DAWs for the AAO?

Hi guys.I was just wondering what you think about digital audio workstations for the aspire one.Is there any particular one (freeware hopefully) that is not too heavy for the aspire one?or something like a DAW would be out of the question for it? if it is feasible,would you guys know one that's suitable for a beginner like me? any input would be greatly appreciated.thanks guys

 

freeware - audacity
expensive software - audition

 

It's feasable.
I'm using the A110 1,5gb ram 8g SSD (with EWF enabled) Windows XP3 for live purpose.
Mainly I use SIMULTANOUSLY Native Instruments B4 and Korg MS20 in standalone or NI Reaktor and MS20. Works great with a 8-10ms latency, lots of midi info and joystick control.
With EWF it's fast. There is 35-40s between the moment I turn the Acer on and the moment the MS20 and B4 are sounding (I automated the start)

Also I use Ableton Live or Cubase SX3 and as long as you don't use too many VST plugin. Audio tracks are not a problem.

Or use it for live processing of guitar through Amplitube 2.

If you're main intention is audio recording/playing you can go easily with netbooks.
xp tweaking for audio is recommend (disabling of any non necessary services, like network and related. Actually I have a dual XP boot on my acer, one stripped down XP for audio and the 'normal' one for internet and stuff)

It's a great use, it's very light and boot extremely fast.

If you have choice however Asus 901 or MSI/Medion one are a bit more powerful, mainly because you can overclock them. I had a medion Akoya 1210 and overclocked it easily at 1900 mhz. It gave that little extra that helped run some heavier Ableton Live project

 

If you have the HDD version of Acer Aspire One, it can easily outperform* the SSD version by 2-3 times. So if you have the HDD version, you don't need to worry about tweaking the OS ...etc.

 

Tweaking XP is to make it use less ressource and have more ressource for audio appz, and also make it more stable.
I do this even on "normal" computer, it does really make a difference.

HDD vs SSD only change boot speed and launching speed of programm. SSD is faster on reading than HD. It's slower on writing but I'd except you to use external HD to record multitrack audio.

 

The SSDs that you're talking about is different from the ones on AAO. The SSD on AAO is even slower than flash drive. The HDD in this case, is about 3-4 times faster read throughtput (50-80MB/s) and 5-6 times faster write throughtput(50-80MB/s). The SSD is as much as 10 times slower if data is read from the hdd's cache (120+MB/s). The only thing that the SSD beats the HDD is the access time.
External HDD taxes the CPU. e.g. when you used USB drive transfering data at 25MB/s, the transfering process alone will use as much as 40% (including hyperthreading core) cpu power. If you record to internal hdd, the internal southbridge chip will take care of the processing (provided that DMA-direct memory access is enabled).
When running your programs, the frequently used data will already be in the RAM thus it has nothing to do with the SSD. When the program needs more information, it'll pull them of the SSD/HDD. If the information is less than 1KB, then SSD will be faster, if it's more than few hundred KilByte, then HDD will be a lot faster.

If you want both the SSD's low access time and hdd's high throughput, put a SD card in the card reader and set it as cache using readyboost or eboostr.


Tweaking windows XP does not neccesarily make it more stable. I customize XP with nlite all the time. If a newbie was using nlite in a wrong way.. e.g. integrating the wrong drivers..etc.. it'll make windows less stable. For a windows xp newbie, they're better off just turning off uncessarily startup programs, unused services in windows.

 

I use the stock SSD but with EWF enabled (that is using part of the memory as virtual disk) so disk read is just speedier than HDD.
FDbench get some crazy results like 664 Mb/s so it gives you an idea of how speed it goes.
Without EWF it was slow as hell, and indeed much slower than the Medion Akoya HDD based netbook

But with EWF enabled it's just without comparison.

Actually I use a SDHC for temp files and data storing.

 

664Mb/s is still quite a bit slower than writing data to HDD cache (more than 1000Mb/s). 1MB = 8Mb. Optimize HDD (defragged..etc) will reach close to 600Mb/s average throughput and close to 700Mb/s maximum transfer rate.
With EWF enabled, SSD is close to the speed of the HDD.
The 664Mb/s throughput is probably the speed of the "virtual disk", not SSD. Also, you're probably talking about 664MB/s not 664Mb/s (that's about the speed that you're going to get out of ram disk). The SSD's read speed with EWF enabled is around 28MB/s which is still about 3-4 times slower than HDD. No matter what you do, the SSD on AAO is still a couple times slower. Since most users won't mod their AAO (EWF hack...etc) HDD version will perform much faster than SSD version.

 

I use Reaper. Nearly cheap (~$50). No problems.

 

wow..that was a lot.thanks guys.although some of your posts are way beyond my humble knowledge of "the little white thing" (my AAO), it certainly helps because now I have a take-off point for delving more into this topic and to the software.actually, i just thought of having a daw for my kaossilator and my acoustic guitar (which has no pickup as of the moment)..you know,for song ideas.anyway,thanks again ..now i definitely have the daw vernacular..keep posting guys

 

Well obviously you never used a SSD drive with EWF in real life.

 

Has anyone got a DAW running under XP on an SSD machine. I have tried FL Studio and Reaper and I keep getting really bad audio playback!

Ideas?

 

yeah as I wrote I use A110 with SSD with XP SP3 and I can run Steinberg Cubase or Ableton Live with no problem or Native Instruments Reaktor.
FL is less power consummer than these one so it should not be a problem.
You should desactivate most service like internet, network etc.
If you enable EWF you'll have a fast station. XP boot is 30 seconds and very reactive.

 

You have no audio problems? I couldn't get FL Studio 8 to playback at 44.1 at all!
Are you using ASIO or not?

I have the SSD but with 1.5gig of RAM. I am using one of the systems that speeds up the SSD (flashpoint? I have forgotten its name)

I would love to be able to write again, maybe I should have a go with a tracker or something

guy

 

I'm using Asio4all with built in soundcard. In order to use low latency with realtek HD, you should install driver 1.61, it is the one working with Asio4All, newer one are not working well with Asio4All. I get 5 ms latency on standalone virtual synth (MS20). A bit higher for Cubase prject

 

I have started running Making Waves (i lost my codes but now found them) http://www.makingwavesaudio.com its my favourite DAW