KVR Audio

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Fri Sep 16, 2022 6:29 am

kv-2.png

How f**king cool is this going to look on stage? Yes, that's a little window in the back of the chassis so you can see the inner workings and, yes, it's all lit up with coloured LEDs.

In case it's not obvious, it's a 13" gaming convertible. Believe it or not, you can get it with up to a Core i9 and RTX 3070. This is the base model with a Core i5 and Intel graphics. The 12th Gen Core i5 outperforms the 11th Gen Core i7 in my laptop so it will have no trouble playing anything and everything I load into it. List price is Au$2499, it was on sale at $1899 and I managed to squeeze another $80 off that. Unlike a Surface Pro, it comes with the keyboard/cover and a stylus so it's actually great value.

I finally got around to listing my last two laptops on eBay the other night. One of them already has a bid on it, so it will sell for no more than $150 less than I paid for it 18 months ago and it will cover more than half the cost of this thing. If the other one sells too, I'll be more than covered for the whole cost.

My plan is multi-faceted. I'm going to keep using my laptop in the studio and this thing will purely be for live work. It will work because all my data lives on a microSD card, so whichever machine has the card in it has all our latest files. I recently bought Studio One Artist so that's what I want to install on this. It is also a great opportunity to only install the plugins I actually use and/or want to use, to see how good/bad it is to work with an ultra-minimal set-up.

I'm really excited about this. The opportunity to try out new computer configurations without putting pressure on our recording/rehearsal schedule will hopefully be very illuminating for our future planning. Plus, of course, this new machine is just so f**king cool!

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Fri Sep 16, 2022 10:39 am

They stole your font, you should seek royalties.

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Fri Sep 16, 2022 3:45 pm

Shame it's only got 16GB RAM... They're going for £1600 in the UK retail (£1900 list), about AU$2700, inc tax. Very pretty.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Sat Sep 17, 2022 12:43 am

I almost bought a Core i9 model on eBay the other night but, from the time I first saw it on Saturday, to Monday morning changing exchange rates added $350 to the price, which made it too expensive with international shipping. But if you can find one locally, the price will be far more reasonable. It's the kind of thing people would buy because it looks so cool, then discover it wasn't really what they need, so there are quite a few on eBay. The i9 version would not have been a good buy for me because it would be twice as powerful as my laptop without the lappie's convenience. OTOH, the Core i5 is a perfect companion now and for at least the next few laptop upgrades.

16GB of RAM is stupid for the Core i9 version but for me it's plenty. My last couple of laptops had 32GB but my current one only has 16GB and it hasn't made any difference to anything.

chagzuki, our font is based on Planet Kosmos, which I don't see in use here.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sat Sep 17, 2022 9:17 am

BONES wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 12:43 am chagzuki, our font is based on Planet Kosmos, which I don't see in use here.

I was joking, but I see it fits your aesthetic, which is nice for live shows.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Sat Sep 17, 2022 11:54 am

I knew you were joking, I was just spoiling your fun (because that's what I do).

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sat Sep 17, 2022 1:18 pm

BONES wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 11:54 am I knew you were joking, I was just spoiling your fun (because that's what I do).

Grrrrrrr.

revvy · Post by **revvy** » Sat Sep 17, 2022 2:40 pm

Form the back it looks like a Surface with a colorful stripe.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Sat Sep 17, 2022 11:46 pm

It looks even more like a Surface when you are sitting on front of it. The keyboard/cover is exactly like a Surface TypeCover. Mind you, on stage I'll be relying on touch and a mouse, the keyboard takes up too much space. Touch on Win 11 seems amazingly good, if my current laptop is anything to go by.

Can you imagine how cool my stage set-up will look with just this and an Erae Touch on this stand -

It's gonna be awesome. All we need now is a gig.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sun Sep 18, 2022 8:51 pm

Where do you record vocals, Bones? I have some vague idea that I could actually practice and record some vocals in the future, and then I realise I have no feasible plan to escape squashed suburban shit housing where it's not really possible. I guess a boat would be the ideal solution, sailing out to the middle of nowhere and then screaming my head off.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Mon Sep 19, 2022 2:30 am

We used to record at work, where there are voice-over booths that are perfect for our needs. But after I changed jobs 6 months ago, we lost that access. We recently gained access to a former TV studio, so we've been using that. It's a huge room but it has been acoustically treated so it works well.

I could never record on the boat, it's a noisy environment. Too much clanking and clanging, plus lots of noisy cockatoos.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Mon Sep 19, 2022 7:36 am

BONES wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 2:30 am We used to record at work, where there are voice-over booths that are perfect for our needs.

How big is a vocal booth, or rather, how small can one be whilst not creating problems with reverberation?

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Mon Sep 19, 2022 8:08 am

I used to use one that was the size of a public toilet cubicle but it was fully lined with acoustic foam. The one's at my old work were just repurposed small meeting rooms, maybe half the size of a kid's bedroom, lined with heavy curtains on two sides. They weren't ideal but they got the job done.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Tue Sep 27, 2022 1:21 pm

Holy shit! I just did a very unscientific test, playing through the same song on the ROG and on my laptop, through the same I/O device with the same driver and settings. The 12th Gen Core i5 absolutely smokes the 11th Gen i7 in the laptop. On the ROG, the song was showing 18%-21% on the CPU meter in Studio One, with Task Manager reporting just 12% CPU use. Meanwhile, on my laptop, I'm seeing 27%-32% on the CPU meter and more than 20% in Task Manager. That's a massive leap forward for a lesser processor series.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Tue Sep 27, 2022 11:03 pm

Computers are damn good these days. It's about the only thing that makes me feel optimistic.

New Stage Machine - Asus ROG Flow Z13