16 May
2007
16 May
'07
5:41 a.m.
On Sat, 2007-05-12 at 10:22 -0700, Ken Restivo wrote:
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On Sat, May 12, 2007 at 05:09:51PM +0200, Lars Luthman wrote:
OK, thanks for the advice on what not to get. I realise that I probably
have to get an USB or Firewire box if I want decent analog ins and outs,
but if all I need is S/PDIF out at 48kHz, surely there must be one
laptop that would work OK with the builtin sound? Is no one running
Linux audio software (succesfully) on a laptop without external
soundcards?
I'm thinking about getting a laptop, and of
course I want one that I can
run jackd and friends on with reasonable performance. I really don't
know much about hardware in general and laptops in particular, so I was
wondering if anyone had any advice. This is what I'm looking for:
* Mainboard / sound / CPU etc working well with recent RT-patched
kernels.
* S/PDIF out, at least 16 bits, 48kHz, stereo. Inputs are not
important, ADC/DAC quality is not important.
* DVD+-RW burner.
* jackd running without xruns with ~10ms latency (when using S/PDIF
out at 48kHz).
* Room for plenty of RAM (at least 2 GB).
* Not too expensive ( < 1000???).
Any suggestions?
Don't get the one I have (ASUS Z96F). It's a nice machine, easily-expandable,
and it was a great price, but the interrupt routing really sucks for audio:
way too many shared interrupts. Most of the Intel Core 2 Duo "Napa" based
motherboards (i.e. Mac Mini) seem to have similar interrupt-sharing
limitations. They also have the miserable hda-intel sound chip. I wish there were an online database of
/proc/interrupts, lspci, and dmiinfo
output for all laptops.
That would be very useful.
--ll