Question on NetBooks

mikethomas


I probably know the answer to this but I'm gonna ask anyway. I'm basically a Mac user. But I have a version of Sonar from about 2-3 years ago for Windows. I'm not looking to record anything with Sonar or on the NetBook. I just wanna use a version of Dimension Pro via Sonar I bought at the same time I purchased Sonar.

All that being said, what are the possibilities of using a NetBook for just playing the VST stuff with my controller board?
Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions
Mike Thomas

http://www.youtube.com/wa.h?v=LMKftem79ZQ&NR=1

I just happened upon this video on my search for more infor on the kb37,  but I was doing something very similarly with an edirol pcr  A 30 and an acer aspire one (netboook). I was also using Reason with my netbook, and was able to do quite a bit. I recorded my band practices on it.. I even performed live with it using ableton and Reason.  Never had an issue.  I loved my little netbook,  but I traded it to the singer for some other gear. I miss how extremely portable and actually useful it was. 

fireberd

1GB RAM and Win 7 starter edition. 

It's probably the  1 gig of ram.  Try adding another gig (or more).  Mine came with 1 gig,  but I added another.  And it was also XP. It was fine for playing a couple of synths real time or basic recordings. 

fireberd


The RAM may make a difference (I've been considering that, anyway). 
The Win 7 starter edition is sort of a cross between XP and Win 7 and it's not the issue.

But, I only bought the netbook for traveling and mostly checking e-mail.   I have a full size laptop with a 17" screen that I have setup for Sonar and recording if I needed to do "on site" recording.

yeah,  they are no comparison to more powerful computers (though there is a dual core netbook now).  I idn't have much expectation either.  But since I had it,  I tweaked,  put some music software in it...and I was very surprised at how far I was able to go.  Like I said..real time playing in Reason (which is very light on the CPU anyway) and a few VST playing was possible.  Recording a couple of tracks was no problem at all (I did 6 at one time,  just to test),  but then most any computer can record audio tracks just fine.  It's more the CPU intensive stuff like VST's and fx that are the issue with those little netnbooks.  If you freeze and raise the latency..you can do quite a bit with one. 

The only issue with my Asus netbook is that the weird version of XP it comes with is not supported by either of my interfaces. When you try and install the drivers it errors with" OS not supported" ??
So I've never even loaded Sonar into it.
I did upgrade my RAM 2Gigs highly recomended. By all counts its just a lazy old 1.7 Mhz processor and that's what you can expect. But the worst is what you get with the dpclat meter, it's horrible even with wireless disabled. They are even worse than standard laptops as far as strange things lurking in the background

I do love it for my backing tracks< the on board sound works fine even through a PA. No hum or artifacts. Good little workhorses and cheap too! But I would not even dream to ask it to be a DAW