fireface and laptops?

[PlugHead]

I thought the fireface was going to be a winner, and I imagine it to be a powerful tool. I want to know more, mostly from being a digi droid who's starting to make the move away from their dependency and creating a simple setup, with some quality outboard, to either track and mix, or dump off to PT later...

Any other's using the fireface as a "portable" rig? What laptops are people preferring/running? Soon, I'm going to be building a portable, but fairly powerful remote rig, and am considering the fireface as the hub: I'm wanting to equip a solid laptop for this role only - no BS, just audio. Throw in your experience with fireface or computer tech: I'm all ears ...

Thanks all,

[PlugHead]

bump...

trying to research within rme but they only have a newsgroup, not web-based, so i can't access info...

Anyone out there with the unit/laptop? Leads? Anything?

Should this go in Remote Possibilities instead?

[Don S]

Plughead,

I've been using the Fireface with a toshiba laptop P4 3.0 GHZ for a month now. I wish I had put more time into research before buying the PC. It was inexpensive compared to a Powebook G4. But not as user friendly. I came from the digiworld and wanted a quality editting program. There are serious limitations that you must consider, because there is NO way to upgrade ANYTHING.
Important things to look for:
Processor speed (if you want to run CPU hungry pluings and master)
Display - the powerbook is miles ahead in this spec.
I/O's - mine has 3 usb, 1 PCIMIA, thernet, 1934 VGA dual head for 2 monitors. but no P2 for a full keyboard.
Fan Noise - very important if you want to use it as a DAW. The centrino is quieter but I don't know about the performance.
Additional stuff - RPM of the drive. the internal handles 10 tracks no problem. DVD burner handy to backup data.

Good luck!

Don

[PlugHead]

Thanks Don,

Was wondering about the PC route myself - still using a Ti PowerBook 550, and am due to upgrade soon, but was waiting till I got the Fireface then move up a rung for the laptop. For me the jury's still out on Mac/PC, but I'm leaning towards a PC - either Centrino, or more likely an AMD 64 - they sure look to be a powerful machine, and I'm hoping to use it for both the FireFace in tracking duties, as well as for Giga, but not both together at the same time...

Thanks,

[jdunn]

First of all, you should look in the Low End Theory forum here. There's a 3 page thread about the Fireface.

Funny, I've been running a Titanium 550 Apple Powerbook for over 2 1/2 years now, it was my first laptop. A few weeks ago I was pondering this same dilemna, an AMD 64 laptop w/ Nuendo or Sequoia, or stick w/ Apple. Since musicians/producers want me to run Logic (I have 6.3.2), I ordered a custom 1.5 Ghz Aluminum Powerbook from the Apple Store.

Got the lighted keyboard model but went without the Super Drive (-$200). I have an external DVD burner, and an internal one is bound to get hot, thus reducing the life of your laptop. I did go for the faster 5400 rpm internal drive however, and got Final Cut Express for $99.

I found a 1 GB RAM for $200 that works great. Check out the PC2700 SODIMMs at Newegg. So now I have 1.25 GB RAM for cheap! A lot of people on the Apple Discussion forum have had problems after installing their own RAM, but that was an early Powerbook revision perhaps. Mine works perfectly. And Apple wants lots of money for extra RAM. Don't buy it from them. Trust me, it's really easy to install.

All in all, I'm happy to be using Mac OS X, my favorite operating system ever. The new Powerbook indeed has a killer screen, built-in Firewire 800, the Airport Extreme Card.......it rocks! I'm looking at either the Fireface or the Apogee AD-16X w/ Firewire X card.

If you do decide to go the PC route, have a look at the Sager Notebooks. Apparently they are some of the better AMD 64 notebooks out there. Oh, and Apple Titanium 550's are supposedly worth between $1,050-$1,250 on the used market. Haven't sold my old one yet, but I might. Or I may just keep it for an internet machine.

[PlugHead]

Originally posted by jdunn
First of all, you should look in the Low End Theory forum here. There's a 3 page thread about the Fireface.

Been there - this topic was posted about a month ago in lieu of hijacking that thread, which I've been scanning off an on, now with lots more great info...

I've been wanting a PC for giga, as well as another option for remotes, but haven't made my mind up yet - more wanting to get away from digi/Apple dependency after 6 or 7 years. I love my powerbook, but it's old for new technology, and I'm going to need another 'puter at some not so far-off point in time - just wondering if it should be a PC, or stay with what I know, which often seems the path of least resistance...

Cheers,

[jdunn]

Jay - I keep editing my post above. Yeah, I guess Giga only runs on PC. I would just make sure you can deal with Windows XP before deciding. I built a Windows XP machine, my first non-Apple. It was kind of fun to build, and a lot easier than I thought.

I plan on eventually running Sequoia on it for mastering, but haven't plunked down the $2,400 yet. Windows XP is pretty straightforward, but I'm sure there's all kinds of stuff in there I have no idea about. At least with a Mac, if I'm in a remote situation, live recording, etc.... I'm not going to be guessing about how to do something, as I'm very familiar with OS X.

[manning1]

plug head. i'm a puter engr. heres a tip.
do with it what you will.
if you want a fast pc laptop.
go to amd.com and click on where to buy. on the next page click notebook.
this will take you to a list of laptops running amd athlon and 64
processors. bear in mind this is a fast NEW emerging market. particularly as the amd 64 is such a fast chip. there will be good implementations of the a64 in laptops and probably some that some people are not as happy with.
the best way is to find a retailer before you buy the laptop ,
and run your (eg firewire sound solution) and software (eg giga)
on it. some key points. if going firewire make sure the
firewire sound solution is compatible with the laptop firewire interface(ask the manufacturer of the firewire sound solution).
also try and get a laptop with 7200 rpm drives. not the old slower drives. and probably lots of ram.
as i said this a64 market in laptops is going to be a HOT market.
particularly with mobile DAW users. but even though
the A64 is a very fast chip and i like it - just be aware to try the laptop in real world terms via a test before you plonk down your hard earned money. also be aware , versus towers;
laptops are less upgradeable and become obsolete more quickly.
just some ideas to consider.

[jdunn]

I'm thinking the 7200 rpm drives might be a little noisy in a laptop, but I could be wrong. You're usually going to have an external drive for audio anyway, though I'm sure a faster internal drive would be nice.

RME has some pretty detailed notes on FW800 compatibility and other things on their site.

FWIW, my approach is much the same. I don't plan on doing extensive mixes on the laptop, but rather, use it to track remotely and dump tracks onto the Fairlight later for editing/mixing.

That said, I've been loading up on all the free AudioUnit plug ins I can find. With the Logic Node capability of using additional Macs for DSP power, this could be useful for mixing ITB.

[PlugHead]

manning1 and jdunn,

Thanks for the notes: I realize the AMD 64 is a new contender for the laptop market, yet I'm still a bit leery of moving over to that for remotes: I have to agree with jdunn - I'm not wanting to have super strength for remotes, merely a rock-solid, but powerful enough system to do 8 to 16 channels input (44.1 mostly, but sometimes 8 channels @ 96k) and light edit/mix duties. The re-sellers couldn't tell me the FW chip/implementation for the 64 laptop, so I'd assume I'd have to get a cardbus FW800 I/O for predictable results?!? If an AMD 64 laptop can do that, I'll seriously look that route. If it's laden with hassles, I'll keep with a PB, and possibly look at a sequencer to run remote sessions. The great thing about the mid-level PB's is FW800 and 400 are standard, as well as the lovely display, and familiar OS X connectivity...

I'm almost of the mind to get the hell off of the computer upgrade path every time something new comes out. I just want a good mobile solution, and something less than a tower and display to lug around.

Regards,

[manning1]

well - if your worried plughead about being on the leading edge.
maybe give it a few months. as more amd 64 lapotops come to market and see how other people are doing.
or - heres another option. if you could handle a rackmount instead there are various people around doing rackmount amd athlons. ie: taking the innards of a proven athlon tower and putting them in a rackmount.
if you want to be even more confused wait till dual opteron laptops hit the market in droves. and watch the daw mobile crowd go crazy.
the key to protecting yourself in this type of hi tech market is to talk to the vendor ofwhatever you are interested in eg: 64 laptop and go see the vendor and run your firewire sound solution and pc multitrack software on the platform.
ie: ask for a trial tun. this is what i did when the athlons came out.
this way you can protect yourself.
but shortly overall i can see the time coming when youll run 150 tracks on a laptop, with the way things are going.

[jdunn]

Indeed, my Titanium 550 Powerbook has been serving me well, but it would barely run Logic 6 or NI Guitar Rig (which I hope to purchase soon). So, I upgraded out of necessity for a mobile solution that would run the programs I need.

Here are a few links on the RME site worth reading:

Firewire 800 Alert

FW800 under Windows XP SP2

I just ordered one of the Ice Cube FW 800 drive enclosures too.

[PlugHead]

jdunn,

Thanks for the links - I saw both those posts at RME: seems to be poor FW chipsets, and bad PCI cards. As for your Ti550: did you try a Fireface on it? I assume it's way too underpowered for much, but I'd assume you could record 8 tracks, esp. if you're using an ext. HD? I don't know, but MH's staff said you could record dozens of tracks with their MIO without any stress on the CPU (G4 PB's) so I'd assume the Fireface could do similar?!?

manning1: I've been looking at an AMD PC for awhile, but really want the stable system for outside work - still looking hard tho! I expect within 6 months to a year, I'll be really ready to jump into a new laptop, I'm really just fishing till I absolutely have to move on it. Thanks for your insight - I really know nothing about PC's

[manning1]

well plughead. heres an idea for you thats real cheap.
wont cost you much to get your feet wet and will always have resale value.
look around for a used amd duron 1.3ghz pc. you can find them sometimes for 150 bucks. put a nice fast hard drive with - and this is important - an 8mb cache. the drives are dirt cheap.
make sure you have 512 ram in it. keep the existing drive in the used machine for windows and use the new one with the nice big cache for your audio tracks. you should easily get 60 tracks plus plus out of it if its set up right.
then in a years time when this amd 64 hi speed laptop market has settled (as its very new)you can use the duron as a great home office machine as well as surfing the web or if you have kids for playing games etc. or if your REALLY HANDY. some folks would take the guts of the machine like the duron and using wood build a rackmount type case for it. it can look quite nice if done properly. at least youll have a great pc until there are more vendors selling amd 64 laptops , which will occur, and thus drive prices down. (note. if looking at a64. get the 939 NEW chip version. amd have moved to a new version. dont want to see you stuck with the older version.)
youll always get back at least 60 per cent i reckon even in a year
or so on the duron as they will be desirable fast machines for quite a while. this is what i helped a newbie (to recording)
friend with. we found him a used duron. he is a happy camper.
if your a songwriter like me try the demo of band in a box from pgmusic.com. simply put. you select styles and enter chords and it fgives you a back up band in software. then you lay down your vocals etc. a very neat songwriters aid for roughing out arrangements. also i use powertracks from pgmusic.com.
an amazing multitrack package for 49 bucks. ive turned lots of folks onto it and they always thank me profusely.
ive shown it to pro tools users and their normal reaction is.
"if only i'd known before i spent lots of money".
anyway , hope all this helps.
just some ideas. you could also consider a used athlon notebook if you can find one. but people in the know normally snap them up as they will do tons of tracks. so difficult to find.
if you DO find one try and ensure the firewire works ok and that it has 7200 rpm drive support.
all the best.

[MattiMattMatt]

Just got a 15" Apple PB, and planning to use it w/ Logic 7 and a FireFace for remote.

[manning1]

with respect matti. try one of the new amd 64 notebooks sometime running say nuendo, samplitude or what i use ...
powertracks. imho nothing beats an amd64 processor.
except an opteron level processor.
the new amd 64 market in these new notebooks is going to be very big with daw users. as more notebooks using this processor come to market.

[MattiMattMatt]

Manning -- thanks.

I'd love to see the AMD in action, and will keep an eye out for it.

In the meantime, though, I've got a week-old Powerbook chugging away, and so far so good, although I haven't done any real DAW work with it yet.

(Waiting for Logic 7 to arrive).

It sure looks nice, though, sitting there with its screen saver on, hooked up to a 23" LCD.

[manning1]

matti - just out of curiosity how long does it take you on a powerbook to noise reduce a 3 min 16 bit 44.1 audio track?
i'm just curious to know. some info for you.
until the amd 64 came out the best i could get on a PC was about 15 secs. a 64 user reported to me that it took 1.75 secs on his
amd 64. which i think is amazing. just curious to compare. and im trying to keep an open mind with mac. particularly as friends are always asking me for comparisons.
thanks.

[jdunn]

manning1 - You're a computer engineer, so I'll give you a pass here.....But aren't we straying into processor wars? And the thing about noise reducing a file is pretty vague (to me at least). I would assume that a Mac and a PC are not going to run the same noise reduction software, or are we talking about a plugin that is the same on both platforms?

Anyway, to address Plughead's question about running tracks on the Ti Book.....What I'm saying is that my older laptop will barely run Logic 6 Platinum, meaning that it's so slow that a single command with the mouse takes ages. It's not useable. That is why I had to upgrade, and of course, Logic will not run on an AMD, at least not without some voodoo emulation software crap which would render it worthless.

I have no electricity right now due to the massive rain storm in our area, but the laptop battery is making this post possible. Brought to you by the good folks at Apple and Verizon (the phone lines are still working at least).

On another note, I'd love to have a slick AMD 64 laptop running Sequoia, but I'm sure it will work fine on my 2.6 ghz XP machine. Needed that portable Logic/Guitar Rig action, thus Apple. So far this machine works great, even with the cheap RAM I put in.

[Don S]

I'm usually impressed with the combimed knowledge here - I'm so happy I'm not alone dealing with the computer side of recording music.

Manning- Question for you - can I get more bandwith by adding a PCIMIA to firewire adapter to my laptop? When I put a firewire drive in the chain with the fireface800 I can't record as many channels. Unfortunately, I didn't do as much research as I should have. The laptop only has one 4 pin firewire port and no usb2.

thanks!

Don

[jdunn]

Don - Agreed. The more computer heads the better. I wasn't being too serious there or anything.

I definitely think you should get a Firewire 800 card. Orange Micro has a nice looking one. Correct me if I'm wrong experts.

Oh, and that's PCMCIA card. As in, 'Pulse Code Modulation Central Intelligence Agency'. I like your version though, with the 'Missing In Action' on the end. Is that for George W. Bush?

[manning1]

DON S. could you tell me a little about your pc confign.
processor , memory, drive speeds etc.
thanks.

[MattiMattMatt]

Originally posted by manning1
matti - just out of curiosity how long does it take you on a powerbook to noise reduce a 3 min 16 bit 44.1 audio track?
i'm just curious to know. some info for you.
until the amd 64 came out the best i could get on a PC was about 15 secs. a 64 user reported to me that it took 1.75 secs on his
amd 64. which i think is amazing. just curious to compare. and im trying to keep an open mind with mac. particularly as friends are always asking me for comparisons.
thanks.

My PB is so new I haven't done this yet -- still setting stuff up and racing for a couple of deadlines. If this thread is still going when I get going on this, I'll let you know.

BTW, it's a 2.5 GHz G4 PowerBook w/ 1 GB RAM (to be increased in the near future).

[Don S]

Manning1 - Thanks for the reply!

Toshiba A75-S226 Laptop
P4 3.0 GHZ
512 Meg ram
5400 rpm 60 gig
533 FSB

External - 4 oin firewire port to OWP mercury elite FW drive (200G) to RME fireface

I checked IRQ settings and believe the PCIMIA to firewire adapter will help - any thoughts?

I tried to record as many tracks as possible using the internal drive. it maxes at 14. (at 44.1) With the FW drive in the chain, I get about 10 tracks.
This is to Samplitue 7.2

Thanks for your help!

Don

[manning1]

don - heres an idea. i think it might be an easier road if you can get it done.
on some recent laptops you can remove the internal slow drive,
ie: your 5400 rpm drive and replace it with a 7200 rpm drive.
this is the route i would look at first . and could relieve the firewire stress.
you certainly have an excellent fast processor.
with the right fast drive your track count should increase.
i would consult a toshiba dealers tech guy who KNOWS
that brand inside out and see if you could upgrade the internal drive easily. if you find out it can be done. make sure dma is enabled on the new hard drive. DMA is vitally important to getting lots of tracks on a DAW. you might also do this please,
and tell me the results....
get diskbench from prorec.com. it runs in a dos window.
its a very usefull utility and will tell me something about your system. could you please run it and tell me what it reports.
eg: potential track counts etc etc.
also you might want to check with a tech if your current 5400
rpm drive is running at its optimal fast speed. some dealers set them lower. in device manager is a clue. if you click on the drive properties. if you dont know what i'm talking about - in laymans terms there are several settings for different drives. for example on 7200 rpm drives if dma is not checked off in device manager ,
you wont get optimal daw performance ie: lots of tracks before the PC puffs out.
please get back to me. also it would help to know what recording software your using. some use more resources than others.
it will help me complete the picture as it were. i might have some optimisation ideas once i get the whole picture.
look forward to hearing from you.
peace.
PS - you have a vgood processor. its the drive area that needs to be addressed.

[DrDeltaM]

It might be even something else. A 5400rpm laptop drive still should easily handle lotsa tracks. Surely way more then the 14 at which your computer maxes out. Laptop drives are smaller then normal ones, so a 5400rpm laptop drive is faster then a 5400rpm normal drive, you can't directly compare the rounds per minute, as the size of the physical surface matters a lot as well of course.

Since your track performance goes down even more with the firewire drive (with a faster HD inside) connected, i'm suspecting some bad firewire port/chipset/whatever. Something wrong with that firewire port.
I know you share the HD and the FireFace on the same firewire port, but that shouldn't really be a problem at such low track counts. Bandwidth should be enough, unless your firewire port on your computer is not performing to the specs.

Btw, try switching the order of your firewire devices: connect the Fireface direct to your computer and the firewire HD linked thru the FireFace. How does that influence the performance?

[manning1]

as an example don - you might want to contact
the folks at the following link and give them your notebook model number details (i dont know how good they are - never dealt with them. i would ask a and double check with toshiba.)
you might be able to upgrade it.
www.bixnet.com/60722innohad.html
also if you google for "toshiba internal 7200 rpm hard drive upgrade"...quite a lot of links should show up.

get back to me. and hope this helps. but dont rush things.
all the best !!

[manning1]

drdelta is correct. try and find out what firewire chipset
the toshiba has. and see if its compatible with your firewire sound solution and lacie.

[Don S]

Mattithijas,

The RME only has 1 fw400 port. I can't put the drive on the other side.

Manning1-
Very interesting program! I ran the diskbench. The numbers are not even close to the "typical" results.

Here they are:
Timer Check=1000
CPU Check = 11.87%
CPU INdex = 5.665348
Open = 0
Write = 42156ms, 6.07MB/s, CPU=0.35%
Flush= 0ms
Rewin= 15ms
Read=12094ms, 21.17MB/s, CPU=0.35%
Close= 0ms
Blocksize=131072, MB/s=7.84,Tracks=98.2, CPU=0.61%

Blocksize=65536, MB/s=5.71, Tracks=61.41, CPU=0.69

Blocksize=32768, MB/s=2.96, Trcks=35.25, CPU=0.74%

Blocksize=16384, MB/s=1.51, Tracks=17.90, CPU=0.82%

Blocksize=8192, MB/s=.84, Tracks=9.96, CPU=.82%

Please let me know if this is normal (mac guy here).
Thanks so much for help.

Plus, I'm running Samplitude 7.2 (ASIO driver) and Pyramix 4.3 native.

Don

[DrDeltaM]

Ah yes, my mistake, it's only the 800 port that comes double on the FireFace. I'm not sure, but it might be possible to use those as link-thru ports anyway with a 'firewire800-to-400' cable. An 800 -port should be able to run in 400 mode i'd say.

Oh, and it's just 'Mathijs'