Using old Laptop for Recording?

Hey all!

My day job is guitar teacher at a local music academy and I just received a "promotion" into a bigger studio space. Later this fall I'll be moved again into my own studio space that I won't have to share. Right now I share a room with three other instructors, and I'm going to be sharing this newest room with one of them on the one day of the week I don't teach. The only people at the academy who teach more than I do are the owners and it feels great to have all this hard work and high rates of student retention being recognized!

Anywho, back to the title of this thread...

My new room is going to be big enough that I can move a computer into there to do some recording and video editing. We have a big screen TV in the waiting room where we play recital footage, students jamming together, etc. One of the owners has a room large enough for full band performances so we do a lot of video taping there and we've also recorded things for parents, grandparents, etc. I really want to bring down a computer to be able to do the same on, and would like to use my old laptop for this. It's not exactly ancient, but it's practically there- Pentium III, 384 MB of RAM, 700Mhz, USB 1.0, etc. It does have a single PCIMA slot and I normally use an HP Firewire card in there for connecting cameras, iPods and external hard drives.

I'm pretty sure that I could run my old copy of Sonar 4 on this thing or maybe even dig back into Sonar 2.2 XL. I also thought about looking into Reaper or Audacity as I don't need too much MIDI or plug-in power. I mainly just need top be able to record one or two tracks of audio simultaneously and need a cheaper interface for this.

Used or cheaper new is the best way to go about this I would think, especially seeing as I'm unsure how well this would work. Also, when construction is finished on my personal use room it will be large enough for me to bring my drum kit down, my older recording DAW that was recently replaced (and I'm currently using to type this on), one of my MOTU 2408s and my old monitors. This is just going to be a temporary stop over, but it's a great way to impress new clients and the kids are beaming when they run out and tell their mom that they're "making a CD!" I'm not expecting the power or versatility I expect from my main DAW after all.

So I guess the heart of the matter is:

Are there any cheap(er) 2+ channel interfaces, preferably under $150-200 that you would recommend to use with an old laptop for doing basic tracks and editing for students around 10 years old? Which DAW would you recommend for using? I'm most comfortable since Sonar since I've used it since it was Cakewalk and MIDI only (I still have my 3.1 on floppy! ) but if Reaper or Audacity would perform better on this machine, so be it.

Thanks for help, guys!

Bump-a-doodle-doo!

I'm using a M-Audio MobilePro 16/48 2 channel usb powered interface that seems fine... except it does not do 24bit. It was $150. There is probably better ones/deals out there.

Reaper is totally free to try. Download it and give it a run just to see if it runs ok. Krystal is another free one that only has 16 tracks [i think] but it's new and you could try it out also. Reaper does MIDI and VSTi's, not sure if Krystal has those

Cool, thanks for the help.

Considering I have an older laptop with older USB ports do you think I need to have a device with a separate power supply?

ooh good question. I don't know the answer. my weaker laptop is an older USB... I know it's NOT the faster 2.0, and it seems to run okay. Let me double check that tonight and post up then. eitherway, wouldn't hurt to have seperate power

I use an Echo Indigo with my work laptop. It's an extremely high quality interface that plugs into the PMCIA port.

Terry D.

minimum requirements for cubase sx3:

384 MB RAM

pentium/athlon 800 mhz

so, it may or may not work, it's worth a try. even if you did get it working it probably would be more trouble than it's worth at the speed it's going to run at.

That's why I said I could use Sonar 4 or even 2.2. I won't be doing much with plugins at all... some reverb and delay and that's it. I can always take stuff home if it need a really good mix. Most of these kids are around 9 or 10 and are playing a two minute song max.

Requirements for Reaper www.reaper.fm

Minimum system: 500mhz processor, Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/WINE with 128MB RAM, 10MB free disk space, 800x600 in 256 colors or higher, Windows compatible sound hardware

A P III machine is going to have trouble doing much in the way of realtime effects but you should be able to record and playback a bunch of tracks if it is running decently.

Well, I got some good news actually... I'm getting a "hand me down" laptop from my dad! My family has always been into the hand me down thing and it's proved useful many times, especially since I have no qualms about using older technology if the price is right!

I'm thinking I might actually use the laptop for here at home and just go ahead and take my old DAW down to use at the Academy and not worry about a using that old of a laptop. Maybe I'll turn that into a MediaCenter PC...