[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [microsound] Installation hardware advice?



Tim

tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I'm researching hardware for a sound installation involving basic AI/digital entities
which will interact with each other, anyone in the room & the environment (esp sunlight)

All possible in Pure Data, with video analysis possibly with the PDP externals.


any non-PC (sorry micro$oft!) options or advice would be appreciated

I have a sound installation running in Osnabrueck right now that is going continuously for a month. It is running on a barebones Shuttle box with a 1.6 GHz AMD processor, 512MB RAM and a Delta 66 sound card, running Pure Data on Gentoo Linux. Next to it is a shiney new [+ extremely ugly!] IMac which is running a Jitter patch which takes care of the visuals, which was rented by the festival.


The Shuttle box, all together [minus soundcard, actually, which I already owned], cost me about 500 EUR. I could venture to guess that the IMac costs at least three times that, perhaps four. I would even suggest that the rent on the IMac would probably pay for another Shuttle box. In spite of that, their computational power is roughly analogous, give or take a few megaflops.

However, on top of the price factor, the extra video adaptors needed to get a normal VGA signal out of the thing, combined with the fact that Jitter must either be used in demo version or as an executable rather than just simply installing and using the software which my partner paid good money for, makes the whole experience of using such a machine quite irritating.

Now I am not trying to start a platform flame war here, so anyone who wants such a thing might try trolling Slashdot instead. What I am trying to point out is that using free software and an open source platfrom on cheap, easily available hardware [hell, Linux even runs on XBoxes!] is a fantastic way of handling your situation. It does require learning a bit more about the tools of your discipline, however, but that is not a bad thing in my mind.

good luck,
d.


-- derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl ---Oblique Strategy # 101: "It is simply a matter of work"

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.microsound.org