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 Kyma Forum
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 multi-tracking on laptop
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| Author | Topic: multi-tracking on laptop |
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chuck welti Member |
posted 19 February 2001 16:33
 
I am running kyma on a Dell Laptop P3 with 196meg. So my question is how many tracks of digital sound files can I play simultaneously from disk. Would there be a difference if I write to the internal hard drive, versus if I wrote to an external drive via SCSI PCMIA adatptor card? Also, if there is a A/D converter on the input does it use that as word clock? IP: Logged |
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SSC Administrator |
posted 19 February 2001 18:44
For a Capybara-LS on a laptop, you should get 6 mono 16-bit 44.1khz tracks. I would not expect that using a SCSI or IDE driver would change the number of tracks you could get. When in digital mode, the Capybara-LS uses the clock on its digital input as the clock. IP: Logged |
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chuck welti Member |
posted 20 February 2001 10:57
Why so low. Native host processing programs boast many more simultaneous tracks. What is the limitation? IP: Logged |
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oivindi Member |
posted 20 February 2001 11:14
Donīt forget that ordinary harddiskrecording software is reading directly from the harddisk, while Kyma has to get its data through the (slow) PCMCIA bus. This is the big limitation (and itīs even worse on my Mac Powerbook G3 -- playing back a stereo track with something like 2x or 4x the default frequency will slow the response time of the Kyma GUI down considerably. Not good.) There have been talk about a Firewire adapter to replace the PCMCIA. Iīd *really* like to see this, of course, but Iīm afraid itīll take some time before it sees the light of day. /Øivind/ IP: Logged |
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garth paine Member |
posted 20 February 2001 15:48
I have noticed since getting the Capy/Kyma that when using audio off hard disk, everything (especially screen redraw) is very slow. I tried the ASIO drivers and the machine nearly clogged up, and there was a constant aliasing/clicking type sound in the audio stream. I also tried just playing 4 channels of audio in the timeline, and that froze the computer (couldn't even stop it) until the time line ended. I had understood I could play many more than 4 tracks of audio in this way? I have a G3 400 Powerbook - it has DVD drive, a Bronze keyboard, and SCSI (the model just before the firewire versions). I believe there may be some problems using the PC bus on this model for Audio work? I heard Magna didn't support this model - I am wondering if some of the slowness I am seeing regarding multi audio file playback is due to the PB compliance with the cardbus spec?? Do you have any experience with this? IP: Logged |
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SSC Administrator |
posted 20 February 2001 18:52
Are you playing back stereo files? A stereo file uses twice the bandwidth of a mono file, and we would expect you to be able to play back 3 or 4 before running out of PC Card bandwidth. Also, playing a file from the hard disk at a rate higher than it was recorded uses up additional bandwidth: a mono file played at a Rate of 2 uses up twice the bandwidth of the mono file played at its original rate. As far as the Magma chassis, we have tried one of the CardBus ones out on our VIAO laptop and got very good results, comparable to a desktop PCI-based computer. Unfortunately, that Magma model would not work with our 300 MHz PowerBook, so we could not try that out. Check out the Magma website to see if the Bronze version may be new enough to work. IP: Logged |
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garth paine Member |
posted 20 February 2001 23:53
quote: I am wondering about that - the audio files I have are mono files, but they are split stereo - recorded originally in Logic without any linking of the 2 channels - When I open them to edit I get a stereo file, but they should really only be mono, so that confuses me, as they were not recorded as stereo files. So I am guessing that when I am playing them in the timeline, they are playing as mono files??
What I actually meant was that the Magma chassis do not work with the Bronze keyoarded PB's, so I was wondering if there is a problem here that affects the performance of my PB with the Capy? Why is it that you say we can only play 3 or 4 stereo tracks through the capy, when one is suposed to be able to play many tracks through a Magma chassis from Logic or Protools?? Surely they are using the same bus, and subject to the same restrictions therein? IP: Logged |
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SSC Administrator |
posted 21 February 2001 09:27
<Why is it that you say we can only play 3 or 4 stereo tracks through the capy, when one is suposed to be able to play many tracks through a Magma chassis from Logic or Protools?? Surely they are using the same bus, and subject to the same restrictions therein?> The Magma chassis and Magma PCI converter both use CardBus, rather than PC(MCIA). CardBus bandwidths are comparable to PCI bandwidths (approximately 16 times faster than the PCMCIA transfer rates) IP: Logged |
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oivindi Member |
posted 22 February 2001 07:00
Iīm rather clueless about the Cardbus vs. PCMCIA, so whatīs the difference? And isnīt it possible for Kyma to use Cardbus as well? Just wondering. /Øivind/ IP: Logged |
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SSC Administrator |
posted 22 February 2001 09:14
PCMCIA is basically the ISA bus for laptops. Cardbus is basically PCI for laptops but has not been available for as long as PCMCIA has. PCMCIA is 8 or 16 bits wide and operates at 8 MHz, while Cardbus is 32 bits wide and operates at 33 MHz. At the time we designed the PCMCIA interface, Cardbus did not yet exist. This raises an obvious question, and the answer is, yes, some new Kyma interfacing options are in the works. More on this later... [This message has been edited by SSC (edited 22 February 2001).] IP: Logged |
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