This is an issue that has been plaguing most of the laptops on the market and comes in two flavors:
- "a ground loop" -- solution: get a hum eliminator from Radio Shack (in
the US it would be 60Hz, in Europe 50Hz), but otherwise very hard to root out 2) Too much circuitry crammed in small space = interference (esp. when your battery is being recharged by external power supply). On my Inspiron 8000, there are two solutions to this: a) Use battery-only while doing sensitive audio stuff b) Use external power WITHOUT battery
Since you have Inspiron, you can always buy an additional battery and plug it into the media bay, so that should give you 5+ hours of work which should be sufficient for just about anything :-)
Hope this helps!
Ico Bukvic, composer & audio designer http://ping.ccm.uc.edu/~ico/ ico@fuse.net ============================ "To be is to do" - Socrates "To do is to be" - Sartre "Do be do be do" - Sinatra "I am" - God
-----Original Message----- From: eliselaptop [mailto:e.chohan@uea.ac.uk] Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 7:57 PM To: pd-list@iem.kug.ac.at Subject: Re: [PD] PD on a laptop??
I'm also running PD on a laptop, but does anyone ever get any interference when the power supply is connected?
It doesn't occur if I plug straight from phones socket to an amplifier, but I've recently started using a little mixer. When I'm plugged into this, and my power supply is connected, I get pretty bad interference noise, which only stops when I unplug the power to my laptop. I've tried plugging it into different wall sockets, even on different fuses, and also making sure none of the wires cross over, but to no avail. The drawback to this is that I can only work closely on sound for as long as the battery lasts!
I have a Dell Inspiron 2500.
Also, does anyone run a duel boot Linux / Windows on a laptop for PD - I am considering it simply to have access to the different externals available (I have only very basic Linux knowledge, with a friend offering to set this up if I decide it's worth it!)
Many thanks, Elise.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Ruxton" cinetron@passport.ca To: "nullpointer" nullpointer@odessadesign.co.uk; pd-list@iem.kug.ac.at Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 12:21 AM Subject: Re: [PD] PD on a laptop??
Hi Tom, Thanks a lot. This info. is a big help. Had to lug my desktop around again today and tomorrow so getting this info. is inspiring me to go shopping. ciao, Jim
Hi Jim,
I use WinMe on a toshiba satellite 2800-400 PD runs fine except for the strange edit lock that seems to happen on windows machines.. (just close the patch and reopen it to allow editing again...) I use a midiman usb 2x2 midisport box for midi, although the timing
isn't
great (more windows than the usb I think) it's useable with a bit of tweaking... As for soundcards.. my advice is just to use your onboard card fo the
time
being cos it will pretty much gurantee compatibility with pd and wont
hog
any extra cpu time.. Externals.... theres the wami box, the digigram pocket and the almost mythical (here in UK anyway) hammerfall laptopcard... I've heard bad
stuff
about all of them so I'd suggest getting a trial run (return offer on
the
hardware e.t.c.) before you commit..There a new motu firewire unit thats sposed to be god,but i haven't got firewire so... anyway.. i hope this helps..I've done quite a few performances, just
using
the phones socket, and to be honest on an average PA in an average room
you
don't notice the quality level at all.
oh and as far as video cards go .. most newish laptops come with savage video cards (OK) ATI cards (OK again) or NVIDIA geforce (brilliant),
they
all have decent opengl drivers i think although the nvidia card is kinda geared towards T&L systems like DX..
Tom
http://www.nullpointer.co.uk http://www.dividebyzero.org http://www.orphanrecords.co.uk ________________________________________________________