All You Need is the A-500 and a Laptop... really? No interface?

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Rubber Lizard
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2011/12/15 02:16:19 (permalink)

All You Need is the A-500 and a Laptop... really? No interface?

  I have been researching the A series. I read reviews that said all you need is an A-500 Pro and a laptop. I find this hard to believe. I assume you must also have an audio interface? Last time I tried to run Sonar with just the onboard sound card it was not a pretty sight. Still, I might be missing something, since none of the ads or reviews mention needing anything beyond the keyboard and a computer... Any advice?
post edited by Rubber Lizard - 2011/12/15 02:20:48
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    EmajorBlues
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    Re:All You Need is the A-500 and a Laptop... really? No interface? 2011/12/22 19:57:53 (permalink)
    To be honest I don't have a Audio Interface at this moment in time. Onboard sound with my Asrock Motherboard. SonarX1 runs pretty well. I havn't really pushed it's limits as much as I have other daws but it seems sturdy enough on my cpu/ram.

    My specs.
    AMD Athlon II 640 x4 running at 3.1ghz
    4GB DDR3 1600mhz Kingston HyperX
    Asrock Nforce 720 - I think.

    Hope this helps
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    offnote
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    Re:All You Need is the A-500 and a Laptop... really? No interface? 2011/12/22 20:17:11 (permalink)
    wanna good results? get a good audio interface. simple as that.
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    RobertB
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    Re:All You Need is the A-500 and a Laptop... really? No interface? 2011/12/24 00:34:47 (permalink)
    It depends on how the sound card drivers are implemented on the laptop.
    The A-500, or any controller, has nothing to do with it. The kicker is the latency in the sound from your soft synths when you are trying to record a performance.
    If you are stuck with MME, then you definitely need an interface.
    If you have good WDM or WASAPI drivers, you may be ok.
    I had some success using WASAPI on my two year old laptop (Vista 32bit). It is capable of very low latency, but proved to be somewhat unstable on my machine. WASAPI has the potential to be very good, but implementation is at the discretion of the vendor.  Ymmv.
    Technically, the controller and a laptop is all you need. Yes, it will work. But to get the performance most of us demand, especially when recording live MIDI/soft synth tracks, a decent interface is called for.


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