on location recording with DAW and notebook: more stable connection?

[fafalio]

hello friends.
for you, considering a laptop with a DAW for on location recording, what is the more stable connection?
now i use firewire connection.
is there more suitable connection for audio stable as PCI?
thanks a lot.
f.

[Mats H]

Originally Posted by fafalio

hello friends.
for you, considering a laptop with a DAW for on location recording, what is the more stable connection?
now i use firewire connection.
is there more suitable connection for audio stable as PCI?
thanks a lot.
f.

Hi! From recording a lot of concerts, two musicals, a few on location CD recordings and a lot of home studio recordings, I believe that many Firewire of PCI/PCIe interfaces of today have excellent stability, depending on the manufacturer of the audio interface at hand. It also depends on the computer configuration.

I've had RME Fireface 800 as my main audio interface for the last three years and it works great with my HP nx9420 laptop and my DIY stationary workstation in the home studio. Both have Texas Instruments FW chipset. I've also used PCI interfaces from ESI audio that work just fine with the computers I've tried them on. I've never had a failed recording in this time.

I believe it comes down to choosing a good brand of audio interface and drivers. RME is a safe bet that will work well on most audio computers. By the way, they have no interfaces that use USB. USB taxes the CPU of the host machine more than Firewire/PCI.

[fafalio]

my set up is the same friend!
i also use fireface 800 with nx9420, but sometimes fireface looses signal (i hope with a good UPS i could solve this problem, because it happens in my house).
the problem is that on location recording sometimes i have error with samplitude (LOST ASIO BUFFER) and i don t know if it is a problem of samplitude or something else.
i have bought nx9420 because it is considered, as all HP business notebook, among the best for audio, with its texas instruments chipset.

[Mats H]

Originally Posted by fafalio

my set up is the same friend!
i also use fireface 800 with nx9420, but sometimes fireface looses signal (i hope with a good UPS i could solve this problem, because it happens in my house).
the problem is that on location recording sometimes i have error with samplitude (LOST ASIO BUFFER) and i don t know if it is a problem of samplitude or something else.
i have bought nx9420 because it is considered, as all HP business notebook, among the best for audio, with its texas instruments chipset.

Hi! Nice to hear someone else has a similar setup

About the lost signal, I don't know. I get that sometimes when booting up the computer. Either the computer has recognised the soundcard or not. About one in fifty times perhaps. It's just a mattter of restarting the soundcard and the problem goes away for another couple of months. No biggie. I've never had it lose ASIO buffer or signal mid-way through a recording... yet

In sweden we have quite stable power and get perhaps a power outage once every other year or so. I haven't quite found the need for a UPS, as the laptop saves all files anyway with it's internal battery in case of an outage and I carry a KORG MR1000 as a backup recorder. Perhaps that's the problem, intermittent power surges. Have you spoken to RME about the problem? I hear they have excellent support. It might be a broken soundcard that you can get fixed.

[summer_room]

Hi
Just wanted to say, that I run a Compal cl56 1.6 Ghz Centrino (VIA FW chipset) with a RME Fireface 400, and I have never found it unstable.
Actually, I have not had any problems at all with the setup - I'm a happy user

Best - Jon

[fafalio]

same set up, but with digital performer under mac osx.
all it is ok. without clicks and stop.
With samplitude the same problems is both with hp nx9420 and mac book pro in bootcamp.
i m evaluating at this point to use digital performer in recording and then samp in post production.
thanks to all.
f.

[Mats H]

Originally Posted by fafalio

same set up, but with digital performer under mac osx.
all it is ok. without clicks and stop.
With samplitude the same problems is both with hp nx9420 and mac book pro in bootcamp.
i m evaluating at this point to use digital performer in recording and then samp in post production.
thanks to all.
f.

Hi,

I'm using Reaper with great results. Never a hiccup in the recording process. It buffers to ram if the harddrive is busy.

[ghellquist]

Keep on using Samplitude.

The error message "lost ASIO buffer" is actually misnamed. It really should read "I believe there is a possibility that we might have lost a buffer but it is not certain". Most other programs simply ignore this, that is why you get more error message in Samplitude.

There is no way for any software to reliably know if there are lost ASIO buffers. ASIO simply does not have that kind of flow control.

Samplitude does its best by measuring the reception time for the buffers, but this is by no means a certain thing.

A lot of messages is an indication that you are close to the limit of the system. You could increase the limit and decreaset the likehood to close by zero by the normal measures:
- larger buffers
- settings in windows (priority for background processes)
- turning off antivirus
- turning off network
- turning off indexing
- turning off scheduled things
- doing regular reformats of the hard drive
- probably more.

Gunnar

[csbarnet]

I've been using an hp/compaq nx9600 with a fireface 800/Samplitude for several years now. At first, I had problems with dropouts using the 4-pin firewire connection on the laptop. I bought a PC card with 6-pin firewire and have never had another problem. Could have been a problem with that particular 4-pin to 6-pin cable, but the 4-pin connector just seems less secure.

Not sure if the nx9420 also has the 4-pin firewire connector, but most PC laptops do.

[Mats H]

Originally Posted by csbarnet

I've been using an hp/compaq nx9600 with a fireface 800/Samplitude for several years now. At first, I had problems with dropouts using the 4-pin firewire connection on the laptop. I bought a PC card with 6-pin firewire and have never had another problem. Could have been a problem with that particular 4-pin to 6-pin cable, but the 4-pin connector just seems less secure.

Not sure if the nx9420 also has the 4-pin firewire connector, but most PC laptops do.

The nx9420 indeed has a 4-pin FW connector. They don't seem very sturdy. Also, half of the off the shelf cables I've bought are of shitty quality and won't work at all. Even the cable that came with the soundcard was faulty. Upmarket cables seem to work better.

[LX3]

For what its worth, back in 2002 I was recording using two MOTU 896s (with a Focusrite Octopre connected to one of them by ADAT optical), giving me 24 inputs. I had the two 896s plus an external firewire drive which I was recording the audio to, all daisy-chained together, and connected to the firewire port on an Apple 800MHz iBook.

It worked fine, but I believe that was more thanks to MOTU's hardware and software design than any skill on my part. I recorded several 1hr+ shows that way (before I decided it was too slow to set up and moved over to dedicated hard disk recorders).

On the other hand, I've seen other firewire interfaces that wouldn't record 5 minutes of decent audio before blowing up, and cheap firewire hard drives that cause all kinds of bus glitches.

So in my opinion, there's not a lot wrong with Firewire's underlying technology. Where things go wrong is with bad hardware and driver design (one manufacturer particularly comes to mind there), chipset incompatibilities, OS issues, and all that other computer fun. In which case you may well have to worry about daisy chaining and chipsets, etc

Like any computer based DAW that you intend to use for mission-critical applications, I think it's important to research the options carefully, and test like crazy.

[marty lester]

Originally Posted by fafalio

hello friends.
for you, considering a laptop with a DAW for on location recording, what is the more stable connection?
now i use firewire connection.
is there more suitable connection for audio stable as PCI?
thanks a lot.
f.

i've used the MOTU Traveler, the M-Audio lightbridge (for 32 channels of 48K, 24 bit), and yes, even a Digi MBox with great success. never a drop-out once i got the software
dialed in. my preferences is firewire for sure.

i've been studying up a bit on the expansion card options for my macbook pro, but
for now, it's firewire all the way if possible.

marty.

[David Spearritt]

I use a TC Electronic Konnekt 48 on a regular basis for 12 channel classical recordings and I have never had one glitch, ever. There are lots of people complaining about these boxes, including a friend of mine who recently bought a brand new Dell laptop and wanted a decent "sound card" for it. I recommended the Konnekt 24.

Well he had lots of problems, so I felt obliged to assist. After a lot of research and experimentation, we were directed to DPC spike issues causing the problems.

That Dell machine had such driver problems causing huge DPC spikes, we finally got it stable after a BIOS upgrade and disabling, ACPI battery, DVD drive, LAN NIC, and the Wireless NIC. You need to disable these things in Device manager.

So it wasn't the Konnekt or its drivers after all, it was the Dell drivers for other devices causing DPC spikes. I urge you to load this little DPC Checker and check to see if you are getting spikes:
DPC Latency Checker

and then disable all the stuff on your laptop you don't need. Audio stability will blissfully return. Talking PC here of course, ignore if Mac user.

[ohmsweetohm]

Sonic Solutions (Sonic Studio now) recently sent out a warning to their users about how easily a FW cable can go bad and interfere with audio transmission. It's deceptive because the same cable can work fine for asymmetrical transmission (copying data) but fail for audio work.

I've had a FF800 for years now. I think got one of the first off the line. The unit has been flawless. Any trouble I've had has either been a rare (very rare) bad driver update in which case I just rolled back to the last one or a bad cable.

I took my FF800 on an international tour in 2005 recording between 40 and 50 shows all over the US, Canada and Europe. My laptop at the time was a Mac G3500. It worked perfectly every time. I'm currently using a Sonica Labs PC with the same FF. The funny part is that here is a digital technology that in 5 years not only isn't obsolete, but is selling for $400 MORE than the day I bought it. Pretty incredible. RME really made a fine product.