Well, after some 2+ years in FL Studio I have just started using Renoise.
And I freaking love it.
The sheer amount of sample manipulation and ease of use is an absolute dream for edits and choppage fun.
I have a desktop,lappy and now looking at a netbook after the efficient music competition. Just for audio ideas and programming beats on the move/work/travel.
Does anyone have a recommendation for netbooks as they are practically all the same in the market at the moment? So far, I have narrowed it down to either a Samsung NC10 or Msi Wind U100.
Plus, if anyone has tips and tricks for optimising Renoise for a netbook, that would be great.
I use Samsung NC10 as my secondary Renoise-machine and it runs well enough to be usable in most cases. NC10 also has an excellent keyboard which naturally is very important when using Renoise. Battery life is about 7 hours and display is OK, you can make it very bright. I tried Renoise with another netbook (guess it was MSI-made) and NC10 was bit faster, although having same processor, Atom 1.6Ghz.
So what can you do or not to do with it:
You cannot run most demosongs using 44,1 Khz samplerate, if you drop to 33 Khz then you should be able to run most of them. You get some extra power without (probably) losing too much sound quality, but of course you can hear the difference between 44 and 33 if you start to listen.
Latency is set around 40 ms with my NC10. Asio4ALL driver actually makes things worse with NC10 so you should use DirectSound, that is my experience… Not really a problem when tracking without a MIDI keyboard.
It has enough power to run some VST’s and those native effects. From freebie-synths I can recommend Synth1 and Minimogue as they are economical with CPU. From commercials I use mainly FM7/FM8 and Moog Modular with it.
If you have a big sample library, it takes some time to open the sample library every time you start Renoise and click ‘Sample’ in disk browser. Not probably a problem with a smaller amount of samples. I have maybe 20 GIGs which can take 20 secs or so before the library shows up.
Sound quality from headphones is surprisingly good, compared to some other laptops(like MacBook) I have used. There isn’t noticeable noise or crackles.
All in all I have been satisfied with it, just don’t expect too much regarding processing power and you won’t be disappointed.
I run an Samsung NC10 as my secondary machine too.
I’ve found the built in audio a bit quiet when running headphones so I use a Native Instruments Audio Kontrol 1 USB interface for umph and to drop the latency down a bit. Although it does drop battery time down to around 4hours.
Strip out all non critical background tasks on xp home like anti virus etc. I also run bb4win_mod as a minimal shell replacement.
the Samsung NC10 is a really well build netbook.
If you really just want to sketch with it (no/minimal vst use)
you will be satisfied.
I myself got annoyed with the restrictions.
so I bought a Samsung Q210.
Dispite being a Laptop it has the size of a Netbook (12" screen)
those 2" really matter with long term use.
Samsung NC20 also has a 12" and VIA NANO CPU.
I just picked up the N110 for some mobile tracking fun, and Renoise runs as explained in the posts above. Great for going back to basics, which personally I find more productive.
I’ve got another more powerful laptop + machine for if I ever actually write a song and want to go vst crazy and/or master etc. So far the N110 is a great portable machine, 7+ hours of mobile music mashing.
I’m sure there are more tweaks for me to do, so far I just un-installed most of the vendor noise and set visual prefs for performance.
Linux with proper RT running on a Netbook gives more CPU resources to Renoise.
We have a super sale on Indamixx digital download for $49.00 plus it comes with lots of goodies. Sale ends the 13th. http://www.indamixx.com/indamixx-iso-download.html
Interesting stuff… I didn’t realise I could buy your OS on it’s own I thought you had to buy the hardware also for some reason.
Is it easy to dual boot my pre-installed Windows 7 Sumsung N110 with your audio OS and Renoise etc are included in the 49 USD? I have no CD rom so assume I can stick it on a flash a boot the install/partition from there…? No fiddling with drivers etc?
