Audio Recording?

Hi.

I'm a musician and I've been looking for a small laptop to take around with me and record audio on with an external interface to USB device, and maybe edit it a bit (Nothing intensive, just play around). Would the Aspire One be able to do this without issues?

Thanks.

 

The Atom which is shared by most netbooks is not the most powerful processor in the world and can stutter quite easily at times but then it can be quite snappy. On a HDD XP version with 1gb RAM or upgraded yourself to 1.5gb would handle it in my opinion as I have seen Cubase run on hardware a lot less powerful than the One. But let's see what other users say.

 

On the Linpus-Acer USB-Audio is -not- installed.
It can be made to work, but it is certainly not 'without issues'.
--Japser.

 

I intend to get an XP one, then either keep it XP or put OSX on it with a Gentoo linux dualboot via a card

And dskid, thanks for the advice, I'll keep watchin' the thread.

 

I just downloaded the free multitrack audio recording program Kristal from the Hitsquad site and tried some basic recording - a rhythm guitar track followed by 3 solo tracks using a USB sound card and the Acer handled it just fine. It also played back a 16 track demo file without problems.

 

Just picked up a 110, 1gb RAM, 8GB Intel SSD. I mainly intend to use this for working on audio on long flights.

I tried out a few different apps, here are some comments:

Audio recording: B+
For real-time monitoring, you'll need a usb interface - there is just too much latency with the integrated audio (up to ~700ms in some cases, though this may be due to me having the slower Intel SSD)

Synth / production: B+
Depending on your setup, you can get reasonable performance (I was testing some fairly heavweight VSTis). 43ms latency with the integrated audio, and down to 10-12ms with my Edirol UA-20 USB interface. I was impressed with standalone synth performance with the USB interface -

Audio editing: A
Running Audacity, works fine. You can't go too heavy on live processing, but work with destructive edits and you'll be fine.

Hosts / Mixing / Sequencing: C
So-so here. Ableton Live is pretty much unusable, not sure why. Cubase SX 3 runs decently, but again, if you're used to using lots of cpu-intensive plugins or synths, you better get used to using 'Freeze' Again, a USB interface will greatly improve things here. The big test: I loaded up an old project with about 6 midi/VSTi tracks, 12 audio tracks, and a full mastering chain on the main bus. With my UA-20 at highest latency (~100ms) and the VSTi tracks frozen, it was mostly workable. A few buffer overruns here and there, but definitely doable. With the audio tracks & channels frozen I believe I could get it overrun-free, WITH the full mastering chain still live - more than adequate for doing any high end processing / mastering.

Overall: B+
I think it's what I expected. It's a netbook, so it's not going to replace your current DAW. However, paired with a cheap USB interface and a 9cell battery, this is a suprisingly flexible mobile studio swiss army knife. You may need to change the way you approach audio (i.e., depend more on 'freeze' and destructive edits), but it's hard to beat the value. As I'm running the slow Intel SSD, I expect you could get even better performance with HDD. I'm considering swapping mine for HDD to see... I'll post again if I do.

Hope that helps!

 

A quick update... I ended up swapping my SSD AAO for a HDD AAO. I haven't benchmarked it yet, but, as I expected, performance is MUCH improved for sequencing/tracking multiple audio files given the much higher read/write speeds of the HDD version.

Here's the shocker: Logic Studio runs under OSX runs phenomenally well! Hardly any latency, and easily runs a 25 track project with multiple softsynths. And this is using the integrated audio! Maybe it's Core Audio magic, but I am still having a hard time believing how well it runs, given the CPU-pegging performance of sequencing apps in XP.

Full benchmarks to come soon, but for now my recommendation is buy a HDD model, and throw OSX on it. Overall, OSX: A+