Forgot to mention, the below mentioned PCMCIA soundcard runs ya around $350. Check http://www.rme-audio.com or http://www.rme-audio.com/english/hdsp/cardpci.htm for more info on it.

Ico

-----Original Message----- From: Ivica Bukvic [mailto:ico@fuse.net] Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 10:00 AM To: Andrey Savitsky Cc: pd-list@iem.kug.ac.at Subject: RE: [PD] notebook (PC) for creation of sound ?

Hello,

I've been using Dell's Inspiron 8000 very successfully so far. Personally, I believe it is currently the best laptop on the market (obviously this is my opinion, nothing more :-). You can custom-configure it down to every single detail and it runs Linux out-of-box (except for one of the offered video cards: Geforce2Go, since it came out only 4 months ago, so no distribution had its drivers bundled, but Nvidia has a great Linux driver support so the post-install config is relatively easy). As a soundcard it uses ESS Maestro 3i soundcard which is the best one I've seen bundled with a laptop (most, if not all laptop soundcards come integrated into the motherboard). It has a Line-in, Mic-in and audio out (Stereo), but the laptop itself also supports SPDIF out. On the other hand, if this is not satisfactory for ya, you can always get PCMCIA version of RME DSP (~24 channel, or somewhere around that number) card, but I am not sure if the Linux driver for that one is ready as of yet, and for that you got 2 PCMCIA ports. The laptop also has a firewire port and if you need raw Cpu power for real-time stuff, you can buy it as fast as 1 Ghz Pentium III (I used it on my recent performance of my thesis work using live sound processing/interaction with a guitar and had absolutely no problems whatsoever). Geforce2Go is also a real jewel of a video card, being the only hardware T&L video card for the mobile computer at this time, also utilizing 4x AGP (and Nvidia's drivers, although currently still having a few glitches, have a tremendous performance in Linux) and it really does wonders to Gem. You can also opt for a cheaper ATI Mobility M4 card (also 4x agp with 32MB of video RAM), but this type of card is extremely hard to configure for acceleration (using DRI), while its 2D XFree config is out-of-box, so you might wanna consider getting AcceleratedX with this one in order to get a good acceleration performance out of it (commercial version of X that can run you around $100-120 which in the end makes it more expensive solution than the other :-). In both cases you'll end up with one heck of a system. If you need more info regarding this system or have additional questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail me.

Ivica "Ico" Bukvic, composer http://meowing.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 "Just do it!" - NIKE

-----Original Message----- From: Andrey Savitsky [mailto:savitsky3000@yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 3:53 AM To: pd-list@iem.kug.ac.at Subject: [PD] notebook (PC) for creation of sound ?

hi

Is there anybody in the list who uses a notebook (PC) for creation of sound ? I`d like to buy one for mobility but can not find any answer on the question of quality of sound. In specifications for some notebooks stands only "SBpro compatible stereo sound" comment. I dont know what does it mean, becouse it's just driver-standart, no more. Would it be enough quality (of a soundcard) for making sound? Have any experience?

Thanks. Andrey.

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