New small SAC rig (with pictures)...

[Wurst Werner]

Just finished my new small SAC rig, which replaces my old laptoprack.
I stole a lot of ideas from this forum, and thanks to AntonZ, he suggested the small lenovo PC.

Best whishes
Christian

[grecoaudio]

Nice work Wurst, but are you running at a 70% load?

[Wurst Werner]

Nice work Wurst, but are you running at a 70% load?

Yep, with 72 Channels. 60 Channels had EQ, Dynamics, Aux and some Monitormixers were engaged. In addition ten VST Plugins and SAW as playback in the background. I ran this load for 24 hours and never missed a buffer. In short:
This was my "Stress Test":-)

But the tiny lenovo was not easy to tweak, with the help of Bob and Anton I found a setting, that is stable till 90% load.

Christian

[ralhop]

Hi Christian,

It Looks Great Like all your Art work.

How do you use the Mindprint DI in your setup?


greets Ralph

[Wurst Werner]

Thanks Ralph:-)
The DI Port is an awesome piece of gear. It has two MicPreamps/Line Inputs on the front, and two RCA line in on the back. You can switch between these two Inputs with one switch on the front. It has SPDIF In and Out and syncs perfectly as a slave to the SPDIF in/out of the Digiface.
So, I use the RCA inputs at the back for my iPod playing music during breaks.
I use one MicPreamp as Talkback, the other one occasionally for a measure microphone during the pa setup. Best thing is, it has also a build in headphoneamp on the front, that is connected with the SPDIF out of the Digiface. I use this for my Solo-bus. All togehter it is a very useful tool for every soundcard that comes with SPDIF. Unfortunately the DI-Port is discontinued, but sometimes you can grab one for cheap on evilbay. I paid 100,- Euros for it. Really nice...

Christzian

[Donnie Frank]

Nice setup! I see you're using the Appsys digital snake. Are you remoting your pre's? Even without remote pre-amps, I think the Appsys is pretty freakin' cool.

I'm thinking about making a small setup for one of my bands. I may re-steal some of the ideas you've stolen....<;^)

[JeremyJo]

Which Lenovo machine is that? Is the RME box their Firewire interface? So no PCI or PCIe card internal to the box?

That seems to be a nice bridge between the "full size" systems and the laptop "holy grail portable" system.

Thanks for the information

JJ

[Wurst Werner]

Yes, I'm running three ADA8000 with the Appsys remote Gain controller and the VST gain plugin...works like a charme:-)
@JJ: The digiface is connected with a firewire cable (but it is an RME protocol, not firewire audio) to RME Hammerfall PCI card. The lenovo M55/57 USSF can hold one pci card, so it might be good with an Motu 324/424 pci card as well. It has a Intel E6650 Core2Duo CPU and 4GB ram.

Christian

[Paul Henry]

...the tiny lenovo was not easy to tweak, with the help of Bob and Anton I found a setting, that is stable till 90% load.

Christian

Mind telling us the tweaks you had to do?

[AntonZ]

Good to hear you got the initial problems resolved Christian. Can you show a detail pic of how you mount the screen on your rack? I'm currently trying to get mine into a small standard size alu "camera/tool case", will post pics of that if I can make it fit.


I have one of these little Lenovo's too. It is really tiny: narrow, exactly 2u high and shallow. Fits an effects style rack. And it is a powerhouse, plenty plenty plenty of processing power for a 24ch rig. These can be had dirt cheap. The first one works so well for me that I bought a second as a spare. Since it is so compact, some of the parts are not standard. E.g. power supply, cooling/fans, slimline drive). So it seemed like a good idea to have one available for parts.



Jeremy - My two small Lenovo's are 6071 and 6089, USFF (ultra small form factor). Processor Core2Duo 6550 (2x 2.33GHz), 2GB RAM, Q35 chipset, I/O bus speeds up to 1333 MHz, onboard Intel network and graphics.