Philip Perkins Posted March 22, 2009 Report Share Posted March 22, 2009 I'd like to look into the little cheap netbook PCs for use in the field, and for recording when I only need a few tracks (like 6 max). One problem w/ this is the application--all the recording apps I know very well are Mac only. Is there still no PC equivalent to BR or MC? I don't need bells and whistles, but I do need time-stamping of files. Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Lightstone, CAS Posted March 22, 2009 Report Share Posted March 22, 2009 Philip, You can now have the best of both worlds. You can use a Dell Mini 9 and "hackintosh" it. The Dell is about $400 and you have to use a legal copy of Mac OS-X 10.5 (about $129 retail) http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook RL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Palmer Posted March 22, 2009 Report Share Posted March 22, 2009 As I am about to move my Macbook over to permanent playback duties, we have 4 to 5 days of playback on each show, I'm really thinking about this little gem. Thanks for the link RL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted March 22, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2009 Philip, You can now have the best of both worlds. You can use a Dell Mini 9 and "hackintosh" it. The Dell is about $400 and you have to use a legal copy of Mac OS-X 10.5 (about $129 retail) http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook RL Do you know anyone who has tried this w/ a recording app? I'd really prefer a native PC app if possible... Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted March 23, 2009 Report Share Posted March 23, 2009 Do you know anyone who has tried this w/ a recording app? I'd really prefer a native PC app if possible... Philip Perkins I have been curious for a long time if there is a Windows equivalent of either BoomRecorder or Metacorder. There certainly are lots of music related recording apps out there for both Mac and PC (ProTols, Nuendo, Cakewalk, etc.) but it really wasn't until there were dedicated apps designed for our sort of work that we really started using computers in normal production. Those 2 programs, BoomRecorder and Metacorder, really made a difference (and neither will ever be made for Windows machines). - Jeff Wexler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted March 23, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2009 There is really nothing out there like BR and MC that is so suited to what I do. I still get funny looks from music audio people about MC when I show up to do a job where there is a PA involved too. It's ok--they don't understand and don't need to understand. I should just suck it up and buy another Mac and not try to re-invent the wheel with a music-oriented pgm. Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
old school Posted March 23, 2009 Report Share Posted March 23, 2009 I only know the Mac platform with any confidence so please note that info, but my G4/1.67 runs all day most days in the sun, wind n dust, wet, n wild and has been rock solid. Great playback system for my playback needs. (Pro Tools), or back up recordings w BoomRecorder. I think the hackintosh Idea is a cool option. Has anyone tried it? Richard? I like the price point for sure. CrewC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Lightstone, CAS Posted March 23, 2009 Report Share Posted March 23, 2009 I have not gone the "hackintosh"/Dell route. It is very intriguing as a small net book version of a Mac. I don't think I would use it for processor hungry things like BR or MC. But it could certainly handle light playback jobs like Sound Studio and Peak Audio etc. There will probably be an adventurous soul who will try BR or even Pro-Tools? Here's hoping. RL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jimg Posted March 23, 2009 Report Share Posted March 23, 2009 I have the same Powerbook G4 as Crew, but after several years on some brutal locations (and a little help from me) it's starting to fall apart. I thought about this as an alternative, especially for road work. But other than the email/web surf part of travel, I also use the Powerbook for burning CDs and DVDs and for converting files to mp3's, etc. So the lack of firewire and an optical drive make the hackintosh impractical. My need to replace the Powerbook is just a job away, since the computer now refuses to see one of the memory slots. I know the memory is good, and a repair will be pretty costly even if I could find somebody to do it. But what a swell concept. Best regards, Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Lightstone, CAS Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 Jim, Same issue with my 5 year old 15" Mac PowerPC G4. Had 1.5Gb of ram -- now it refuses to see the lower slot - so I'm down to a 1Gb stick. There were big issues with the 17" G4's with logic board failures too. Next job and I'm upgrading. RL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jimg Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 Yep, same here until you remove the memory from the upper slot. Then the lower slot is present and works just fine. This month's problem is that the 1.67 GHz processor thinks it's a 1.5..... After 4 1/2 years I guess it's time. Best regards, Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danijel Milosevic Posted May 17, 2009 Report Share Posted May 17, 2009 Philip, any luck yet? A friend of mine wants to sell one of his two eeePCs 701 (one of the first versions, marketed 4G surf). It has only 512mb RAM, but it can be upgraded to 2gb. What I like about it is that it doesn't have an HDD. I'm getting it for a test ride tomorrow, and I will borrow an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8 - it's an 8ch (8 pre's w/phantom) USB2.0 rackmount interface. I think I will install Reaper trial - I hear it's the most light-weight DAW on XP, and we'll see how it performs. And I found an interesting post here: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/printview.php?t=195401&start=0 Did some serious recording with my 1st generation eee 701 (celeron, 4gig ssd)meanwhile. 8 Inputs via adat -> Motu 828 USB @24/48 -> eee& Ableton Live7/ 8 Tracks -> ext. usb2.0-HDD. Buffer size is 1024, no dropouts at all, system stays quite responsive over all, works really well. Didn't (wouldn't) try to mix stuff on that machine tho... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted May 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted May 17, 2009 Philip, any luck yet? A friend of mine wants to sell one of his two eeePCs 701 (one of the first versions, marketed 4G surf). It has only 512mb RAM, but it can be upgraded to 2gb. What I like about it is that it doesn't have an HDD. I'm getting it for a test ride tomorrow, and I will borrow an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8 - it's an 8ch (8 pre's w/phantom) USB2.0 rackmount interface. I think I will install Reaper trial - I hear it's the most light-weight DAW on XP, and we'll see how it performs. And I found an interesting post here: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/printview.php?t=195401&start=0 Did some serious recording with my 1st generation eee 701 (celeron, 4gig ssd)meanwhile. 8 Inputs via adat -> Motu 828 USB @24/48 -> eee& Ableton Live7/ 8 Tracks -> ext. usb2.0-HDD. Buffer size is 1024, no dropouts at all, system stays quite responsive over all, works really well. Didn't (wouldn't) try to mix stuff on that machine tho... I looked at Reaper too--that might be a way to go. Otherwise I haven't popped for the Netbook yet. Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker71 Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 Back in my PC using days (over 6 years ago now) I would always go to Sonic Foundry for my audio apps. Since they were bought by Sony a few years ago I've lost track of the version upgrades and specific feature set, but the apps were always top notch, almost "Mac like" in my opinion and ran well on slower CPU. It looks like Sound Forge might do what you need, though I'm not sure it datestamps or handles metadata, but could be worth a closer look to find out. At $300 though it's as much as a cheap PC/netbook ... http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/soundforge Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tByrd Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 I just got off a two week docu-reality shoot using a MacBook (2.2ghz, 4gb RAM, OSX 10.5.6), recording 10 tracks with minimal problems. The software was Reaper, which actually worked out great because I could easily Solo tracks as well as hear what a mix would be like together. The job was only to record Isolated tracks, so I did not record the mix track, but it was definitely workable. I would imagine Reaper would run fine on a Netbook; it's supposed to be more stable on PC than for Mac. Reaper only crashed once during the full 12 days of production, and it was because I deleted a track mid-take (stupid, I know). Luckily, the recordings were able to close out and are still usable. Reaper was able to reboot and roll again within 1 minute. The whole time I had a 744 (my TC source and A/D for the wireless boom and RF1 --SPDIF to the interface) rolling on the boom and our lead "instructor" character, so no real losses. With Reaper we were able to punch in and out recordings by the track as Transmitters entered and exited play without ever stopping our recording or causing problems. The one major netbook issue I could think of would be screen space, because I needed the screen real estate of the 15" macbook just to see the mixer and the tracks. Software got a bit sluggish when you zoom in on the waveform mid-recording, so I'd shy away from doing that. I highly recommend Reaper. At least download it and play with it a bit. It might not be the solution for feature and short narrative work due to lack of entering scene / take info, but for rolling long hour-plus segments, it did the trick. I had a KORG Nano Kontrol to solo / mix, and the interface was an Edirol UA-1000 (not my choice at ALL, decided by the company that hired me and rented about half the audio gear, highly suggest one not use this piece of junk) I'll have a full article about this project up soon once the PR for this company gets the interview. Overall, very happy with my first laptop recording experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted May 19, 2009 Author Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 Does Reaper do TC stamping of files from external TC? I couldn't tell from the manual. @ $225 it isn't that much cheaper than Boom Recorder, which does do TC stamping, can do all the take naming and produces its own reports etc.., but then again BR won't run on a Netbook either. Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tByrd Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 Yes, it does stamp timecode, but I'm not sure about exporting poly files (since recordings make mono files per track). I have heard that there is a way to export as bwf poly files. When I bring in the bwf files from Reaper into Wave Agent, they show start TC, end TC, and duration. It appears as if they don't have a "frame rate" space on the metadata, but I just set it back to 29.97ND. Also, Reaper will run with all features on "trial version" indefinitely, all it does is ask if you want to register once a day so definitely check it out. It's kind of obnoxious in how the key commands and interface work, but you can tweak ANYTHING in the interface and software "actions", so it's pretty easy to set everything exactly how you want it (a feature Boom Recorder does not offer) and has really solid forum support base and eager developers. We thought about doing this job with Boom Recorder, but soloing tracks and on the fly routing changes felt easier with software more similar to ProTools... plus I wanted to see if it could be done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danijel Milosevic Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 Unfortunately, I was (and will be) very busy these days, so I couldn't get out and borrow the M-Audio interface, and I will have to return the eee..... But I did install Reaper and recorded 8 channels of eee's internal mic for 10 or 15 minutes, and then listened back - there were no dropouts or anything, and the machine was very responsive to zooming while recording and the peakmeters jumped just fine.... not a sign of sluggishness. 800x480 resolution IS a problem - Reaper doesn't let you (as far as I can tell) resize a record-armed track below a certain height in the timeline, so I could only see four channels at a time. On the other hand, at least 10 channels can be displayed in the mixer view, but I'm used to watching the waveforms as I record, not the meters (BTW, the timeline view has very nice meters per channel too). Overall, I have a very good feeling about this computer, can't see why it shouldn't work, and I will probably go with a bigger-screen model (901 is the same size/weight, but the screen is 2" bigger (and 1024x600), so I believe that's 5-6 channels in the timeline, plus it works three times longer on batteries). It feels quicker and more powerful than some of the older laptops that I used for multi-track recording. Does anyone run Laptops on external batteries? Are they more finicky about input voltage compared to stand alone field recorders? Here's some rave on eee's durability: http://impulsegamer.com/wordpress/?p=224 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tByrd Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 Yeah supposedly Reaper 3 will allow you to make Rec enabled tracks even smaller, but that's in beta stages now. I think if you are in with the Reaper forum admins and devs, you can get in on the beta pretty easily. I agree on being able to see the waveforms. Just one more assurance that something has been recorded! One thing to watch out for with workflow is where it stores those "peaks" files for the peaks, which will create twice as many files when they are looking at the day in post. You can re-route that (or disable it in general) to another folder. I made one big "peaks" folder for this whole 2 week shoot and it added up to about 2 gigs against 200+ gigs of audio recorded. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danijel Milosevic Posted May 23, 2009 Report Share Posted May 23, 2009 Yeah supposedly Reaper 3 will allow you to make Rec enabled tracks even smaller, but that's in beta stages now. Reaper 3 is out! I just tried it, and no change about armed track height BTW, it's grown from 3.6 to whole 4.5 Mb! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt McGowin Posted May 23, 2009 Report Share Posted May 23, 2009 I had a KORG Nano Kontrol to solo / mix "I had a KORG Nano Kontrol to solo / mix" Im interested in how well this worked out with Reaper. It looks cool Thanks , Matthew McGowin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tourtelot Posted May 24, 2009 Report Share Posted May 24, 2009 Reaper is a great sound editing application. Google it! I have both the PC version and the slightly-later-to-the-party OS X version but they both work really well. I use Reaper exclusive for playback if I am not forced into a Pro Tools session (I frickin' HATE Pro Tools!!); Reaper has two very interesting features that make it really nice for playback. The first is a global speed change setting that makes pull ups a piece of cake changing the sampling rate perfectly and pulling up 29.97 TC to 30 flawlessly, and an assignable time code generator that is externally syncable to incoming LTC. And all for $50!! It's a steal! D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tourtelot Posted May 24, 2009 Report Share Posted May 24, 2009 Oh, and sort of off-topic. I have been using Reaper to work with the Schoeps Double M-S Plugin to do five-dot surround using three Schoeps heads that will fit into a regular Rycote zep. Very cool. I am using this for recording music as I am not a fan of trying anything more than rudimentary stereo on location. But the Double M-S setup maybe could do with another thread. D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_bollard Posted May 25, 2009 Report Share Posted May 25, 2009 I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who has gone down the Hackintosh path. Even comments on how well they run as a non-sound computer. Does the Dell mini 9 have enough grunt to run Leopard? Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tByrd Posted May 26, 2009 Report Share Posted May 26, 2009 You are right about the track height. I had heard from the forum that it would change, but I guess not. Maybe the best solution with a netbook would be an additional monitor so that you could keep the mixer and maybe big clock on the netbook and the session window (and whatever else) on the big screen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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