Hiya folks,

After visiting the mother nation (UK) to collect my guitar, some software, and even a microphone, I thought I was all set to get my ass back to France and record some tunes - but now my laptop is playing silly buggers.

I have a sony vaio pentium 4 with 256 ram, 40g hd. I have installed cooledit pro, acid pro, reason and (thanks to some cunning web mining) full version of FL pro (I can handle fruity loops, just till I manage to master reason!)
As a side note, I also managed to save 300+ CDs onto the hd (only at 20kbs - only takes up something like 6g) just for that little inspiration.


Problem is cooledit crashes as soon as I try and record anything. Before it began crashing though, any sound played from all music software (including windows media player) comes out crackly and popping. I thought I had funked up the drivers by installing all the different softwares, but there seems to be no clashes.

I'm all set to back up (on god knows how many CDs) and get the recue cd's into action...unless anyone here has any bright ideas!

Secondly, I have a question just concerning the setup of a laptop-based 'studio'. Does anyone here use such a system?
My future pay-rise is going to budget for an external (USB) sound card with lots of ins and outs inc. midi for similarly budgeted controller for Reason. Is this sort of hardware anygood? Obviously a laptop is goingto be limitted from the start in terms of sound cards so I just assume that the external approach is the next big thing. Any comments on this approach would be really useful to me!

Cheers

Ok just a quick note...Good setup...pretty much the same as what i use when i'm playing out or mobile recording..firstly soundblaster audigy usb...good card to use..
Ditch cool edit... exchange it for soundforge...keep acid...good sequencer.. keep fruity excellent for drums and samples... reason rocks, but is so hard to get to grips with...will take u a while but worth it.
Also if u use these progs and u know your way around them have a look at native's reaktor four...
What sorta music u producing?

joker001 said:

He joker thanks for the response! I may have a copy of soundforge somewhere so I'll give it a try and compare it to what I can do with cooledit (when it works that is).

I want to produce live sounding guitar/bass (acoustic/electric + effects via amp), and vocals, and maybe harmonica once I learn some blues lick (I kinda rested on my laurels after pulling off some 'bends' only a couple of days after getting this instrument). I can't play drums so I'll be using fruity or reason for that, and I can't play keys so I'll be 'playing' a two octave midi controller when I get my hands on one and figure out Reason. I have a lot of ideas floating around my head and so I wont be specialising on one particular style of music just yet. For the moment I want to concentrate on a rocking Funkadelic-style concept, and a light acoustic blues-folk thing (with an edge in funk I hope...I guess Cookie Jar would be the 'stylistic' equivalent...erm, almost!).

I'll probably also have a crack at a good thumping break beat tune for some Reason practise, but for now I need a sound card that allows me to plug loads of things in for real time recording of audio (and midi). I think I descovered what the problem was with my sound card last night - I supsect it doesnt have enough channels for multitrack recording and simultaneous playback. I also read somewhere that the USB sound cards are not that good for this sort of recording (they don't have the speed required or something like that). I did also descover though (better late than never!) that my vaio has firewire (or 'i-link'), the sound cards for which are better for multitracking apparently.

What do you use your audigy for?
I've just checked out the reaktor website and it does look good!

Ooh, and it now seems I have the full version as well.


[The 'Kazaa - Superstar, by far' Edit]
[This message was edited Mon Sep 8 12:41:47 PDT 2003 by MaggotBrain]

I use the audigy as it is easier for what i do than using a full midi interface (I use a roland 303 groovebox as a controller for fruityloops and reason so only need one midi in/out. The two programs are basically the same setup as a 303 for programming so work really well together. Also the audigy has multiple ins and dolby 5:1 out and controller so u can play with your mix-down by placing some channels to come out of the rears...sorta like an updated Q-sound... Soundforge is basically a super sampler. Record in... play around...time stretch, but for the music you are looking at, it may be better for you to get hold of cubase vst then at least u can record your new track whilst the others are playing...Also the plugins for cubase vst once loaded are useable in fruityloops...If u can't get cubase, use cakewalk... they both use the same recording setup based on the old atari st version of cubase...
Keep it up and send me some stuff u've written... or post it here..!!

Peace..

Joker