PC music production business that won't tax your PC?

[Guest petesasqwax]

Just an idle thought. I got a couple of windows 10 tablets over Christmas to run Kodi on. They were offensively cheap (like £40 sort of cheap) but work like a charm for my requirements. The thing is, they're only 1GB of RAM, but they have quadcore Intel Atom Z3735G processors, so they're quite handy units. I was thinking of the possibility of putting some kind of production app on it for use when I'm out, maybe, but didn't really know what might be light enough on the RAM and CPU to work. Any suggestions?

[Guest rasteri]

Ableton all the way.

[Guest petesasqwax]

Really? That's awesome - I imagined that Ableton would be too intensive for that amount of RAM/CPU power.

[Guest rasteri]

Ableton is extremely light on resources as long as you don't cane the effects.

 

Certainly I used to run Ableton on a laptop shitter than that, but that was several Abletons ago. I dunno if Live 7 still works on windows 10 but it might be worth a shot.

 

EDIT : Reaper is even lighter on resources but I really hate its interface

[Guest petesasqwax]

Thanks, Andy, I'll definitely give it a go and see how it performs. I've had friends tell me how great Reaper is, but it doesn't do it for me either. My intention is to create sample banks that I would pre effect with the kind of plugins I would usually apply in real time, thereby foregoing the need to use them whilst sequencing.

[DJ Rock Well]

Everybody tells me about how well Reaper works and sounds, but one quick glance and erm, yes...

[Guest petesasqwax]

I wouldn't have thought it was all that difficult to get it right with the interface of a DAW, but Reaper just seems oddly repellent for some reason.

[Flexinoodle]

The problem with Windows tablets is the horrific nature of touch interface on desktop apps, unless you carry a mouse around with you, they are shitty to work with, the latest betas of Reaper are having an overhaul for touch support, Maschine simply does not work with touch (Dials wont move) and parts of Ableton are very trixxy too.

There is Remixlive for triggering clips, but not production, designed specifically for touch.

Bitwig is pretty good with touch, but its just a resource hog

Openlabs stagelight is designed from the get go for Touch, and is not too bad on resources

And Xotopad is not too bad for triggering clips, built for touch.

 

As for Reapers default ui being crap, yep it is, here is my current Reaper UI project, the theming engine is pretty solid, and here i have converted it near enough to look and work like Maschine

 

[Guest petesasqwax]

Interesting. I've not heard of loads of those. Will have a look. I have a touchpad presently, but will probably get a little keyboard/touchpad combination device

[DJ Rock Well]

I seem to remember the other Reaper problem I had was when I installed it, there was two different ways to install it, or at least an option you could select when you did that meant you could track Maschine straight into it with all your sounds landing on different tracks... A guy from a Maschine forum tried to guide me, but he was on a PC and I was on a Mac and I couldn't work it out. Then I forgot all about it until now.

[Guest petesasqwax]

I'm going to say "don't fear the reaper" at this stage just so that nobody else has to suffer the indignity of doing it

[DJ Rock Well]

Sorry mate, you're gonna have to speak up. I can't hear you over that bloody cowbell

[Flexinoodle]

I am guessing you mean installing with Rearoute ?

I am also guessing that the Windows guy had no clue at all about Macs, because there is no ASIO on Mac and in turn no Rearoute

Rearoute is a fake ASIO driver, but i am not sure why anybody would use that vs just loading the Maschine VST or just saving out the tracks as stems in Maschine

It would be the worst possible way to achieve the task, Rearoute is last resort when nothing else is available.

But you can do the Rearoute thing with Soundflower anyway can't you ?

[Mutis Mayfield]

It seems ReaRouter was before Reaper gained ReWire support in windows. Has Machine ReWire?

[DJ Rock Well]

Thanks for the above advice guys. I'm pretty sure you've nailed what I was told I needed to do. I also agree (via subsequent experience) that bounced stems will do me just fine and that the old advice I was getting was erroneous.

 

I might have to fire up 'old ugly' again at some point and play around.

[Flexinoodle]

It seems ReaRouter was before Reaper gained ReWire support in windows. Has Machine ReWire?

 

No, Maschine has no Rewire and Rearoute is entirely different to Rewire, Rearoute is a fake ASIO driver and was designed for routing within the ASIO protocol, so for instance you can route out and in to the same Reaper instance.

Rearoute never made it to OSX because there is no ASIO on OSX.

 

Maschine is actually very poor for interfacing with other software, Rearoute would work, but rendering out stems from Maschine itself is way less hassle.