Notebooks suitable for Bodzio Software?

[kelticwizard]

I know little about notebooks other than you can't change sound cards and such on them easily. I am considering purchasing a notebook mainly for loudspeaker measurement. That way if I want to measure response outdoors, it will be much easier.

I have two inexpensive notebooks in mind. I am strongly considering purchasing Bodzio Speakeasy software, mostly for it's ability to give a frequency response for any kind of enclosure you make up. But as long as it has measuring capability as well I want to be able to use it.

In another thread here years ago somebody was using Bodzio software and apparently he had to purchase one of two sound cards they recommended-I don't have the thread handy, but that was the gist.

The Bodzio website says any sound card with full duplex action should suffice-that sounds like quite a different story from the thread years ago. If anyone with experience with Bodzio software could take a quick looksee at the two inexpensive notebooks I have in mind and give advice as to whether these would be suitable with the Bodzio software I would be quite grateful.


Acer - Aspire Laptop with AMD Athlon™ Single-Core Processor - AS5532-5535

or

Toshiba - Satellite Laptop with Intel® Celeron® Processor - Silver - L455-S5975

Finally, if either of these are not suitable, could someone tell me

A) A notebook that might be

B) Is there some way to hook a suitable sound card up to one of these on an outboard basis, (you can really see I know little about notebooks).

I contacted Bodzio with no response so far. I look forward to any useful advice I can get as to the advisability of using Bodzio software on notebooks.

[SGregory]

For the same price you can get a dual core processor. Look at Newegg dot com. I do my measurements with Dell D800 dual core. Bought my wife a similar one for <$500 and it is faster, more memory and HD space. If you really want to get fancy, use a usb soundcard. I use a emu0404, has pahntom power built in fopr mics. Others even have RIAA inputs for phono.

[kelticwizard]

Much thanks for your reply.

Wondered if there was any advantage to dual core, now I know there is.

[kelticwizard]

One more question. My major attraction to Bodzio software is not so much the measurement-there are several measuring programs-but the design part. As I understand it, you can conjure up just about any enclosure with all kinds of chambers, ports, etc and the Bodzio software can give you a frequency response for it. Just making sure-is this true?

Can it model the Bose sound cannon? (not the only enclosure I'm interested in, but I would like to know).

[Doug Plumb]

I think you should choose a laptop for other reasons than the sound card and pick up a USB sound card to use for measurements. The laptop sound cards tend to be noisy in measurement taking when AC power is used. This is just an opinion, not a statistical study regarding noise, but I often get asked about why results are so noisy and people have told me of improvements on taking off the AC and using battery. I suspect this is an internal proximity issue where the sound card is near a noisy switching power supply. With a USB card, the results are unaffected by this even if you use AC.

[kelticwizard]

Sorry for the delay in responding, haven't been near a computer in days.

A USB soundcard definitely sounds like the way to go. Thank you for the advice and your experience.

[tvrgeek]

Yes, USB. Most laptops do not have full duplex sound.
I run SE on a old Toshiba A105 duo centrino with a creative Audigy II USB.
When my e-mu 1610 gets here, I will be strapped to a desktop as it is PCIe based.

I bought SE for the crossover modeling and CSD plotting. I do impedance measurements with WT2 and prefer TrueRTA for simple fr plots. Quick and easy. SE is not easy. Powerful, but not easy. My current project is to write some perl scripts to modify WT and RTA data into formats SE likes. Gives me an excuse to learn perl. I saw an excel plug in that generated a spreadsheet from a picture of a graph. Now, would not that be a slick way to get driver fr plots into SE? Of course, it probablly assumes the plot is lin-lin, so we have to recalculatre for log/log. Excel 2007 still only does lin/log. WAKE UP MICROSOFT, I am getting tired of preformatting my data.

[twest820]

If you check the SoundEasy forum you'll see Bohdan favors firewire interfaces. My own experience with SoundEasy v16 and a Tapco Link.USB has been unimpressive (issues on both sides, though more with the Link.USB than SoundEasy) and lower cost laptops don't come with 1394 ports or an express card slot which could be used to add a controller. This shouldn't stop you from getting a low cost notebook, but it's something to consider.

[kelticwizard]

Much obliged twest. Sorry for the delay in answering-I just got DSL in the place I'm staying this week. I've put the purchase of the notebook off slightly-not forever, but slightly-until I master soundeasy on the desktop first. Thank you very much for your answer.

[Shaun]

Originally Posted by kelticwizard

My major attraction to Bodzio software is not so much the measurement-there are several measuring programs-but the design part. As I understand it, you can conjure up just about any enclosure with all kinds of chambers, ports, etc and the Bodzio software can give you a frequency response for it. Just making sure-is this true?.

I'd recommend you join the SoundEasy Userslist and ask about it there. Be very specific about your expectations. SE has these standard enclosures (see pic). For arbitrary enclosure modelling, it might require a different method, perhaps more complex. The manuals are available on Bodzio's web site, so you can read up on it there, as well.

No-one has yet mentioned FireWire sound cards. I use an M-Audio FireWire 410 with no problems. The basic requirements for SE is a duplex sound cards, which will allow you to do measurements, but it also has the ability to emulate multi-way crossovers (listen to crossover design without having to physically build it). This requires a multi-channel card, such as the one I use.