Thread lap top recording

Hey Maxolla, Welcome to the Board.

Quote: The lap top is a frv26 with 2.8 gig processing and a 40gig hd and 256ram

At first glance, you should increase your RAM. I also have a VAIO :D and did that straight away. But I've seen that you probably have 512 MB DDR SDRAM (256MB x 2), expandable to 1024MB (cf. SONY PCGFRV26KITC ) ???
And that 's cool. ;)

Quote: Can I use this little lap top to do both at the same time?

You may be looking at some virtual studios where the PC do the sequence and control your nice sampler korg triton via MIDI output ...
Cubase is a right choice for this task.

Quote: Do I need to get a new hard drive thats quicker. mine right now is running at 4500 rpm.

don't think so. Bigger RAM is the way to go and you can afford 1024MB which is super cool
You can still use an external bigger storage in an external case PCI/Firewire when you will need some room for your samples libraries.

Well my first advice is to start making something operational and then upgrade your laptop internally/externally with the required extras.

Thanks for joining!
Regards,
Red

reds right about the ram,I have vaio set up for a studio running cubase and using tascam usb control interface running out to extigy I've been very pleased with my results.I found that you should set up a 2cd partition on your hard drive,install xp on that or what ever then go through windows and custemize it.like go through the services and disable all non related features.if in doubt set it to manual.then go to system properties device manager disable all non related external hard ware,such as printer,cams,exturnal drives,you can turn them back on as you need them.then go to advance tap go to performance and set for best performance,then at the bottem you'll see vitaul memory click that and change the number value to 1500 or more,like 1500 min. 3000 max.then go to start tap,run msconfig,startup tap disable all non related programs.then to services on the same board disable all except plug-in-play,and win.audio.at this point your system will be completely set up for audio,no glitches no pops,no hisses,oh ya make sure that all pcmi cards are disconnected,they will cause hisses.and by all means more ram the better,hard drive is fine the only thing that I would do is go system properties and device manager right click on hard drive,properties,policies,check the write catch enable,then your good to go.I also have external hard drives for storages perposes but that all that there good for.

i'd definately say to get a faster drive also. I've kinda "cheated" the high end sound cards with ad da conversion.. mainly because they're too damn much money. My setup is a home built P4 2.2GHZ with 512mb ram, and a small 12gb drive to house the OS and utilities (I use cakewalk, but for the most part, cubase behaves the same way). For the audio, i have a cheap ($35) IDE RAID card with 2 40gb 7200 RPM drives. The drives are mirrored so they appear as one partition to the system. Also, writing data across multiple drives is always faster than one. For the audio inputs, here's my setup: i have 5 seperate SoundBlaster Live! PCI cards in the machine and a USB Creative Labs Extigy (a fine product.. definately check it out..). I use the left and right line inputs on each card as a seperate track.. i.e.- SB 1- line in left- track 1.. line in right- track 2.. SB2- line in left- track 3... line in right- track 4, etc etc. the 5 cards with the Extigy line input gives me 12 independant tracks to work with at the same time... MUCH cheaper than buying a customized hardware interface. Load up with as much RAM as you can fit... this and the speed of the drives are the two key elements to doing live audio recording.

hey maxolla,
for external audio capture with firewire you should use something like the MOTU 896, pretty expensive though. you could also try the Edirol UA-1000 USB 2.0 Audio Capture Device, thats pretty good, but it does cost around $750.
later!