BrainModular

Hi. I'm a long time digital music guy, but new to Usine. I caught a demo of the HP Touchsmart last weekend and the first thing I thought of was possible music applications and that led me here. However, I can't seem to find a human who's actually using one in this capacity so I figured this would be the place. I looked at a few video links I found here and I see people are making their own touch screens so that might be an option for me as well.

My main concern is the HP Touchsmarts have firewire, but I've heard horror stories about how using a non Texas Instruments Firewire chipset is bad for audio. I'm pretty happy with my MOTU 828 and I don't want to move to USB2 if I don't have to.

My secondary worry is that while Usine is made for touchscreen use, what about a lot of the other VSTs I might want to use and program. Will setting up a patch in Zebra 2 be a nightmare? If I run Live 8 will I need to revert to a mouse?

If I go homemade touch screen, is the resolution high enough for VST UIs with smaller buttons and knobs? Is there a way to make one that would fit on my laptop screen and have a second one for an external LCD monitor?

I'd love to hear all your thoughts and experiences. This has been totally consuming me the last week and I'm excited to get started.

Thanks,

Mark

Oh, just to make it more clear, this is the model I'm thinking of:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopp ... 00t_series

Thanks

Hello Zerocrossing , welcome on board
(Sorry guys for my no presence here, i receive my APC40 and i play with my new toy and yes Seb , the add on is on the way...)

Ok... i'm goin to try to answer to the maximum of your questions :

First , i think i'm the human you search lol > I use a tablet pc HP touchsmart TX2Z
the touchsmart are great Pc and with Usine it's just awesome

For the audio, i use my onboard card and i haven't any problem(maybee if you use external audio source....)
But for my use, i never have any problem about sound quality....

For your second question: you can make any patch to control yours VSTi and Live 8(a patch was crested by 23FX23 to emulate the apc40) but the mouse is unfortunaly needed...

For the external home made monitor, the resolution is attached to your PC... you can adjust it like you like.

But the best way is to make a interface via Usine!
you can control what you want no problem of resolution or UI, Usine do it like a charm.

For the dual screen i really don't know... maybee someone can answer that but not me... sorry

bye

fractal wrote:Hello Zerocrossing , welcome on board
(Sorry guys for my no presence here, i receive my APC40 and i play with my new toy and yes Seb , the add on is on the way...)

Oh that is a fun toy indeed. I'd consider that myself but i don't dip quite that deep into Live for clips.

fractal wrote:First , i think i'm the human you search lol > I use a tablet pc HP touchsmart TX2Z
the touchsmart are great Pc and with Usine it's just awesome

For the audio, i use my onboard card and i haven't any problem(maybee if you use external audio source....)
But for my use, i never have any problem about sound quality....

I don't know what the onboard audio is like, but I use a Firewire interface that does 8 channels in and 8 out all at the same time. I do this so I can get multiple instruments separated by tracks all at the same time. No onboard computer audio is going to do that.

fractal wrote:For your second question: you can make any patch to control yours VSTi and Live 8(a patch was crested by 23FX23 to emulate the apc40) but the mouse is unfortunaly needed...

For the external home made monitor, the resolution is attached to your PC... you can adjust it like you like.

But the best way is to make a interface via Usine!
you can control what you want no problem of resolution or UI, Usine do it like a charm.

For the dual screen i really don't know... maybee someone can answer that but not me... sorry

bye

I don't quite get your meaning here. "make any patch to control your VSTi and Live 8" with what Usine? Can Usine control Live? That could be awesome. There's a ton I don't even understand about Usine. I guess I'll have to do some more homework.

Thanks a lot for the answers.

Yes , Usine can control Ableton Live and many others thinks

here a very quick video i made when i start using Usine to control ableton Live :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVITjbH1Rp4


The best thing is : read a lot the forum and wiki to understand what is Usine.

bye

fractal wrote:Hello Zerocrossing , welcome on board
(Sorry guys for my no presence here, i receive my APC40 and i play with my new toy and yes Seb , the add on is on the way...)

hey hi back fractal,
so yo went for APc40 hehe, first expetience? cool i guess.. It was said some secret handshakes between akai and ableton would prevent us from tweaking but im quite sure it's just rumors and we can do amazing thingz with this and usine...
So do you know if it can send and receive midi from other apps to control the cellz?

relating my live8xpach I should provide next week (will be in holiday) a new version of the square addon that is far more speed and powerfull, will control and memory 256 swich, 256XY and for now 16 XYautomations, can run up to 16xsequencers at same time with gate and velocity control possible, and should implement ableton live gestion, all this with should be with descent Cpu thanks to the new4.22 modules and better all repaching, very happy with first results, seems im not far of the ideal all-inone solution i had in mind, im quite sure you''ll apreciate it, just need a bit more time to think of the best way for live control, I need your advice, what do you think would be a good number of tracks to control and receive feedback : 4, 8 or 16? (cpu will increase relating)
was going for 8, 4 would be simpler to implement but might be not enough...

Zerocrossing: Hi, usine will let you draw your touch "shortcut" interface the way you like, and as it can deal with midi( and not only) it can control any Vsti, any other Host, and receive infos from them, for exemple we can trigger live clips and get back the info if it's loaded or not, and draw your interface the way you like to control live,. you can have this on your touchscreen, and using the "extend desktop" feature any modern grapiccard have, you can have your second screen display wour Vsti, host, or whatever..
for good feedback.. in fact I see usine as the best modular tool to control and make it's own interface adapted to your needz..
relating Ti chipset, shouldn't be a pb as long as your motu is performing well.. otherwise there is still the possibility to go for a pcmcia/express card better fw chipset..

zerocrossing wrote:My main concern is the HP Touchsmarts have firewire, but I've heard horror stories about how using a non Texas Instruments Firewire chipset is bad for audio. I'm pretty happy with my MOTU 828 and I don't want to move to USB2 if I don't have to.

i haven't used the touchsmart but my hp elitebook 8530w has non TI firewire and works fine with my firewire soundcard. i'm not using a MOTU though...

i'm using a gateway tabletpc firewire for running my presonus firebox and i don't have problems, but you never know and might end up having to get an expresscard/pcmcia card if you take the chance.

first post, trying to learn more about this program....