Hi,
I'm thinking to buy a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop, I want to know how its ESS maestro3 audio interface works with ASIO: has the ESS chipset a dedicated ASIO driver? How does it work with Cubase DirectX ASIO general driver? What's the best latency with this chipset?

Maybem in time I will buy a professional interface, but now I want to make some tests with the onboard audio.

Many thanks.

Max (Cochrane)

This from RMEs' tech-info page:

quote:

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Dell Inspiron 8000

Dell's top model shows the best bang for the buck of all notebooks tested. We would have liked declaring it the reference. Unfortunately, it is completely useless for audio. Switching on and off the fans, the notebook produces a system standstill of up to 23 ms, so ASIO and MME cannot work properly below 46 ms at all. Dell have been aware of this problem at least since January 2001, but they have not fixed it yet. This lets us assume that a simple fix via BIOS update is not possible but that it is a hardware problem (motherboard).

By the way, this effect has nothing to do with IRQ sharing as argued by MOTU. It is much more a problem of the ACPI cooperation of BIOS and operating system, that causes comparatively bad values under Win9x even without any fan operation.

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RME laptop comparison

Although this comparison above was done with Hammerfall hardware - hence the latencies. As to whether the ESS Maestro has native ASIO drivers or not I'm not sure, but doubt it.

Check all the RME notebook info - some of it is very useful in choosing a notebook.

I have a different brand of laptop and use an Ego-Sys U2A for ASIO audio and bypass the built-in laptop soundcard. Its all working fine for me

[ 05 October 2001: Message edited by: CiM ]

No ASIO for the ESS - it's a horrible chipset, sounds like total cr-p, the latency with MME is enormous. A couple of times it's even caused crashes that took down the whole (Win2K) system. It's ok for games and "You've Got Mail", but useless for music.

I tried without success to find a laptop using the 10K1 (SBLive) chipset, so now I'm looking at a Hammerfall DSP (expensive, and a bit over the top for what I need on the laptop), or a USB audio box.

Ideally I'm looking for something either self-powering (over USB) or with batteries, and it's got to be small and light. Four outs would be a plus, as would compatibility with Macs and PCs, in case secondhand Ti-Powerbooks ever become affordable
It's for playing VSTi's, so the latency has to be below 10ms. I was thinking about an M-Audio Audiosport Quattro, but apparently the Windoze drivers still aren't ready.

Any thoughts..?

Angus.

Angus, I can reccommend the Ego-Sys U2A. It cost me £175 from Andertons, is self powered (through USB), has free ASIO drivers (downloadable from Ego-Sys site - licensed from the usb-audio.com guys). Has both Mac and PC drivers.

Only problem is it lacks the outs you probably need - it has three outs (analogue stereo pair, optical, coax) and three ins (same). It mirrors audio to all outs so you can have a digi out and monitor at same time.

The ASIO drivers are mentioned on the USB Audio site as being able to get down to 7ms (not sure if that relates strictly to the U2A or to other boxes) - however I had to increase the latency on my 933 notebook due to audio jitters so doubt I am getting down that low.

If you can try one out, I'd definitely give it a go.

Anyone try the Emagic 2|6? It's a usb audio device that is supposed to give you low latencies. I wanna try it out with my laptop (a Toshiba celeron 650) to see how well it works with Traktor. I have yet to hear any user comments on it, is no one buying it? The USA Keyboard magazine reviewed it and liked it but they didn't give any solid numbers for ASIO latency.

I may pick one up this weekend and return it if it sucks.

bioroid

For an honest opinion from someone that's used notebook since they were suitcase sized, avoid Dell like they've the plague. Poor build quality and specification. A better bet would be IBM or possibly compaq.

However, it's very unlikely you'll find one with ASIO drivers. Best you can do is use the DirectX ASIO adaptation for around 46ms latency.

I use my Thinkpad a20m extensively for both Reason and Cubase VSTi hosting and beyond the latency, have no real complaints. With a decent pair of headphones/speakers, it's very capable of producing excellent quality music anywhere and can heartily recommend it.

Buy a Mac laptop in a few weeks when they bring out the new versions of the Ti Powerbook, and also possibly the iBook.

MHMM....
I've spoken about 8100, not 8000...

As regarding RME comment, DELL has updated the bios and it seems that the problem is fixed:
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3. Fixed audio stuttering heard when the fans turn on or off while playing music or videos.
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IMHO I've used toshiba, acer and ibm laptop but the best is DELL INSPIRON 8x00: better display, better hard disk, better interfaces, better graphic card.

Has someone used them for audio, in particular with VSTi?

Many thanks

Cochrane

Hi, I'm new here and just thought I'd add my 2 cents worth.
I bought an 8100 about a month ago. I loaded on VST and guess what, it didn't work. I loaded on Nuendo via a friend and it worked! I talked to Steinberg UK tech and they weren't much help (I'm still waiting for a response from Germany as to why Nuendo worked and VST didn't). I loaded on every other audio progam I use (Cool Edit /Acid/Fruity Loops etc) and they all worked fine. As a matter of fact I ran it through my studio monitors and there was no noticeable noise coming from the laptop (first one ever... of the 7 or so laptops I've had in the last 6 years doing music with Cubase).
There were a couple of Bios upgrades in the last 2 weeks and they seem to have sorted it out. I have never had the dreaded "Fan Bug" but the audio did stutter when playing the windows start up music. This stopped though with the Bios upgrades.
As of today, 05.10.01 I have had VST working longer that 5 minutes and playing 24 audio tracks with FX. And I don't know how the f**k I did it. I have been playing with Buffer settings and they didn't do anything for the problems I was having (audio only played for about 4 seconds and then the Disk Access lights would go into the red and audio would stop). I managed to get it to play 3 different songs today without problem.
So it will work with VST.....I can only hope for better written drivers over the next few months so that it works consistently. The latency is 750 ms with the ESS drivers and 357 with the DirectX. No ASIO unfortunately.
I'm thinking of getting WinXP because I think a lot of the problems I have had stem from WinME. They don't do drivers for Win98 for the 8100's ESS card unfortunately (Pressure from Microsoft to push ME on the consumer methinks).

Funny thing is....In the Audio properties menu the card is listed as being able to do 24 bit 96,00khz recording. Haven't tried it yet though. Early days, I'm still in shock I got it to work with VST. I hope it stays that way.

sox