[microsound] OT: laptop for permanent sound installation - suggestions?

[Michal Seta]

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 6:40 AM, Tobias Reber <tobiasreber at sunrise.ch> wrote:
> hi All,
>
> I'm in the planning stage for a permanent sound installation. The customer
> saw the following netbook (currently very cheap at a local discounter) and
> asked me whether this  would be a good choice to run the installation on:

Did you feel a little awkward writing "cheap" and "permanent" in the
same phrase, pertaining to the same equipment?  If you did, rightly
so.  There are many things to consider for permanent installations.
But no one should even think of saving money on the equipment,
especially if you consider that nothing is permanent in this material
world.

> As far as I can see this is good enough to run a Max patch with relatively
> basic DSP operations (no DSP-heavy stuff such as FFT etc) in MaxMSP Runtime.

If you ditch windows7 and run linux instead you will save a lot of CPU
power and maybe even some energy.

> I have experience with long pieces, but never in a situation where i was
> commissioned and the piece was permanent, so I'm curious whether any of you
> here have some suggestions?

Yes.  Buy the best equipment you can that is designed to run for
extended periods of time.  Make sure that such equipment can have its
own space in the venue.  The space should be as dust free as possible,
isolated and well ventilated.  Watch out for contractual obligations.
You do not want to sign something that makes you responsible, at your
expense, for any equipment that breaks, especially not at perpetuam or
some other extended period of time.

That said, yes you can pull off a "permanent" installation with cheap
equipment, but the risk of it failing in not so distant future is very
high.

Hope that helps somewhat.

./MiS