Best Laptops for Pro Tools LE

[RickyMoss]

Thought I'd try here as well as this is driving me up the wall ... Is it my hard drive????? - internal ( 30 gb - partitioned 20gb sys / 10gb data ultra ATA100 HDD , External usb2.0 7200rpm 80gb partitioned for audio ( fat32 , 32k 2 x 15 gb the remainder as storage )........... Is it not enough memory - 512 ddr 333mhz 2700sodimm, the P4 ( 2.6 GHZ ) , should I be using Firewire for hard drive??? Please see below any help is HUGELY!!!! APPRECIATED!!!!

I've just recently bought an m-box with the factory plug-ins and am running it through an ACER laptop P4 2.6 , 512DDR, 30gb internal hardrive which has 10 gb partitioned for audio. I've got an external usb2.0 80 gb hard drive but i'll come to that later......
Basically got everything up and running fine and love the system However a couple a weeks in after familiarising myself with pro-tools le 6.4 errors on playback, recording, and bounce to disk. The main ones i'm encountering are relating to hadware buffer size ( 6086, 9093, 9092 ) which i've increased and decreased etc etc. I've done various system tweaks as per reccomendations on the forum and the answerbase and also took my external hard drive out of the usb ports in the back of the laptop altogether and only use it for storage now as it seemed as soon as you ran that and the m-box together protools just errored again..
So i'm recording to my internal hard drive. Point is i'm still getting loads of errors, I am recording at the moment approx 11 track ( as an example ) using an m-audio radium 49 via usb (self powered via power pack) so bout 4 midi tracks through sample tank on an aux track and also bout 6 audio tracks (guitar,vocalsetc) and the master fader , using only bout 3 plug-ins again on the master fader and the sampletank on the aux. Error, Error Error . Help PLease?!?!??!

Thankyou any possible offer of a solution or workaround is hugely appreciated.

[dizzyzuma]

I hate to burst your bubble but I have a similar setup to yours and I would say it is your processor. I know what you're thinking because I thought the same thing but the Athlon 64's are just way better at ProTools for now. Sell your laptop and get the eMachine 6811 or 6809. Even then you might have a buffer error here and there but it won't be like what you have now.

There are tweaks and this and that you can do to slighty improve your situation but I haven't seen anything that would "fix" the problem for good.

Good Luck

[Tuur]

Yo people,

Living in the Netherlands Europe, which laptop should you recommend for live recordings with 002R. I like also a dvd rw. And this 80 Gig seems to be enough. Anthlon? Centrino? Yes /no ?

Dell is easy but is it oke? like you guys talk about the emachines. I can't find them here...
Acer?

Which one is the best or very good one now??

Looked at this forum but this laptop section is looooooong

Any help apriciated.

Thanx
tuur

[AWright]

Following up on my previous eMachines M6811 posts:

I've tried two different PCMCIA firewire cards (Adaptec and Dynex - the only two at my local BestBuy store). The Adaptec did not work at all, and eMachines confirmed my dawning awareness that the eMachines has a VIA chipset and wants VIA compliant cards. The Adaptec is NEC compliant. The Dynex is VIA and it did work, but not as well as the on-board firewire port.

Thanks to this forum, I've tried many other tweaks and last night looked at the whole IRQ sharing issue. The on-board firewire port does not share any IRQ number with any other device, so no changes were necessary. When the the Dynex was installed, it shared the same bus as some USB devices. I uninstalled the Dynex, and will go with the on-board. I finally tried the external drive (PPA firewire/USB) via one of the USB ports on the back of the laptop, and that now works well, even playing back audio, although I was not editing anything.

Bottom line: My best results with the M6811 so far are with the Digi002R connected directly to the laptop's on-board firewire port, recording and playback from the system (C:\) drive, and using the external drive to backup sessions/audio files via a separate USB connection.

Things seem to work best with only the minimal windows optimization steps taken as set forth by Digidesign in the manual. When I went deeper into the "recommended" tweaks or other "XP Optimization" steps I tried, it seemed to only cause minor problems (like taking longer to load the program, not showing all of the edit screen waveforms, other glitches). I was doing all of these tweaks to see how low I could get the HW Buffer settings. Right now it seems recording will have to be at 512 minimum and playback at 256 minimum. If I'm editing, messing with plugins, playback has to be higher.

I spoke to a studio owner where I've recorded in the past and he said this is what he runs at, so now I'm not so worried that I'm not getting good performance. I recorded a bass track with a compression plugin along my 6 drums and 1 guitar previously recorded, had the HW buffer at 512 and did not have low latency monitoring on (can't with the plug in, right?) and I did not have any latency problem, which is really the bottom line for me. Perhaps with lots of virtual instruments and plugins you would notice the latency more, but I'm happy now.

Thanks to Terry and everyone else for GREAT info on this forum and if you excuse me, I'll be recording now!

Adam

[thopman]

Your welcome, Adam.

Very eloquent recap of the state-of-affairs on the eMachine! I am exactly where you are at (Digi on firewire, audio drive on external via USB-2) and with similar results/buffer settings.

This seems to be the optimal, as we have both come to the same conclusion. It's nice to have that confirmation! I could easily have been wrong (believe me!).

While it'd be "nice" to work at lower buffer settings, I agree that the ones you describe work fine, and with no noticable latency issues.

I am now working to squeeze more performance out of my 512 mb RAM. Looks like I'll have to upgrade that soon in order to run all the virtual synth plugs I want to.

I've done some reading on the RAM upgrade (there are threads here on that), so let me know if you have questions. (I haven't actually *tried* it yet, though . . .)

Take care, and stay in touch!

--Terry

[AWright]

Yes - I may look into the RAM upgrade as I get more virtual. I want to also let everyone know that I have had excellent experiences with eMachines technical support. It's a toll call if you're not in Utah, but it's well worth it, as they have been knowledgeable, fast and courteous. I waited on hold for less than 1 minute each time I called, and they are open long hours (something like 6:00 am to midnight US Mountain time). I see that Gateway bought them up this year, so perhaps folks in other countries will have an easier time buying these.

Adam

[EDurney]

Following up on my previous eMachines M6811 posts:

I've tried two different PCMCIA firewire cards (Adaptec and Dynex - the only two at my local BestBuy store). The Adaptec did not work at all, and eMachines confirmed my dawning awareness that the eMachines has a VIA chipset and wants VIA compliant cards. The Adaptec is NEC compliant. The Dynex is VIA and it did work, but not as well as the on-board firewire port.

Thanks to this forum, I've tried many other tweaks and last night looked at the whole IRQ sharing issue. The on-board firewire port does not share any IRQ number with any other device, so no changes were necessary. When the the Dynex was installed, it shared the same bus as some USB devices. I uninstalled the Dynex, and will go with the on-board. I finally tried the external drive (PPA firewire/USB) via one of the USB ports on the back of the laptop, and that now works well, even playing back audio, although I was not editing anything.

Bottom line: My best results with the M6811 so far are with the Digi002R connected directly to the laptop's on-board firewire port, recording and playback from the system (C:\) drive, and using the external drive to backup sessions/audio files via a separate USB connection.

Things seem to work best with only the minimal windows optimization steps taken as set forth by Digidesign in the manual. When I went deeper into the "recommended" tweaks or other "XP Optimization" steps I tried, it seemed to only cause minor problems (like taking longer to load the program, not showing all of the edit screen waveforms, other glitches). I was doing all of these tweaks to see how low I could get the HW Buffer settings. Right now it seems recording will have to be at 512 minimum and playback at 256 minimum. If I'm editing, messing with plugins, playback has to be higher.

I spoke to a studio owner where I've recorded in the past and he said this is what he runs at, so now I'm not so worried that I'm not getting good performance. I recorded a bass track with a compression plugin along my 6 drums and 1 guitar previously recorded, had the HW buffer at 512 and did not have low latency monitoring on (can't with the plug in, right?) and I did not have any latency problem, which is really the bottom line for me. Perhaps with lots of virtual instruments and plugins you would notice the latency more, but I'm happy now.

Thanks to Terry and everyone else for GREAT info on this forum and if you excuse me, I'll be recording now!

Adam

Adam,

I have configured my setup in the same way that you´re.
A couple of days ago i installed (Added)a second operating system and I installed it using the Standard PC Hardware profile and now I can record and playback under 256 HW Buffer setting without any buffer errors.

I think that this can be useful for you to know.

By the way...I bought a SIIG PCMCIA USB2-Firewire card and it didn´t work at all with the Digi 002R.

emachines 6810
Digi 002R
Davec test : 32+18 at 256
24bit-44.1khz

[drmmrboy]

[/QUOTE] Adam,

I have configured my setup in the same way that you´re.
A couple of days ago i installed (Added)a second operating system and I installed it using the Standard PC Hardware profile and now I can record and playback under 256 HW Buffer setting without any buffer errors.

I think that this can be useful for you to know.

By the way...I bought a SIIG PCMCIA USB2-Firewire card and it didn´t work at all with the Digi 002R.

emachines 6810
Digi 002R
Davec test : 32+18 at 256
24bit-44.1khz


[/QUOTE]
Can you please tell us how you installed the Standard PC Hardware Profile?
Or put up a link to a page that tells us how to do it?
Alot of us (myself included) Have been fighting the buffer errors, and can't get below 256.
Any information you have would be greatly appreciated.

Andrew
002R
eMachines M6805
Athlon 64-bit 3000+
512 MB RAM
davec: 32+17
dverb: 34

[AWright]

Hey Eduardo - That sounds very interesting and useful. Please let us know the second operating system install procedure or where to look it up.

Gracias!

Adam

[drmmrboy]

I just switched to Standard PC, and it works GREAT for me!
64, 128, 256... no problem, and no errors so far!
I switched on my current OS, and it worked fine.
You will have to reinstall all your hardware drivers though.
How to can be found on this thread... halfway don the page...
http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.p...5517&Forum=The recomended way is to do it while installing XP.
This can be found here...
http://www.pcaudiolabs.com/winxp_tweaks.htm

Andrew
002R
eMachines M6805
Athlon 64-bit 3000+
512 MB RAM
davec: 32+17
dverb: 34