Spec for Laptop to be used as a Bass Guitar FX Pedal !

[Funkybassman]

I want to be able to use a laptop as an FX rack when playing bass guitar live.

I tried to achieve this using my aging acer A6000 laptop but have had limited success. First tried to use the "Line-In" on the laptop and used ASIO4All but was unable to get the latency low enough without the resulting audio popping & clicking and ASIO4All displaying red on the task bar.

Next I purchased a Behringer Guitar Link UCG102 but had limited success with it.

My first problem was that on the Acer (which runs windows XP BTW) I had exactly the same latency issues which was surprising as the Behringer is in effect an external Sound card which comes with it's own dedicated ASIO drivers so I I expected there to be no drop out/latency issues (I'm assuming that this problem was due to the lack of CPU power on the Acer).

I borrowed a neighbours laptop (running windows 7) and was unable to get a sound out of the device at all (this was reported in reviews on Amazon), so I'm unsure if a machine with more 'grunt' is all I need to get this idea to fly.


So my questions are

1. Can I use a laptop as as Bass Guitar Effects Rack (using Amplitube, Guitar Rig etc)

2. As that's 'The Most' I would want it to do, what spec of machine would I need to achieve this

3. Recommnedations for a reliable and cheap(ish) interface to use to get the audio signal into the Laptop from my Bass

Thanks in advance for any help

[ecc83]

That Acer is probably borderline as a realtime FX machine. It would almost certainly work ok as a modest recorder, grabbing 8 or so tracks at 24bits/44kHz but that requires little grunt. The spec' I found gave various ram loadings but if you don't have 2G onboard, forget it. IG IMHO would work for recording but not for FX.
Guitar Rig especially is very CPU hungry as well.

As for latency, how low do you need cos you can't have none! It is now pretty well established that latency performance is almost all decided by the soundcard/AI. The best AI extant at under £300 is (yup you guessed it!) the Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 but if you can find a second hand M-A fast track pro they are not far behind.

Suggesting a laptop is pretty impossible unless you have 2 grand for a specilaized audio model? I have an HP i3 W7/64 4G ram and that seems pretty swift, not tried it on GR but if there is a demo I can download I will.

This problem comes up SO often you would think somebody would make a super fast "host" box with a cut down W7 in it and an SSD?

Dave.

[jim_branning]

well one assumes the OP has set the bufferson the audio in/out device to their lowest?

if you still get audible latency ten the lappy and/or audio interface aint up to the job

sounds bananas to me tho. Why not just get a line6 or a boss unit and be done with it?

[ICBM]

Worth looking at this, if you haven't seen it already...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy91hyYcVEs (The iPod is just a controller, not the processor.)

Especially the bits in the comments about him running a split signal with some of the bass signal going directly to the amp (which will mask latency), and that he switched to a Line6 hardware unit from the laptop, also to deal with the latency problem.

I would like to do this as well (for guitar rather than bass, but same difference really) but it looks like it's difficult to make it work well in real time.

[ecc83]

Fork! Din't know my Tannoys could produce that much bass!

Yes, the "parallel" dodge is a good one. Son used it with a demo of GR2 since the PC could not get the latency low enough. He found having about 50-50 wet and dry sound was fine and the dry feed gave enough of a "que" to keep in time. This was home recording mind you, not live stuff!

Then a lot of reverb software has a pre delay, just crank that back to compensate.

Still, guitarist have been playing about with delay for decades and getting stunningly virtuoso* results.
DOH! I blame the meds, should of course be "virtuosic"! (I think)
Dave.