Hi all,
I was thinking about assembling an ultimate audiovisual artist's mobile kit around VE3 concept (and more). Some advice, suggestions and opinions are greatly appriciated.
Trustworthy non-sexual slave
- Two 1tb internal drives in stripe RAID mode
- Firewire 400/800 card for quick expandability
- No sound card
- Windows XP64 & XP32, dual boot
- A full set of SFX libraries on internal HD's
- A full VI set on internal HD's
- VI dongle safely inside
- A special rack case for the whole thing
The main mean machine
- Dual-core HP laptop
- 4 GB memory
- Windows XP32
- Nuendo 3 & 4
- Sound forge 9.0
- NI Audio Kontrol USB audio interface
- Sennheiser HD-600 headphones
Main use will be for composing at home and on the run from home. No need for keyboard because I use mainly piano roll and my ears. Secondary use would be for sound design in similar situations.
Third use would be to attach the Slave into studio network and continue mixing the whole thing in surround through RME Multiface and TC System 6000. In this case, with another main machine but in theory also with laptop via Cardbus-card to RME Multiface.
Fourth use would be to boot the slave in XP32, attach a few monitors and do some serious video editing & compositing, taking full advantage of Xeon's power. Or simply use the slave as additional powerhorse to cut down some rendering time in complex video compositions via network, again with laptop acting as master.
So, in theory, this would solve many problems I currently have and most importantly, make my main setup powerful enough to finally compose everywhere I like. Well, maybe.
Some possible problems:
Noise & heat
Is it possible to make the case fanless? When building the rack case around it, how much do I need to leave air holes and stuff like that? I've never done anything like this, so any suggestions are greatly welcome. Especially cutting down the noise would the most essential thing, but not in the cost of reliability and component life span. However, if the PC is really in 1U rack, could it be made mobile just like any other rack thing?
Dongle inside?
Is it possible to somehow route on USB port inside the case? I'd be so happy if I knew that my precious VI dongle would be safe inside the case. No need to remove it anyway. But this is not really that important, more a like wish for convenience.
Laptop enough?
I've done quite a lot with this HP laptop I now have (17", Dual-core 2.14GHz) in terms of mixing, sound design and so on. It runs VI quite well from FW400 Maxtor RAID drives, but I've yet not done any real stress tests. But with VE3 running from network, laptop's capabilities might be enough for some serius work? Or not?
Component suggestions
Any advice on mobo, case, memory, hard drives, etc. is greatly appreciated.
VE3 could be the answer to my dreams in terms of no-compromise mobile composing set. I'd be ready to pay quite a lot for this setup, if it really allowed me to do things at home, in the cottage somewhere in Lappland, deep in some lost copper mine or high up in the mountains. Well, wherever with electricity.
Thanks for your advice & opinions,
Jarno "Stakula" Sarkula
Audiovisual artist
www.stakula.com