Pc specs, buying tomorrow?

About to pull the trigger on this pc laptop:

https://www.elkjop.no/product/data/barbar-pc/windows-barbar-pc/262543/lenovo-yoga-9-14itl5-2-i-1-barbar-pc-i716512

In short it’s Intel i7 11th gen 1187G7, 4 cores, 1,8ghz with a max turbo of 4,40 ghz

16 gb ram

512 gb ssd.

Touch screen

This is quite a step up for me from my 8gb Surfacebook 1 (6 gen i5), anyone got any comments?

I’ll use it with my RME fireface playing bass.
Today, everything runs fine, except the PA Tantra when the gui is on screen. I get the clicks and pops then, but not when the gui is closed.

Can I expect to be able to run it at an even smaller buffer than today?

You should report that. Opening the GUI window should not impact audio and if it does, it means the developer did something really stupid inside the audio processing thread, most likely calling GUI stuff, which would cause blocking and screw up audio.

I don’t know - you don’t say what buffer size you’re using now!

ops, sorry, running now at 128, which is fine with everything, even with Tantra, but when opening the GUI, I get occasional clicks.

I tried 256 now, then no clicks in Tantra with GUI open

Here you can see the CPU load is 28% (Tantra on, GUI closed)

However here CPU load is 41%, occasionally spiking to 48%

Both images are with the 256 buffersize. To me, it’s a bit too much of a buffer for it to feel good, 128 works, but I’d love to be able to get down to 64, but it’s maybe not possible…

Anyway, thanks for any comments on this.

Frode

I had a very bad experience one year ago. A super fast gaming PC that had serious driver collisions preventing any possible audio use.
My experience was so bad that after 6 months of fighting I sold that bloody PC and bought a Mac.
Never buy before a serious test with LatencyMon.
If that program shows bad latency caused by system drivers, leave that PC on the vendor bench and try another one.
I got the feeling that new Intel chips are sensible to that because BIOS settings often do not allow to exclude some “sleeping” cycles, typical solution to prevent too high temperatures.

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Why not build a rack mount PC? I’m an AMD guy – not Intel. You could get an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G 6-Core 12-Thread which runs almost identical performance stats – for alot less. I couldn’t read the price on the link you posted as it comes up in German (I think it is German). I have another AMD chip in a 3 space rackmount case that I built… and I run firewire at 48K and 64 samples – no glitches with about 85 rackspaces in my gigfile. I wouldn’t get anything < 1TB hard drive. You’ll chew up 512G before you know it.

Gig Performer CPU meter is specifically measuring cycles used for audio processing. There should not be anything significant in the audio processing thread beyond stuff needed to well, process audio.

If that CPU meter goes up significantly when the plugin editor is open, then I guarantee you that the implementation is seriously flawed and you should report this to the developer. Whoever wrote it is most likely trying to modify the visual stuff from inside the audio processing thread, thereby seriously holding up audio processing and that is why you’re getting clicks.

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I would only consider a PC with a base frequency of at least 3GHz, 1.8GHz is really not a lot. But, it is perhaps enough for your bass cabinets and FX, I don’t know…

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Yeah, I just got off the phone with the store, apparently they have misquoted the specs, so it’s actual clock is 3.0ghz with a max boost to 4.8ghz.
I guess I’ll be buying this, as it seams to have more than enough power to run gigperformer with a console plugin, some effects, eq’s, compressor etc…

Thanks for all the input folks!

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I play bass, so don’t use sample libraries etc, only plugins like bass amp, consoles, eq, comp & efx. I’m thinking the 512gb will suffice in this situation? I guess I could also hook up a usb 3.2 ssd if I need more space down the line…?

For example, Band in a Box uses lots of .WAV files. My current install of 2022 BiaB Ultra with all of the Extra packs uses 151 GB of drive space. I use it for creating backing tracks to practise bass to. I have it installed on a 2TB external Thunderbolt 3 drive (Drive D:, my samples drive). I’d recommend getting a 1TB or 2TB Samsung T7 USB 3.2 drive and make it your D: drive from the beginning. I have two of the T7 2TB drives (E: for work files and F: for backups). They work great and are not nearly as expensive at the Thunderbolt SSD. Amazon has the 1TB at $160 and the 2TB at $260.

I hope it’s OK for me to ask this, could you share a picture of your setup?
How do you do this screen-wise?
I saw a build online somewhere where the pc was built in a suitcase with screen attached to the lid, so it looked like a somewhat oversized laptop .
I ask because I bought the laptop yesterday, and I’m not being able to get good numbers in latencymon.
My desktop is and, and it’s a beast.
The store I bought at has a 50 day refund policy, and checking prices , building a similar pc to my desktop but in a rack, would cost only slightly more, so it’s tempting to do the return thing…

Certainly! Working right now but after work I’ll post pics and a rundown on what I use.

I am sorry to see I was right… Very recent windows notebooks seem to be unable to have serious LatencyMon performance. Which means audio dropouts.
Where desktop machines with same technology are perfectly able to manage that.
My last idea was to built a NUC with a portable touchscreen.
I got a i7 NUC at home as HTPC and it is perfect for audio

You have to optimize it first, have a look here:

If your laptop goes to the PDT-DOWN frequency of 1.2GHz your are dead, you have to optimize the CPU for performance.

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Hi,
Actually, i finally managed to get the high performance power setting to appear so I could set the course and usb power settings.
I tested the system for a while this evening, and no clicks or dropouts, the tantra plugin behaved better than on my older laptop, even with the gui open, so I guess a few more days of testing before deciding to either keep or move on. So, a bit more optimistic now. But it fails the latency mon test, in that the bottom graph goes too high. Acpi I believe is the issue. No clicks though…

Yeah, the 1.8ghz thing was an error on the shops web.
It’s actually 3.0ghz.
And been optimizing the whole day, and no crackling now, but still fails the latencymon test…oh well…it runs better than my old laptop which passes the latencymon test, go figure…

It was not an error of the shop this lower frequency exist and is supposed to be configurable.

Source: Intel Core i71185G7 Processor 12M Cache up to 4.80 GHz with IPU Product Specifications

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Would it work ok if you just play more slowly?:exploding_head:

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Good tip, @npudar should add it in the optimization handbook :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :+1:

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It sounds like you’ve ironed out your problem and are testing. I won’t clog the discussion with more variables. If you would still like my build info, I can post – but otherwise sounds like you are on your way.