From sgtpepper@rcsis.com Sun Nov 03 19:10:42 2002
Subject:B4 Computer Up & Running!

The latest installment in my adventures in the building of a computer to run the B4 software:

I've been gathering together the parts for this computer over the last three weeks, and finally this weekend all of the were in my fat little hands--the motherboard and CPU were purchased on Ebay, and the memory and case from TigerDirect. The Sound card came from Frys, and the rest was stuff I already had from previous computers. Here's what is consists of:

CPU ii an AMD Duron 750 MHZ
Motherboard is a Socket A type with a VIA chpset
Memory is 512 MB of PC-133 in two 256 MB DIMM's
Two hard drives:
Western Digital 8 GB
Samsung 1.5 GB
8X CDROM Drive
TEAC 1.44 MB Floppy
Soundblaster Live! 5.1 sound card
OS is Windows 98 SE
MIDI Controller: Fatar Studio 610 (The A70 is at the church & wasn't handy)

I brought this all up this afternoon and installed the Native Instruments B4 software, then started playing around with it. At first the SB's output was fed to a pair of Sony speakers, then to my sound system, and finally to the FrankenLeslie. WOW! sounds great! Here's what I noticed was different from the performance I was getting from my Sony Vaio laptop:

1) Better sound quality
2) I now have Bass & Treble EQ available
3) Digital effects--the reverb is quite good

Initially I set the B4's latency to 25 msec, using the DirectSound driver, and it was working fine. Much better response than I was getting with the Sony laptop, where the latency had been set to 45 msec out of necessity. Then I decided to experiment with latency settings, and I started reducing latency in 5 msec steps. 20 msec. OK! 15 msec. OK! 10 msec. Still OK!!! Laid my forearms down on the keyboard to generate a whole mess of simultaneous notes--still OK! That's as low as the software would let me go, so I left it there. I was under the impression the only way to get latency this low was with ASIO drivers.

This seems to be a winning compination, but alas, not very portable. But it will serve me well at the church, methinks.

---Steve

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