Recommendations please?

[bruj0]

Hi there,

God bless the conbined gods of google for once! Its great to find a site full of info over problems found with hardware and not just recycled vendor blurb at free delivery great discount blah blah.......

I am looking for some hardware recommendations etc and while I see ther are many out there that have had some bad experiences which makes me question what to do surely there are others that have had good ones LOL

First a tale of woe.....

About 4 years ago I bought into Final scratch 1 wishing to dj without breaking my back humping records...... Went ok until you try to use the system outside the home ..... Horrendous ground loop problems

Wait a couple of years Buy Final scratch two apparently ...... the problems are solved :) Not quite you need to buy a firewire card and reconfigure your drive to ntfs ok done..... buy the super upgrade offer from NI to find Traktor 3 isnt compatable!!!!!!!

Anyway.....Good New Year Good news start to get into Reason buy a copy of reason three and begin to get the idea that onboard soundcards dont quite cut it and so buy an emu 1616m order the wrong one and get a pccard version instead of the pci ..... no biggy buy a pccard adaptor and I can use the card in both my home pc and the fs notebook :D

All is good in the world two pc's one cracking soundcard all the inputs outputs and throughputs I could ever wish for..... Just turn 40 The frigin fs laptop dies!

Ok Buy a new laptop ohoh no xp laptops for sale anymore never mind just install XP buy a copy of xp pro hmmmm the new onboard hardware doesnt have drivers for xp pro I can have a dual core machine with a wopping 800x600 screen res! AT this point I decide to give up on the mobile side until the vista drivers etc are released....

Cut to two months later the vista beta drivers come out time to clear out the box room to make my ultimate studio room all my decks cd players record collection My remotesl dj mixer blah blah all in one place and together I have a batcave in the making :D ok so gather up the pc's one music box, two linux boxes two laptops (the vista and an old linux one) put them in the room they are going to put all the spare bit scattered through the house into a bag (firewirecards 2Tb of backup drives 1616m dock etc) into a bag and place in the room along with two monitors and the kvm. Pat myself on the back for having done this go out to celebrate and come back to a robbed house :mad:


That was up until two months ago anyway quickly get a mailorder replacement for the stolen new laptop (I need one for work honest). And set about rebuilding from what was left - the reason install disks scratch amp 2 and the scratch amp cd's and vinyls. OK :D

My plan was to use the laptop it was spec'd higher than the stolen music pc to run reason fs2 and the surviving license of ableton lite now can I find a fw port on this damn new laptop ...... go on guess? OK so now my shopping list looks like this and in retrospect this time befor I buy a damn thing I want to check the experiences of others good or bad (preferably the worked out the box never looked back variety) from my shortlist below... I see a lot of problems listed in these forums but they cannot surely be everyones experience?

New Audio I/o

Uses

Home recording using Ableton and Probably at the same time Reason
Live recording and playback from reason / ableton (if simultaneously possible) of dj sets while gigging and possibly lite live music recording.

Running under Vista AND XP I have one of each now (xp for the home machine Vista for a gigging laptop)

Since the new laptop doesnt have fw and only has one pccard slot (not express card) I am even toying with a new laptop specifically for the music

So What audio interfaces would you suggest for the above purposes and more importantly if (as I suspect) I will have to buy a new laptop can anyone recommend any (troublefree) ones? I am not averse to go through the settings and making changes in windows and can easily find my way around bios settings etc but I would prefer these to be tuning fixes rather than troubleshooting.

My shortlist so far has been

Alesis io 26
MOTU 828 MK11 usb
Motu Ultralite
edirol F/U A101
1616m pccard (and a cheap 1010 when I can find it)

I can dream of a bargain find

Projectmix i/o
or motu traveller

But I dont suspect thats very likely.

In terms of a laptop I am looking at dual core (i prefer the pricing on amds) pccard and express card and 17 inch what I need to know is what inbuilt hardware to watch for or what models DO work well

Has anyone here had good plain sailing experience with any of the above and a particular make / model of laptop ?

Let me know before I start reading guns and ammo?

Thanks

Bruj0

[Reegs]

adkproaudio.com
Trouble-free, optimized for audio production laptops.

If you can't go custom, look at business models. They come with less system crap and run XP more often than not. Plus they look sleeker. Also, if you can get a notebook with a Firewire port running on a TI chipset you'll have a much easier time getting things to play together nicely. Dual cores are good, both AMDs and Intel are fine.

I've had okay sailing experience with an HP dv6000 on Vista, even though it doesn't really fit anything I've said above. When I do it again I'll be going business model or custom.

Your shortlist is nice. Also check out the Focusrite Saffire line.

There are specific DJ interfaces out there too (I think Edirol might have one) but as I don't have any experience DJing I am not in the position to recommend any.

Best,
Reegs

[sabianq]

for your short list,
I see that your price range is between 200 and 800 bucks.

if you are looking at high end interfaces, I would have to say stay in the upper price range for your interface as the better quality interface you have the happier you will be with your product.

I would also recommend that you look at
Echo
http://www.echoaudio.com/
specifically the
http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/FireWire/AudioFire12/index.php

audiofire 12

http://www.musicmarketing.ca/products/images/echo/ec_audiofire12.jpg

and if you are inclined to MOTU, then i would have you check out the MOTU traveler
http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/traveler
http://www.jrrshop.com/images/images_big/motutraveler.jpg
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Traveler/

or look to the RME
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_index.php
Fireface 400
http://www.rme-audio.de/images/products/products_fireface_400_4.jpg
or the
Fireface 800
http://www.rme-audio.de/images/products/products_fireface_800_1.jpg
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Fireface400/
IMO These Interfaces are the best you can get for the money right now.


as for a computer,
at least 2 gigs of memory
two hard drives one for your OS and one for your projects.
use a external hard drive with a laptop.
and a media card reader is essential.

you want the XP OS.

or Tiger OSX 4.x
i dont know anything about the current mac OS

[sabianq]

also i would add a good multi channel mixer to your equipment list.
this will help you a lot when it comes to mixing and working with analogue signals prior to converting the signals to a digital format..

and the Microphone Pre amps are better on the mixers than on the interface boxes.
notice how the Echo Audiofire 12 has no Mic pre-amps?
the technology went primarly into the AD's and DA's.

Mackie make the ONYX series mixer with the ONYX pre amps, and they really do sound sweet.
http://www.sweetwater.com/images/items/750/Onyx1220-large.jpg

or Soundcraft mixers have a really fantastic sounding pre amp
http://www.sweetwater.com/images/items/750/SpiritM12-large.jpg