.
eG; one for pyramix stuff, one for samplitude etc
what i do in magix is have a magix master song folder with sub folders for each newsong i'm working on. each with its own track custom template for that song A la samplitude templates.

whoa ...forgot something....do a search on your notebook for *.tmp files. these can build up over time and really dog down a system. you normally find them building up in the windows/temp sub folder. a lot of folks dont know about these nasties.

by the way - i forgot...an amd 64 system will eat 24 tracks for breakfast. A TIP !! best bet when shopping do what i do take along samplitude and load it on the system your thinking of buying before you pay for it and do a STRESS TEST. i would suggest take a synth along and just record 40 tracks of anything.
see in real terms how it performs. this is what i do. any decent vendor will let you run such a test cos they want your business.
AND MAKE SURE YOUR FIREWIRE SOLUTION WILL WORK WITH IT BEFORE BUYING BY CHECKING WITH RME and telling them the a64 model you are thinking of getting.
peace.