[Mother Natures Son]

Hi everyone,
I'm finally taking the time to upgrade my netbook to try and get a near studio sounding quality out of it. But to be honest I'm not tech savvy and have no clue about upgrading....especially what needs upgrading to get a decent sound of it. Right now these are my specs.

Model - Eee PC 1015PE
Processing speed - 1.2ghz
memory - 1gb
storage - 118gb

Right now the sound that comes out of it (whether being the internal mic or a cheap external mic) is horrible. Everything sounds underwater and I don't know if this is down to the sound card or not? The whole netbook is very slow. Video plays at about a frame a second.

If anyone can help me on what needs doing or even an article on it then I would be very grateful!

[Mother Natures Son]

I should probably add a couple of things. I'll be recording just vocals and acoustic guitar through a mic, no more than 4 or 5 layers on Cubase.

[Ramshackles]

Got a preamp?
Got an audio converter/interface?

[James Nighthawk]

I cannot recommend these people enough

www.dv247.com

Esp if you can get to branch (cambridge is my local, great lads there)

I have bought 4 systems here over the last 12 years. Always steered me well, helped me sped my money in the RIGHT places (they have often lost slaes or recommended cheaper alternatives)

Call/go see em, explain your needs, software you like, and they will help mould your basket.

[domstone86]

I would probably consider upgrading to at least 1.5 - 2GB RAM.

The problem is that the Atom really isn't capable of performing at peak threshold. Part of the way it minimalises the Watt to GFLOP ratio is by limiting the overall speed of the device. It also has poor cache etc due to it's small size which could make running realtime effects a huge setback!

You could probably record around 4-8 tracks so that's not a concern, but when you start thinking about even basic effects in a chain, you're going to see very quickly how much your computer is going to struggle.

If possible I'd recommend having a PC somewhere you can use as a slave device to perform the complex operations for you, it's very easy using Reaper's Reamote feature.

Make sure your computer can handle the latency for the hardware as well, it might not be a problem, but you will need to set a high buffer and even then it's going through USB on a computer that has a low bandwidth etc.

It all depends whether you want to use your computer as a voice recorder or a studio.