As you no doubt heard, Apple today refreshed their MacBook lineup with across-the-board adjustments to pricing. I’ll let other sites comment on the news more generally, as this is a music site, not a notebook site. But the big news for audio in terms of I/O, just so you don’t miss that:

• FireWire on more models: Finally, you can again get a 13” MacBook (now called MacBook Pro) with onboard FireWire – a FW800 connector. That’ll restore the use of audio interfaces and certain high-speed storage, and means the MacBook is again a good choice as an audio machine at the US$1199 base price point.
• ExpressCard on fewer models: Oddly, the addition of a lowly SD card slot (nice for photography and mobile recorders) has supplanted the ExpressCard slot on the 15” MacBook Pro. If you want ExpressCard, you have to buy the 17” – which, in turn, loses the SD card slot.

Now, generally the news here is pretty good. For music, you probably aren’t too concerned about the GPU, so the 15” MacBook Pro at US$1699 is looking like a nice deal. But PC users are no doubt puzzled, given that all of these connections are standard equipment on the vast majority of PC notebooks, including ones that cost less than a grand. And there still aren’t as many USB ports as you’d like – you get two ports on all but the 17” model, which has three, and very often only one of those may actually be usable because of power issues.

MacBook Pro [Apple]

The battery life is also greatly improved, but unfortunately is no longer user-upgradeable. See further comments on CDMotion.

Rain Recording make audio-ready notebooks – that is, they’re pre-tested to function well with audio software, with Windows tweaks, driver selection, and configuration all chosen and tested for music and visual production, and no crapware installed. They’re one of a handful of music-friendly vendors that does that (see also: PCAudioLabs, etc.). Given that the PC music making experience can range from awesome to awful depending on which hardware and (particularly) drivers you’re on, that’s no small matter.

Rain has always styled themselves a premium brand. But the latest Diablo really does go to extremes spec-wise. It’ll cost you – base price starts at US$4000, though that’s not as high-end as these sort of desktop specs commanded more recently. Intel and AMD/ATI really are economizing, even at the high end. But cost aside, this machine really maxes out components. You have to admire the results:

• Quad CPUs: up to 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Quad 12MB/1066 MHz “Montevina” Centrino 2 — the most powerful brain you can put in a laptop right now
• Up to 8 GB DDR3 RAM (and if you boot a 64-bit operating system like Vista x64 or – cough – Linux, you can use all of it)
• ATI Radeon MR HD3870/512M DDR3 RAM — just about the most powerful GPU (and some people do prefer ATI to NVIDIA), giving you up to two discrete GPUs
• 17″ display at 1920×1200
• Optional dual 320GB 7200RPM SATA drives with 16MB cache
• 1x eSATA, 3X USB2, 3xFireWire (yeah, you read that right – one onboard FireWire, plus two more using a bundled, TI chipset PCI ExpressCard that pops into that slot, also standard on the lower-cost LiveBook)
• 1 x HDMI, 1 x VGA, card reader, headphone out, mic in, gigabit RJ45 Ethernet, fingerprint scanner

The key specs, of course, are the quad CPU, that ATI GPU, and the maxed-out-res 17″ display. Given those specs, the weight actually isn’t all that bad – 8 lbs. with the 12-cell battery (which you’re going to want, as this machine is likely to suck up electricity in a hurry).

You can put audio on a dedicated chipset (the TI, which isn’t currently available from Apple). You can run two drives in RAID-0, or opt for solid-state drives (which have been improving in performance and value at a pretty impressive rate). And the ATI chipset means this is a pretty powerful visualist / visual production workstation – that also happens to be faster than a lot of high-end gaming laptops, for your off-hour enjoyment..

This is usually the point where someone says, “but do I need all that power to –”

No. You don’t. This is a bit like buying a souped-up supercar — and likely to be about as fuel-efficient. You might “need” this if you want to play Crysis between Pro Tools sessions. (I’ll let you bend the definition of “need” there.) That’s not to say you won’t get a lot of performance out of this, though, and it’s nice to know you have this option if you want it. The GPU only really impacts visuals at the moment, but with the push to do more processing on the GPU, that could change soon even for audio.

Actually, maybe the reason Rain keeps misspelling the GPU as “discreet” is that you can “discreetly” buy one of these and hope your significant other / the IRS / your conscience doesn’t notice you just bought a killer gaming rig as your (ahem) pro audio machine.

For mere mortals, I like the $1999-base-price LiveBook from Rain. It actually gives you a fair amount of this performance, all of the same I/O specs, and compares favorably on specs against Apple’s rival (including offering some serious FireWire and expansion the Apple lacks). And, incidentally, it isn’t a bad gaming machine, either, in case you want to join some of the CDMers the next time they fire up Left 4 Dead.

I do find all of this interesting, though, on two points. One, if any had doubts that you could buy a pre-configured PC and know that it’ll work reliably on audio tasks, Rain ought to put those doubts to rest. I’ve tested the previous Diablo and LiveBook, and out of the box they were ideal audio machines – no tweaks required. It’s absolutely possible to build or buy a mainstream PC that does that, but the luxury of knowing someone at the other end has actually tried running Ableton Live and SONAR sure is nice. (Heck, that’s not necessarily true of Apple – as people found out the hard way during some buggy early releases of Leopard, happily since fixed.)

This also demonstrates that said PC vendors don’t have to fall behind the “enthusiast” custom builders who cater to gamers – if you want to push the envelope on your laptop for audio and visuals and not just games, you can do that, too.

I certainly know not everyone can — or should — spend $4 grand and up on this particular machine. But just like that supercar, it’s sort of nice to know it’s there. And hopefully it can start to serve as a wake-up all that there are communities pushing their PC to the bleeding edge who aren’t primarily gamers.

Diablo Product Page [Rain Recording]

Diablos don’t hang around long, but I do hope to get my hands on a current-generation Rain soon; stay tuned.

Now for US$999:

• NVIDIA 9400M graphics (meaning this is mainly a story for visualists, so see our take on Create Digital Motion – but the rest of you can more easily enjoy World of Warcraft, if so inclined)
• Newer Core 2 Duo, still 2.0 GHz but now with a faster 1066 MHz frontside bus for a marginal performance improvement
• 2 GB instead of the ridiculous 1 GB RAM, meaning you don’t necessarily have to buy a RAM upgrade to use it
• Bluetooth 2.1

More important is what didn’t change: it still has FireWire. And it’s still the cheapest new mobile Mac you can buy. It also still has the older-style Mini-DVI video connector, but it does not support the old adapters or TV out.

If you’re looking to run Windows or cross-platform software, of course, the PCs in the same price range remain competitive. But then, if you want Mac OS, Logic, and various Mac-only tools, that isn’t really an option, is it?

Five hundred bucks. In music tech terms, that usually gets you, what, a single app bundle? Now, it can get you a whole computer, pre-loaded with a bunch of music software. It may not be as powerful as a modern laptop, but it’s also in a cute, smaller form factor you can keep everywhere in case inspiration strikes, or balance on the corner of your Steinway grand. Meet the Indamixx laptop. Whether you want one or not, it’s emblematic of the ongoing commoditization of laptop technology, with ever-cheaper, lower-power brains.

Highlights:

• Brains: 1.6Ghz Intel Atom CPU netbook (looks similar to the Asus, but it’s actually Sylvania)
• energyXT bundled: Runs energyXT, the awesome music production workstation with modular features and some unique editing capabilities – sort of the “indie” electronic music workstation of choice
• Full laptop-like specs: a full complement of I/O including 3 USB ports; an 80 GB hard drive (not bad for a machine this size!)
• Custom Linux distro + apps: Tons of pre-configured Linux music production software running on a custom distribution called “Transmission” – with Hydrogen Drums, Ardour DAW, DJ software Mixxx (that’s three x’s to Indamixx’s’s two – don’t ask), and lots of other lovely tools
• Sounds pre-loaded: 2900 drum sounds, 350 samples + scratches
• Import sessions: The new Ardour Xchange imports from your existing DAW (worth its own article, I think!)
• Broadcast your sets: Included Internet console for streaming your live gigs, etc.
• Hosts Windows VSTs: An included Windows-compatible host for your existing plug-ins
• Bundle: includes 1GB SD card, free carrying case, free US shipping, a t-shirt, and 30 days software support while you get it set up

$499 for the whole bundle – stuff like Ardour Xchange alone lists for US$75, energyXT is commercial, and you get these other goodies, as well (the memory card, case, etc.). So I think this is very competitively priced.

More reflections from Liliputing, which is a must-read blog if you’re into netbooks. (And it’s the creation of Brad Linder, audiophile and NPR producer who occasionally checks in on mobile recording here.)

In a story I originally broke here, Trinity Audio Group has already built an all-in-one, ready-to-run Linux audio machine in a UMPC form factor, the Indamixx. I reviewed that Samsung Q1 Ultra machine for Keyboard Magazine, and was particularly impressed with the software configuration. I’ll be honest, though, personally I could never get that comfortable with the UMPC-style Indamixx, because I found input methods to be overly cramped, and the tradeoff for the UMPC’s extreme mobility is vastly trimmed-down performance – at a price (US$1199) that remains awfully steep. Touch is appealing, and it’s worth holding one just to marvel at the technological achievement, but in practice I just didn’t like the thing that much. I know some people feel differently – EnergyXT creator Jørgen Aase adores his – but you realize that maybe traditional laptops have something going for them.

I’m not alone. The netbook market has already more or less clobbered the UMPC in the market. Under the hood is the same enabling technology: increasingly power-smart, low-heat Intel mobile CPUs. They still fall well short of what the Core 2 Duo can do, but they’re getting better. And in the netbook, they have two massive advantages: one, they’re super cheap, even relative to bigger conventional laptops, and two, they’re in a familiar form factor that’s been made more compact.

Turns out, that whole laptop form factor isn’t so bad, after all. It tilts the screen up, and allows for a big screen. It provides ample keyboard input. It folds to protect the vital bits. It has plenty of I/O.

So, whereas the original UMPC Indamixx might have only niche appeal, you can bet the Indamixx netbook could be a huge hit.

You can pre-order the Indamixx laptop with a US$99 deposit, and guarantee delivery by Christmas by ordering by December 15. With USB2, you could easily plug in audio interfaces and keyboards, some of which have excellent support on Linux. On the downside, unlike something like the Lenovo S10, it won’t run Ableton (at least not with some effort – anyone tried WINE?) On the upside, Linux has audio features Windows XP doesn’t, it comes pre-configured with a bunch of software, and runs nicely on this kind of hardware.

I hope to test one of these machines soon. And yes, before people start protesting, there still is a great argument for conventional laptops — $500 will buy you a fairly impressive conventional machine, and you can install Linux on that, as well; with more of an investment, you could get a machine that easily smokes this one. I do like maxing out the capabilities of just those kinds of machines. But you have to admit, you can see some appeal to this machine, as well. And I do think some of the developments here, from the low-power CPU to the use of the Linux distribution, have some implications for all laptops. Stay tuned.

Indamixx Laptop Pre-Order Page

Tim Hanlon of gizmag.com recently got an IdeaPad S10 – Lenovo’s lovely, $400 “netbook” – to test. He didn’t just do the usual benchmarks, though. His review also included the unlikely choice of Ableton Live and, thanks to a free ExpressCard slot, a MOTU Traveler FireWire interface.

The inclusion of an ExpressCard/34 slot opens the IdeaPad up to a range of high-bandwidth applications. The most relevant for me as a musician was the possibility of using one on stage alongside a professional audio interface. Taking your expensive (and for some, irreplaceable) main rig out on tour and having to constantly keep an eye out for people putting their beer down on the stage next to it is a stressful affair, and the thought of using a relatively cheap, incredibly portable, and ultimately replaceable machine instead was always incredibly attractive – and I’m very glad to say, now possible.

We used a Silicon Memory ExpressCard/34 adapter that added an additional USB 2.0 port and two FireWire 400 ports, although any adapter based on a Texas Instruments FireWire chipset should work with a vast majority with audio interfaces. Windows XP Home recognized the adapter and installed the drivers automatically without needing a driver CD, and we quickly had the MOTU Traveler interface up and running.

My current Ableton Live set sat at a perfectly manageable 15% CPU usage for a majority of the time, however you will need to watch the CPU intensive plugs. One particularly long reverb tail using Ableton’s built-in reverb used up 25% of the CPU on its own.

Check out the full story on Gizmag:

Lenovo’s IdeaPad S10 Reviewed

One major catch, before you get too excited: Tim has the same problem I have universally with these ExpressCards. They just stick our awkwardly. They’re even worse on the full-sized slots on bigger laptops. Chancing an audio interface popping out while playing pretty much kill the appeal for me, especially when there are plenty of workable USB2 audio interfaces out there (including from MOTU). MacBook, you’re not off the hook yet, because this just means I want more USB slots, but I digress.

The bigger message here to me: software developers ought to pick up a couple of these machines and think about what will run on them. With zillions of these netbooks now shipping, why not? They’re not going to replace even standard laptops, but it’s an opportunity to sell more software by targeting these boxes, or even testing lighter-weight software on them. (Imagine notation or quick drum machines.) I don’t really miss the days when we ran Ableton Live on 400MHz G3s, but, well, we did.

And Tim has a point: next time you’re playing a frightening club with chicken wire and angry drunks, here’s your machine! Actually, that S10 is cute. Maybe just bring a tarp and some tazers.

We routinely talk about how the interface paradigm of a computer — screen, QWERTY, trackpad – isn’t optimal for music. But how many of you have, in a pinch, done a live laptop set with just your computer, and found some way to make it work? The Stanford University Laptop Orchestra, set to play this year’s Macworld, natch, is making the most of what it has:

“We tilt the notebook and use its built-in accelerometer to expressively control sound. We use the trackpad as a kind of violin bow,” explains Ge Wang, SLOrk’s founder. ”You can make some wild, diverse music with the MacBook.”

And why not? Designing expressive interfaces can pay off in something that’s satisfying, absolutely. But however you decide to play, a lot of it comes down to how you approach an object compositionally and musically. So, there’s two ways to look at this: on one level, it’s a novelty, and while to most of us seeing people playing behind Apple logos is nothing new, I’m sure Apple enjoys seeing a swarm of their machines. But on another, the real point is that the Stanford orchestra is getting the most mileage out of the machine. Trackpad? Check. Accelerometer? Keyboard? (Why stop there – Apple Remote? Webcam?) You’ve got quite a lot on the laptop itself to use.

We’ve looked at laptop orchestras before, but here’s still more:

Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk): Musical Macs [Story for Apple Pro by Dustin Driver]

SLOrk

Via: Stanford’s MacBook orchestra exposed [distorted-loop.com] and Macworld maestro Paul Kent’s Twitter.

Previously:

Laptop Orchestras Proliferate, from Princeton to Moscow

How to Record Laptop Performances – And Make Them Sound Live (linking to a story on the topic I wrote for Keyboard Magazine)

And for the mother of modern laptop orchestras, recently winning a MacArthur Foundation grant, see PLOrk at Princeton

Speaking of Rain Recording, Rain is about the only vendor I’ve found that offers a 2-port FireWire ExpressCard known to work well with audio interfaces. Now, your mileage may vary depending on the chipset in your laptop, but based on what I’ve been hearing, this looks like a good option. I’ve also seen a cheap (US$30) card floating around some random Internet vendors; it’s so cheap, I’m probably going to buy one just to see if it works. I’ll report back.

2 Port FireWire Express Card (formerly ADS Tech PYRO1394a) [Rain Recording]

I get nothing out of this, for the record; Rain actually hopes you’ll get this card with one of their laptops, but I’m just as curious to hear how it works on other machines. Of course, this would be a nice add-on not only for PCs, but also potentially for MacBook Pro users wanting dedicated FW400 ports and the TI controller – theoretically, at least. Let us know what happens if you take the plunge.

If you’ve had experience with different chipsets and ExpressCard slots on Mac or PC, we’d love to hear it. And I hope to offer my own tests soon.

Updated: The StarTech EC13942 also shares the TI chipset and is available from a number of vendors if that’s a vendor you prefer. It’s the only one endorsed by PreSonus aside from this former ADS Tech card that Rain sells — and may give you better results with other, non-PreSonus hardware, based on reports I’ve read. See PreSonus’ official word on the matter:

Presonus Hardware Compatibility: Approved Chipsets [PDF]

One of the things that attracts me to computers: choice. So it’s worth noting that you do have choices when looking to laptops, PCs included. (This sounds like those lame “We know you have a choice in your travel plans” announcements you get on airplanes. Unlike those choices, though, these are genuinely different – thankfully.)

So let’s cut straight to the chase: there is a choice between Mac and PC, and there are choices on PC that keep it competitive (to say nothing of Linux). If you’re looking for a rig that runs PC-only tools like FL Studio, and you want more hardware choice to get there without being locked into a Mac, Boot Camp, and an extra Windows license, you have options.

Rain Recording has just introduced a revised pro laptop offering. You may have seen the announcement around, but I did get to talk to them while they were developing this, so I want to offer my own, semi-biased reflections. Rain is a custom system builder focused on music and audio applications. They and a handful of vendors like them do test their configurations with actual audio software, which isn’t generally the case with bigger PC laptop makers. And they offer music and audio-specific support, beyond even what Apple can offer.

Now, that said, I have to say I haven’t actually been that blown away by what custom builders have been able to do in the laptop space. The problem is, builders don’t have the kinds of options with laptops that they do with desktops; traditionally, you’ve needed huge manufacturing scale to get many choices. Even a lot of big brands get someone else to make their machines, so custom builders really face an uphill battle with limited barebones systems. Rain and others have put together some interesting systems, but at a price premium and generally lagging some of the hardware options on the mainstream laptops. For that reason, many PC users have chosen to stick it out with “commodity” machines and try to navigate to the ones that do music well.

The current LiveBook, though, is the first that I think really makes a custom builder competitive – and it’s the first I’ve started to covet for my own desk. It’s pricier than some mass-market machines out there, but it is competitive, and with far more of a guarantee for audio performance and reliability.

• Processors are now available up to 3.06GHz on the Centrino 2 “Montevina” – so it’s about as current as you can get architecturally
• Prices start at US$1999 – and that’s already a pretty fully-loaded machine
• The body is all-aluminum and offers a laser-etched case
• The GPU is no slouch: NVIDIA 9600M GT 512M standard, with a healthy 1680×1050 resolution on the 15.4” monitor (which I think is about perfect – any higher is hard to see, any lower cuts down on real estate)
• Lots of ports: three FireWire 400 ports (with the standard ExpressCard plugged in), one eSATA, a card reader, HDMI and VGA out, and two USB 2.0 ports
• Fast, audio-ready drives: up to 320GB 7200RPM (there’s also now a solid-state option, but I prefer conventional hard drives for their price/performance/capacity ratio)

This issue of specs has already started a debate, even among Mac users. And that’s the world we live in: PC buyers are considering Macs, and at least a handful of Mac users are seriously considering PCs. (At the very least, it’s not uncommon to find people with both.)

From the angry thread about FireWire missing in the (non-Pro) MacBooks, one MacRumors reader points to this very Rain LiveBook. Here’s what I’d put in the pros column:

• eSATA is very useful for high-speed storage (you could add it to the MacBook Pro, admittedly)
• The Rain has a TI chipset for its ExpressCard-provided FireWire, which has been more stable for audio performance – even on Mac OS
• Rain has up to 8 GB RAM, and with 64-bit Windows you can use it
• Blu-ray is an option
• You get a dedicated numeric keypad, which is a big boon for shortcuts – think Sibelius on the road, for instance (the notation editor relies on the numeric keypad for quick input)
• For some, Mac OS is the big draw – but for others, Windows is, depending I think largely on the apps you want to run if not everything you use is cross-platform

Don’t get me wrong: I think the Apple machines stay really competitive. The I/O gripes aside, the new machines are pretty remarkable. And you lose a lot going to Windows from Mac OS – Core Audio and built-in inter-app and over-network MIDI, for instance. On the other hand, I’m perfectly happy running FL Studio, SynthMaker, SONAR, Vegas, and Sound Forge on my Windows laptop and not having to use Boot Camp on a Mac to get there, and with solid ASIO drivers, I can get terrific performance from Windows. I don’t personally agree with the conventional wisdom that makes people just “default” to either choice – I think the choices are interesting.

Specs aside, Rain really does test every configuration with audio software, and they think about the impact of specific drivers and components. That’s not so much of an issue on the Mac, but part of the variability of quality on the PC has absolutely been about certain configurations and driver issues causing problems. You can get audio software pre-installed from Rain, you can call Rain about audio questions, and they’ll even install Windows XP for you, if you like. (I’ve been to New Jersey and seen Rain’s facility and talked to their testers. Another vendor offering similar services is California-based PCAudioLabs – they’re also worth checking out; I’ve heard nothing but good things from people using machines from both makers, which says something, too.)

This comes back to the question of what your ideal configuration would be. If I had my dream machine on this LiveBook, I’d have a couple more USB2 ports on the LiveBook, and DVI or mini-DisplayPort plus TV out for video. But it is a nice-looking system. Rain will certainly be hearing my feedback, and they do offer a fair number of custom options.

Interestingly, ASUS and Intel have teamed up to do a site where they get communities voting on what they want from a laptop, called WePC.com. It’s the opposite of Apple’s design process – though I suppose, arguably, it could result in The Homer Effect. (Episode of the Simpsons in which Homer designs a car and gets something … well, overdesigned. But Homer didn’t know anything about cars. Odds are, as a computer musician, you actually do know what you want and need.) Anyway, just so we’re heard, do go vote for audio stuff.

The bottom line for me: I don’t think we always benefit from someone else choosing what we need.

It’s really not worth debating which laptop choice is better, because there’s not an answer to that question. Laptops – even Macs – are bundles of literally thousands of detailed hardware decisions, and I’ve never seen two users doing exactly the same thing with their machines. That means it’s almost impossible to get a machine that’s absolutely perfect, anyway; it’s more about finding the right compromise. And OS arguments tend to devolve into meaningless debates. The actual internals of what makes operating systems work is so technical and involved, it would take a lot more than a few lines to talk about with any accuracy.

But it’s not about which is better; it’s which is better for you. So, instead, I’ll ask: got a laptop you love, Mac or PC? In the market for a new machine, economic downturn be damned? Which one are you thinking? And what would your perfect machine look like – within the realm of possibility?

Disclosure: I recently bought a cheap ASUS (pronounced ah-SOOS) laptop to replace a sudden failure of a machine. (I got an M51Sn-C1; more on that later.) I own a MacBook which I use pretty heavily, too. I’m writing stories for Rain. Heck, I just generally like computers – and I’ve got some gripes for every OS and hardware maker out there. So, like you, I’m biased about everything because I live and create on these machines – more hours than I sleep, I think.

1. Cosmetic changes, under-the-hood tweaks, don’t care that much. Hey, a pretty, new Apple laptop is all fine and good, don’t get me wrong. But PC notebook makers have in recent months rolled out new hardware improvements a lot faster than Apple, and often at a much lower price. That’s not to say the Apple don’t make a very good or even better deal … just that what generally happens is, looking at Apple’s lineup, improvements tend to get bundled together. Maybe I just hate the MacBook Air because it’s beautiful, I don’t know. So, I think this could be big news in the sense that people waiting to upgrade could be very happy, just not earthshaking news. Then again, what we could see is…

2. Multi-touch screens on the whole line. Now that could be interesting. Commodity touchscreens on laptops already appear imminent on PCs in general, so it’s not hard to see Apple getting into the game. And while many people rightfully point out that touch in a laptop form factor isn’t all that practical, for musical applications and live onstage use, it’s a dream.

All bets are off Tuesday.

Updated: Okay, so what we got was basically (1) — except that I missed the “and critical FireWire ports get Steved” part:

… on Create Digital Motion: New GPUs, Connectors; Non-Pro Changes and Did Apple Just Eliminate All S-Video, Composite Video Output?

… on Create Digital Music: Whither, FireWire? What the New Apple Laptop Port Changes Mean for Audio

For anyone who thinks Mac users are superficial and care only about form factor, ahem, we’re going to be talking about jacks. Got it?