Hi,

Here's a question for you:

My school district is providing me with a laptop for which I'll run VDL 2.5 in conjunction with our MalletKat. To make sure that they got me a machine that would work, I pasted the system requirements for VDL 2.5 into an email and sent it to our tech people.

Today, I got an email saying that all of the specs had been met except for the processor: instead of a 2.4 gHz processor, they are saying that this laptop comes with a 1.9 gHz AMD Semperon. Then they asked if this would be a problem.

Since I will only be running one voice at a time for our MalletKat, will this be a problem? I could even see having several voices loaded, but only using them one at a time.

Also, when this is all said and done, is there someone who has used VDL with their Kat who could offer me some advice? I have a general idea of what to do, but someone who has gone through this experience would be a big help to me!

Thanks as always!!!
ER

Cricket... cricket...

Anyone? Bueller?

I no experience with this but I am lurking around this post to see if anyone else replies that [i]has[/i] experience as I have often thought about doing the same thing...

Hope all is going well Eric.

Hi Eric. If you are going with AMD, I'd go with an Athlon. Someone who knows more about this than me can chime in, but as I understand it, the Sempron processor is designed for ";affordability."; Since you won't be churning out huge amounts of polyphony, it may work but when performance is key, I'd shoot for something designed more towards high performance.

The other thing you'll need to invest in (especially for live performance) for this setup is an audio interface that specializes in lower latency than what the laptop will likely be capable of out of the box. Since you're getting a laptop, probably something that connects via USB to a breakout box (most likely with TRS 1/4"; cables) that would then get routed out to your mixer. Something like this would probably suffice without breaking the bank:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MobilePreUSB-main.html

Cool. Thanks, Jim. That definitely is a big help!

AMD Sempron is like the Intel Celeron- made for basic computers and not workhorses.  It's the most important component of a computer, so meeting all specs [i]but[/i] the cpu speed is important.  Considering that an Intel Core  2 Duo laptop can be found for $500-600, there's no reason to use a Sempron/Celeron system. 

[quote author=J Mattson link=topic=2490.msg13398#msg13398 date=1212612230]
Considering that an Intel Core  2 Duo laptop can be found for $500-600, there's no reason to use a Sempron/Celeron system. 
[/quote]

Except, my school district feels like it's doing a really good job if it meets [i]most[/i] of my required specs...

Does that mean that I should try to teach [i]most[/i] of my students [i]most[/i] of the things they are supposed to learn...?

";Today, we'll be performing [i]most[/i] of our contest program. We hope you'll forgive the last minute of the third tune.";

It must be part of the ";no processor left behind"; act of 2008? ;)

Groan... :)