KVR Audio

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 3:42 pm

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered an Asus eee, which arrived just over a week ago. I got it because I decided I need something convenient for writing documents, notetaking, and surfing. My existing laptop is fine, but its a 'proper' laptop, meaning its a bit heavy to carry around 'casually'.

The eee, on the other hand, is cheap (£200), small (size of a paperback, less than a kilo in weight), and far more powerful than most palmtop type thingies (very crisp 7" 800x480 screen, 900Mhz Celeron, 512Mb RAM, 4Gb solid-state hard drive, built-in stereo speakers, built-in wireless, ethernet, USB ports, sound, and webcam). I pre-ordered one through an education supplier in the UK, and it turned up last week. Its small enough to fit in the leg pocket of my combat pants, and its minimal extra weight in my bag. Pretty damn portable indeed.

It comes with Xandros, a Linux distribution, pre-installed, and out of the box, its actually a pretty useful software configuration; its dead easy to use, and comes with Firefox, Skype, OpenOffice, antivirus software, instant messanger(Pidgin), MP3 and video support, all the basic stuff you'd want for writing documents, notetaking, and surfing. Plus some games, basic education software, et.c. The wireless worked easily, and, for most folk, I dont think you'd need to do a damn thing to it for it to be useful. It came with about 2Gb of space left on the solid-state drive.

Of course, I reformatted it, and installed XP SP2 instead. Asus provide instructions, and a driver set for everything, webcam included, on the restore DVD, and, if you have a USB DVD drive, its dead easy. I had a USB CD drive, so I had to burn the drivers on to CD from another machine. Again, dead easy. To save some space, though, I used NLite to build a custom XP install disk. The installation wasnt the fastest in the world, but it was straightforward, and I managed to squeeze XP into under 700Mb. I disabled swapspace because its a flash drive, though.

Ive since installed Firefox, Skype, OpenOffice, antivirus software,MP3 and video support, and all the basic stuff I'd want for writing documents, notetaking, and surfing. That lot has left me with about 2.7Gb of space on the boot drive, and Ive also added an 8Gb SD card which I'll use for documents.

But since the eee is so easy to carry around, Im pretty much going to have it with me most of the time; it seemed natural to see how useful it is for creating samples, loops, or even full tracks. Obviously a 900Mhz Celeron isn't exactly a powerhouse, but I reckon its got enough horses to be usable, as long as I have sensible expectations, and stick to older/more basic software.

Figured I might as well make my success/failures public, so here seemed as good a place as any.

So far, I still need to install ASIO4All, but in the meantime, Ive got as far as installing Tuareg2, and TunaFish, both of which seem to run without any noticable audio issues. On the other hand, both are slightly too large for an 800x480 screen. The eee graphics card can be set to a 'virtual' 800x640 resultion (vertical scrolling), but even so, both applications have 'cut off' part of the UI, and I cant resize them.

Im hoping to go through a few older apps and work out how useful they are for the eee, and mebbe rate them for usability. If anyone wants me to try out a specific audio application, let me know, I'll see what I can do. Big hosts, and high-end softsynths/effects are pretty much out, though, I suspect. Think 2002 horsepower levels, not 2007. I know audacity works on the Xandros install, so I'll be putting the new beta on this at the weekend.

I'm also hoping to try a couple of bits of USB hardware with it, like my Kaoss Pad 3. As a 'tabletop' unit, its about the same size as a Nord Micromodular, and Id like to see if it could fit into some sort of looping/sampling niche. Did I mention its pretty much completely silent?

In the meantime, though, it has to be pointed out how much the new KVR layout utterly sucks on an 800x480 resolution screen.

Anyways : here's the state of things so far

Audio Sotfware

BramBos Tunafish1.8 :
Installation : 10/10 (installer)
Basic Audio playback : 10/10
Complex Audio playback : (not tested yet)
UI : fixed size
@ 800x480 : 0/10
@ 800x640 : 5/10 (cuts off RHS of UI)

BramBos Tuareg2 :
Installation : 10/10 (extract zip file)
Basic Audio playback : 10/10
Complex Audio playback : (not tested yet)
UI : fixed size
@ 800x480 : 0/10
@ 800x640 : 7/10 (just fits)

BramBos Lunchbox :
Installation : 10/10 (extract zip file)
Basic Audio playback : 10/10
Complex Audio playback : n/a (simple application)
UI : fixed size
@ 800x480 : 10/10 (fits easily)
@ 800x640 : 10/10 (fits easily)

Audacity 1.3:
Installation : 10/10 10/10 (installer)
Basic Audio playback : 10/10
Complex Audio playback : (not tested yet)
UI : resizes to match screen
UI @ 800x480 : 9/10 (fits, but buttons could take up too less space)
UI @ 800x640 : 10/10 (fits)

Reason 3 Demo :
Installation : 10/10 (installer)
Basic Audio playback : (not tested yet)
Complex Audio playback : 0/10 on the startup demo.
UI : fixed width
@ 800x480 : 10/10 (fits easily)
@ 800x640 : 10/10 (fits easily)

(EDIT: Thread title updated to cover netbooks in general)

atomic_(no)afro · Post by **atomic_(no)afro** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:00 pm

eee seems to be the perfect platform for custom MAX/MSP, reaktor, synthmaker, etc. patches as you can design the UI and functionality around the limitations of the unit itself. Create one nice neat little prog that does one thing really well and use it live anywhere! I imagine with ASIO4ALL and a cheap battery (or bus)-powered MIDI device you could have a really nice mobile rig for playing on bus stops, street corners, and train stations. Plus if it gets stolen... hey $400 is not going to break most people.

ATA

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:05 pm

Where did you get it?

Reverse Engineer · Post by **Reverse Engineer** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:06 pm

Not that it's any help, but you can attach an external monitor (the res goes up to 1600×1280 then.)

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:14 pm

I think I've decided on my XMas present

Acid Mitch · Post by **Acid Mitch** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:32 pm

Will Vaz modular run at 800x480 ?

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 11:58 pm

aMUSEd wrote:Where did you get it?

Research Machines. So far, as far as I know, the other UK suppliers seem to be waiting for them.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 12:00 am

Acid Mitch wrote:Will Vaz modular run at 800x480 ?

i'll try it out and let you know.

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 9:00 am

whyterabbyt wrote:
aMUSEd wrote:Where did you get it?
Research Machines. So far, as far as I know, the other UK suppliers seem to be waiting for them.

Since I work at a University would they let me purchase from them or does the University need a contract?

johnnytluxury · Post by **johnnytluxury** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 9:33 am

Well you know I gotta chime in for Reason, but the low power of the eee wont do it justice. I've maxed my girls Dell with a Celery 2.4Ghz with some of my simple tracks, I cant imagine a 900Mhz.

Oh and Rabbit you had a bit of a typo there, your eee has a bit more than 512KB of memory, try 512 MB. Hehe, nitpicking but dammit, I'm bored!

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 9:55 am

aMUSEd wrote: Since I work at a University would they let me purchase from them or does the University need a contract?

I ordered directly from RM myself, using my Uni email address to register and had no problems.

johnnytluxury wrote:Well you know I gotta chime in for Reason, but the low power of the eee wont do it justice. I've maxed my girls Dell with a Celery 2.4Ghz with some of my simple tracks, I cant imagine a 900Mhz.

me neither, really.

Oh and Rabbit you had a bit of a typo there, your eee has a bit more than 512KB of memory, try 512 MB. Hehe, nitpicking but dammit, I'm bored!

Yup, 512Mb indeed. I'll correct that. The RAM is actually user-replaceable, standard SODIMM DDR2 stuff; a suitable 1Gb stick comes in about £15-£20, but unfortunately there's a 'void your warranty' sticker over the panel that gives you access to fit it. I'll probably up this one to 1Gb anyways.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 10:57 am

How about Rebirth 338? That 900Mhz proc should be tons of power for it, and I think they released it for free now?

Devon

johnnytluxury · Post by **johnnytluxury** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 11:45 am

Ahh, yeah, the ol 338. One of my classic favs. Now that i think of it, we gonna have to go back to find software that used minimal HP to get things done. Seer Systems Reality comes to mind, but I cant remember if it was standalone or VST only. Hammerhead, Rubber Duck, Im gonna have to hit up Hitsquad for more ideas.

paradiddle · Post by **paradiddle** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 12:50 pm

Have you tried energy XT? Doesn't take much space.

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 12:55 pm

johnnytluxury wrote:Ahh, yeah, the ol 338. One of my classic favs. Now that i think of it, we gonna have to go back to find software that used minimal HP to get things done. Seer Systems Reality comes to mind, but I cant remember if it was standalone or VST only. Hammerhead, Rubber Duck, Im gonna have to hit up Hitsquad for more ideas.

Unfortunately Reality doesn't run on XP and I can't get it to run in Wine on Linux either

audio software on eee and other netbooks (user reports)