Hardware, Hardware, Hardware

So, I just received my 2nd hand E-mu 1616 (not M version) which I bought on ebay for £110 inc p&p, looks as good as new. Running it using my Toshiba Tecra M2V (Hong Kong import, gift from sis) which has a 1.5Ghz pentium M and 512MB ram running winxpsp3 with some daw tweaks. It also has a fat 4400mah battery that I also bought on ebay. Screen resolution is only 1024x768 and the gfx is intel extreme (rubbish, but, does it's job).

The E-mu asio driver is running at 3ms (2ms is as low as it will go, but, lappy isn't quite powerful enough) which ends up being 7.4ms real latency. GR4 is running at 48Khz in Hi-quality mode stand-alone.

Quality is awesome tbh and everything installed within 10minutes. This set-up now allows me to use GR4 with my band T.A.S.

Initially it'll just be used for bass guitar, although, I've already loaded in synths like Kore player and Kontact aswell as midi song writing tools like Guitar Pro 5 for use at home with my cheapo casio keyboard.

I can whole-heartedly recommend this set-up if you're on a budget and your laptop has the old cardbus PCMCIA slot. 5/5!

 

congratulations! Can you provide a link to those of us who'd like to by a new Toshiba Tecra M2V? Also, what are you using as a footpedal to control this? And you mentioned something about "daw tweaks" for your system. Could you elaborate?

Thanks

 

Cheers Jimfist. I don't know where to buy it from because my sister bought it quite a few years ago in Hong Kong. I would assume any cardbus/PCMCIA slot equipped pentium M would be close to what I've got.

Haven't tried a controller yet, I just use the arrow keys up and down to change patches. I will try it with my zoom8080 next jam.

As for daw tweaks, basically all the musicxp site tweaks plus wifi, lan, 56k modem, printer and some usb2.0 ports all turned off. Just the basic tweaks really like no desktop picture, set for background services, no remote connection, minimal bootup programs using msconfig etc.

It's not stripped back though. I haven't removed any windows components. Hope that helps.

 

In researching the E-mu 1616, i came upon this link for the newer 1616m:

http://www.zzounds.com/item--EMU1616M

What caught my eye is that, further down the tech spec list, E-mu lists known compatible laptop systems, PCMCIA controllers, known incompatibilities, and the OS specs they used for testing.

They obviously see the value in listing this information for the benefit of the end user, something I have been begging NI to do for Rig Kontrol/Guitar Rig since purchasing the stuff. Instead NI requires the end-user to do his own trouble-shooting searches on forums like this...a real crapshoot.

If NI is never going to consider taking the variables out of the end users hands (by creating a hardware version of Guitar Rig a la Digidesign 11 Rack), then the least they could do is come up with a recommended tech spec list like the one mentioned above....but they don't. disappointing.

Rig Kontrol could also benefit by this type of design (contained in the 1616m) to reduce latency issues:

- Bus-Mastering DMA subsystem reduces CPU usage
- E-MU E-DSP 32-bit DSP with 67-bit accumulator (double precision w/ 3 headroom bits)
- Hardware-accelerated, 32 channel mixing, and multi-effects processing
- Zero-latency direct hardware monitoring w/effects

 

The 1616m isn't really newer. The m is for mastering as the d/a a/d is of mastering grade. I would have got the 1616m, but, my bid was in and I got the 1616 plus the card really cheap. Ebay has one seller selling the 1616m's for about £120 which is a bargain if you can find the E-mu 02 cardbus card to go with it.

The difference is around 7db snr maximum between the two. My 1616 during band practice is going into an E-mu 1212m which has the 1616m' d/a a/d head-room. I'm thinking of getting a 1212m now to complete my desktop at home which my 1616 can also connect to.

One bonus of this right now is that I can set the laptop to 96khz and output that into my desktop using the 1616 as a pre-amp which is much better than the audigy2 platpro (I never use the pre-amps on the A2). I'll be trying digital connection soon if I can find my wires.

I'd like to keep the A2 though really, because, as far as I know, it's one of the few ways of being able to run multiple instances of GR3/4 stand-alone without problems.

Try 2 instances of GR4 stand-alone...that's next gen sound right there. Even my quad-core feels the strain, but, is just about do-able at 2ms (6ms real).

 

I've been messing around with overclocking my Toshiba laptop. Using a program called Clockgen latest version and pll code ICS 951402. I had to test and find this one to work, no forums helped, not 100% whether this is the right one, but, it works. Other ones made my screen all messed-up or did nothing.

My cpu is a Pentium M 1.5Ghz Dothan chip with 2MB cache. I can use Clockgen's PLL control to overclock upto 2Ghz stable. Anymore after this and it will bsod. Using a program called CPUID I can confirm the overclock. FSB is retained at 133.

In GR4, overclocked performance resulted in around 10-11% less cpu usage and also stable 48Khz/24bit 3ms ASIO settings. So from e.g. 44% down to 32-33% with a 500mhz overclock.

Due to the low-power of the cpu; settings that reduce cpu usage on a desktop by 1% may result in 4-5% cpu difference on the laptop. Turning things like even the tuner off results in a 3-4% drop.

Turning all right-side options in GR4 on the laptop off results in cpu % equivalent to a desktop running a basic preset.

For those looking for a cheap desktop alternative I'd recommend getting hold of a 1212m and going on ebay and buying the cheap 1616m breakout box. Cost is in the region of £270, which is still cheaper than buying the 1616m complete kit on it's own.