KVR Audio

anti-banausic · Post by **anti-banausic** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 5:06 am

UltraJv, the problem with your post, is that you can get the same laptop for about half the price, and do some slight configuration changes to arrive at the same laptop that they want to sell you for so much more. Please stop spreading disinformation. Or at least, buying into the crap that some of these companies will sell you this uber-laptop when you can get the same thing for a lot less if you are half-way competent with PCs...

Sorry about the post though. The lappy that site has can be had for much cheaper (try pctorque.com). Yes, they are a gamers site, but I haven't had any trouble with the "gamer's" laptop that I bought last year for audio (especially since I have seen the same laptop offered elsewhere for about $1000 more with some small config changes, like the ones that you can do for yourself from musicxp.org)

For the original poster. I don't know about the PCI xpress stuff for audio. I have heard similar rumours to the one that you have stated. However, I haven't been in the market for about a year, so I don't know. Just do some research. Check out Tom's Hardward website.

I have to say, that a lot of the places that sell computers "just for audio" are a bit of a rip-off. Most of what they do is tweak the OS a little....and for the amount of money that they are going to charge you....well....

UltraJv · Post by **UltraJv** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 5:38 am

anti-banausic wrote:UltraJv, the problem with your post, is that you can get the same laptop for about half the price, and do some slight configuration changes to arrive at the same laptop that they want to sell you for so much more. Please stop spreading disinformation. Or at least, buying into the crap that some of these companies will sell you this uber-laptop when you can get the same thing for a lot less if you are half-way competent with PCs...

Sorry about the post though. The lappy that site has can be had for much cheaper (try pctorque.com). Yes, they are a gamers site, but I haven't had any trouble with the "gamer's" laptop that I bought last year for audio (especially since I have seen the same laptop offered elsewhere for about $1000 more with some small config changes, like the ones that you can do for yourself from musicxp.org)

For the original poster. I don't know about the PCI xpress stuff for audio. I have heard similar rumours to the one that you have stated. However, I haven't been in the market for about a year, so I don't know. Just do some research. Check out Tom's Hardward website.

I have to say, that a lot of the places that sell computers "just for audio" are a bit of a rip-off. Most of what they do is tweak the OS a little....and for the amount of money that they are going to charge you....well....

I stand by what I said - you get the support you pay for. Too many people here buy cheap then spend ages complaining about hardware issues. Red Submarine and Carrilon know what they are doing. Its not about software tweaks. Its insider audio hardware knowledge. Did you know there are 3 versions of USB? UHCI/OHCI and EHCI? This is why a lot of people have trouble getting USB to work properly on some devices. These companies use chipets on laptops that will work with most kit. Firewire has similar issues too - if you want guaranteed kit, buy specialist stuff. You say you dont know about PCI xpress, its well known that RME do know that it can have issues. You need to find out more before you jump in and attack. Toms hardware dont know about these isssues that affect audio because its not their area. Having said that, many people can and do buy ordinary laptops that work fine but thats just luck and a bit of research.

http://www.rme-audio.de/english/techinf ... _tests.htm

Emog · Post by **Emog** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:12 pm

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Emog wrote:Hi Illfwafer, you're a Gent, any chance you could possibly try out the Orangine, Five Towers, and Thonex stress-tests for measuring performance in Cubase SX, with as low latencies as possible, please? (As discussed on the Nuendo forums here (http://forum.nuendo.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=706&).

I think the links to the tests are:

http://www.citriq.com/sonomatica/sistem ... t%20SX.rar (http://www.citriq.com/sonomatica/sistemas/Orangine-Stress%20Test%20SX.rar)

http://www.adkproaudio.com/downloads.cfm (http://www.adkproaudio.com/downloads.cfm)

http://www.moar.net/cubasetest/index.shtml (http://www.moar.net/cubasetest/index.shtml)

Indeed could anyone with a laptop 915-PM (Sonoma) system try any of the above stress-tests, please?

Would be very grateful,

Thanks, Emog

anti-banausic · Post by **anti-banausic** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:29 pm

Sorry UltraJv, I was a bit buzzed when I wrote that. Your points are definitely true and well made. Just that I was in the market a year ago, and did do a lot of research, but also decided to press my luck and so far I have been just that...Lucky, though I have to go knock on a big piece of wood after saying that.

Didn't mean to be so harsh. Just saw the same prices that I saw about a year ago for a machine that is entirely to similar to mine to warrant the extra $1000 (or so it seems to me.)

Again, apologies.

hollownail · Post by **hollownail** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 4:59 pm

There shouldn't be a problem in a laptop or desktop. Consider, the bandwidth of pci is really small. The bandwidth of PCI-X is huge, and now you're less likely to split bandwith up on a machine with pci-x. You're less likely to have more devices on pci then you used to (no more ethernet card or firewire/usb cards needed on most mobo's). I'm not sure the exact specs, but I believe the bandwidth was 2x the apg bandwith, which is huge amount over pci (at least 8x more).
Now... if you're worried about a vid card taking over all the PCI-x bandwidth don't. Even with the highest end N6800gt's or the ati 850's, you won't use all the bandwidth, there will be plenty for any soundcard.
And in a laptop, you're not using an insanely powerful GPU either, which wouldn't be able to use even the full bandwidth of AGP 8x.
So all in all, it should be ok, but I'd also actually be intersted in seeing overall how the sonoma works. too bad they're better than intels desktop counterparts.
Of course, this is all if you actually get a PCI-X sound card (which they should be awesome once they come out).

cold c · Post by **cold c** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 5:22 pm

hollownail, did you type PCI-X when you meant to type PCIe ?

hollownail · Post by **hollownail** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 5:47 pm

yeah, sure did

i know... pci-x is more server pci type slot. sorry!

Emog · Post by **Emog** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 11:08 pm

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

Bump.

Emog wrote:Hi Illfwafer, you're a Gent, any chance you could possibly try out the Orangine, Five Towers, and Thonex stress-tests for measuring performance in Cubase SX, with as low latencies as possible, please? (As discussed on the Nuendo forums here (http://forum.nuendo.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=706&).

I think the links to the tests are:

http://www.citriq.com/sonomatica/sistem ... t%20SX.rar (http://www.citriq.com/sonomatica/sistemas/Orangine-Stress%20Test%20SX.rar)

http://www.adkproaudio.com/downloads.cfm (http://www.adkproaudio.com/downloads.cfm)

http://www.moar.net/cubasetest/index.shtml (http://www.moar.net/cubasetest/index.shtml)

Can anyone with a laptop 915-PM (Sonoma) system try any of the above stress-tests, please?

Would be very grateful,

Best,

Emog

sovietpop · Post by **sovietpop** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 7:11 pm

Bump.......

The Asus z7v1 works great .

We could make a list of sonoma system that works for audio.. keep this thread alive !

stag · Post by **stag** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 10:26 pm

A 2ghz Sonoma perform as well as 2.8 Dual Xeon, leaves a regular LGA775(5xx series) never mind which, crying in shame, it performs the TonesX test at 80% CPU load at 128 samples audio buffers , the 5 towers test at 64 samples(1,5ms latency) at 45% on idle 65% on playback.

My actual Laptop Sony VAIO vgn-s3xp, soon to be souped up with another gb of RAM.
I have to say enough is enough, i´ll never buy a tower PC in my life again, in fact i have ordered a 4 slot Magma chassis with a 36gb SCSI disk, and that´s it: no noise and top performance, i´ll leave the tower for surffing and for the kids to mess with.

The new laptops with the Intel 6xx series look appealling or just wait a bit for the Dual Core ones and there you got a machine for life, at least until 192Khz becomes standart and convolution used on everything.

sovietpop · Post by **sovietpop** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 2:41 am

So we have right now:
-ASUS z7v1 /Intel 915PM and ICH6-M Chipset ,128Mb nVidia Geforce Go 6600 PCI-Express Video

-Sony VAIO vgn-s3xp /Intel 915PM chipset with GeForce Go6200

sovietpop · Post by **sovietpop** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 12:19 am

VeXKoN · Post by **VeXKoN** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 4:15 pm

To verify - Do dropouts mean a loss of firewire/usb ect? Or does it just mean no audio? Because the problems I am having with my 9300 and presonus firebox involve losing the firewire connection. I think disabling my wireless has possibly solved it but I will have to check tonight and "stress test" it for a while. All my songs take up at least 70% cpu.

VeXKoN · Post by **VeXKoN** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:39 pm

So far tonite no dropouts and only pops at around 75% cpu. This is 44.1kHz and 4ms for the firebox.

VeXKoN · Post by **VeXKoN** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:42 pm

at 8ms there are no pops

Intel PCI express (915E) chipset - A hidden drag?