New notebook: BTO P•BOOK 17CL45-GT650 i7 QUAD

Yay, got a new notebook, a BTO P•BOOK 17CL45-GT650 i7 QUAD! I visited BTO last Tuesday and placed an order for a custom built notebook and it arrived yesterday. It’s quite a monster if you ask me:

  • Intel Core i7-3630QM Quad Core Processor (6MB Cache, 2.3 GHz, Turbo Mode 3.3GHz)
  • 16GB RAM
  • 120GN SSD
  • 1TB HDD
  • Nvidia GT650M

One of the reasons I chose BTO besides the fact that they offer custom built notebooks is that they also offer the choice to have your custom built notebook come without an OS. Unfortunately it came without a license, in other words, when I first started the notebook it booted into a Windows 7 installation procedure. No biggie, created a bootable USB stick with the Ubuntu 12.04 mini ISO and wiped all partitions. 20 minutes later I could boot into a fresh Lubuntu installation. And you know what? All the essential stuff worked out of the box! So far the following things just work:

  • Network, both WiFi and wired
  • Sound
  • Webcam
  • Fn buttons
  • Display
  • Suspend to RAM

The only real challenge is probably getting the Nvidia Optimus configuration to work but I already found some very specific documentation. Yes, the BTO is actually a Clevo W170ER housing with custom hardware.


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BTO P•BOOK 17CL45-GT650 i7 QUAD/Clevo W170ER

Other than that the BTO was a breeze to set up and it happily runs Lubuntu 12.04. Booting into a complete desktop takes less than 15 seconds at the moment. Next up is configuring it properly for real-time, low-latency audio. If I want to get the most out of it I’ll probably have to start looking for a decent USB2.0 audio interface. The BTO has no FireWire or PCI Express ports. A sign of the times, guess FireWire is basically dead technology.

New notebook: BTO P•BOOK 17CL45-GT650 i7 QUAD

LAC2013: Friday 10th of May

“Hello, I’d like to know if I can take my electric guitar with me as hand luggage, would that be possible?”
“Well that depends on the whims of the cabin crew.”
“So if I can’t take it with me in the cabin would that cost me extra?”
“Yes, that will be €200.”

So I decided to take my guitar apart, wrap it in a big towel and put in my suitcase so that I could take it with me as standard baggage. I didn’t want to run the risk of having to pay €200 extra. When I arrived at the airport I was sitting next to a young lady with, yes you guessed it right, a guitar as hand luggage. She didn’t have to pay anything extra. Grmbl. You’ll see that when I unpack my stuff in Graz the neck of the guitar will be broken or something. Let’s hope not.

I had a transfer in Munich which went smoothly. The whole journey went smoothly actually. Thanks to 3G internet, QR codes of my tickets sent to my mobile phone and Google maps. Especially those QR codes are very practical, they save time and paper. Every counter and gate has QR scanners and the personnel just puts your mobile phone in the scanner and you’re done. Maximum efficiency. Google maps helped me out on quite some occasions too although the Grazians were very helpful too.

So on Friday around 2 PM I walked into the main conference building. I couldn’t be there on Thursday because of my son‘s birthday. So I already missed quite some interesting workshops, presentations and lightning talks. I was kind of bummed about that at first but as soon as I entered the building I forgot about all that. It was still lunch time and everyone got together in the main building to eat something. It was a warm welcome and great to see all those people again. I immediately spotted the MOD guys (my goal for this LAC was to get a MOD endorsement) and got acquainted with the one and only Kirill Alferov which was quite a nice surpise. After having something to eat I decided to check on the status of my guitar and to put it back together again. Luckily the guitar had survived the journey unharmed.

As soon as I started screwing the neck back on the MOD guys approached me to ask if they could borrow my guitar for their lightning talk on Saturday. Sure, but only if I could play around a bit with the MOD Quadra they brought with them. This was no problem so a few minutes later I found myself happily noodling and tapping footswitches on this amazing device. Even though it still had some rough edges it all felt, looked and sounded very professional to me. Yes, the MOD is a fine example of my view on Linux audio development: world domination. And I mean it. Within 10 years Windows and Mac OS will only exist for tablets or other small portable devices with touchscreens and Linux will be the only viable alternative on both other ends of the scale: embedded devices and fully fledged audio workstations in professional studios.

Right after that I headed off with Marc Groenewegen to the Linux/Ardour in a Recording Studio workshop where I soon found myself going through the mixing console manual together with Frank Neumann to find any references to GPL clauses as the console was running on Linux (see how quickly world domination is approaching already?). Of course we found nothing. The workshop was a bit too specialized for me so I decided to check in at the hotel and get rid of my baggage. The plan was to eat Schnitzels for dinner but when it was time to go to the restaurant it was pouring so we (me, Funs & girlfriend) arrived at the restaurant completely soaked. But I couldn’t care less when I got served my Schnitzel XL with a big pint of Puntigamer.

After dinner we went to the Mumuth. Amazing building. But me and electroacoustic music don’t go together that well. It’s not that I don’t like it. I’ve seen Sachiko M once and she blew me away with just a sine wave out of a sampler. Not just with the sine wave but more with her performance, her being there and getting totally absorbed by the sounds she was making. They had to carry her off the stage after she was done. Well, that didn’t happen at the Mumuth. Or I should’ve stayed until the end because now I’m basing my judgement on a mere three perfomances because I left earlier as I didn’t really dig the vibe.

LAC2013: Friday 10th of May

LAC2013: some videos

I’m planning on writing a nice and lengthy epistle on LAC2013 but for now you’ll have to do with some videos captured by rncbc and alg0rhythm. Thanks for uploading the vids!

The Infinite Repeat – Leave It All Behind

The Infinite Repeat – Nervous Walking

The Infinite Repeat – Slow Down

Using your electric guitar with Linux – workshop excerpt

Buschenschank Acid Crew

Creative Commons License All tracks by The Infinite Repeat are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

LAC2013: some videos

Switching to English

During LAC2013 it became clear to me that I have quite some non-Dutch blog readers. So I made up the balance and decided to switch to English as the main language for this blog. Other factors that got me around:

  • Blogging in English will hopefully improve my proficiency of the Englsih language
  • There are more people doing Linux audio that master English than those that master Dutch
  • Apparently I write articles sometimes that deserve some broader attention
  • The main language within the Linux audio community is also English

So there we are, I’m going to start writing English blog posts from now on. The blog itself will go into a transitional phase now, I have to translate some captions and I need to rethink the whole category and tags part of the blog.

Switching to English

MOD – your next digital pedalboard

Tja wat moet ik hier nou over zeggen? Check het zelf uit, fantastisch idee, een digitale gitaar FX processor die geheel op Linux draait en gebruik maakt van het LV2 plug-in framework.


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MOD Quadra prototype

En ja het is de bedoeling dat dit apparaat echt in productie gaat. Er worden er binnenkort 35 gemaakt, zou er graag een willen hebben uiteraard, maar zal een aardig prijzige aangelegenheid worden. Heb me ingeschreven op de mailinglist dus we merken het wel. I’ll keep you posted.

Site: http://www.portalmod.com/en/index.html

MOD – your next digital pedalboard