RE: Laptop Looping

[midifriedchicken@comcast.net]

Well I was looking to migrate to a Laptop completly. I use Live already in a solo electronica project. SL is used sparingly with good results. I also play Acoustic music for the "Common Masses" as Kripen refers to them. For that gig, I use an RC 50. I was experimenting with the laptop for its seemingly infinite flexibility in regards to effects and routing. I just cant get it to work without the occasional pop, or dropout. Even if it only happens intermittingly, my faith is shattered. With the other gig, I can hide flaws with other sounds like percussion, deep delays and gobs of reverb.

-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Mark Sottilaro" <sine@zerocrossing.net>

Sounds odd to abandon laptop looping because of one VST host.  Live isn’t as good as Bidule, but on the other hand it comes with a full complement of great plug-ins and is a pretty capable DAW.

 

I don’t remember you saying if you were using Firewire or USB for audio.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: midifriedchicken@comcast.net [mailto:midifriedchicken@comcast.net]
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 8:23 AM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: Re: Laptop Looping

 

So the cpu spikes I was seeing on the activity viewer on my 1.5gig PB seem to be caused by Bidule. I can't seem to replicate this behavior with any other application. Live 6 with SL actually works better. The cpu spikes were creating dropouts and audio glitches that are unacceptable for live work. The flexible routing in Bidule is beyond cool, but the glitches make it unuseable, for me anyway.

I tried raising the audio buffer on both Bidule and/or the interface. But all that did was increase latency beyond playable levels.

My laptop looping experiment has failed miserably. Maybe when I can get a faster machine I'll go back.

I'm guessing in the Ambient genre its easier to hide the limitations because a lot of the sounds you would use are actually similer to the glitchy clicks I was getting. Plus the latency is easier to hide with all those delays. But for now, its back to the RC50 for my acoustic stuff. Live and SL are great for the electronica gig I have. I just wish Live had the routing flexibilty that Bidule has.