XITE-1 Modern Laptop

[pac0r]

I just purchased a new laptop for taking my audio work on the road.

I WAS planning on taking the XITE-1 along the way also, however the new laptop does not have an ExpressCard slot.

It does have a standard HDMI port. I am wondering if the XITE-1 will work connected to a standard HDMI port or is the ExpressCard essential?

Are there any conversion kits I may require such as Express Card to USB 3.0 etc?




Thanks for the help!

[sunmachine]

NO, don't connect the Xite to a regular HDMI port!!
Only use the Xite ExpressCard or the PCI card that came with it!

So yes, you'll need an ExpressCard Adapter to use it with a laptop.

[garyb]

yes, the laptop would need either expresscard or thunderbolt. if it was thunderbolt, then you would need a sonnet technologies expresscard to thunderbolt adapter. both thunderbolt and expresscard are PCIe connections, so there's no problem adapting one to the other. USB is a completely different kind of connection. there's no adapter for that. you would need to pick the right laptop.

[pac0r]

The laptop does have a "thunderbolt lookalike" port.. but checking the device manager in windows i couldnt find any thunderbolt controller.

Lucky I posted here before connecting the XITE to the HDMI.

Oh well, I guess I'll be building a compact PC sometime in the future.

Thanks for the help guys!

[tlaskows]

That's the problem. I have not seen a laptop with that expresscard port in ages. But USB is not a replacement and PC laptops are just probably coming out with Thunderbolt ports. My macbook is almost 4 years old and has thunderbolt, but it's no use for me. It's no use for your Xite-1 unless you put windows on a macbook and there's a driver for that port.

-Tom

[Sounddesigner]

That's the problem. I have not seen a laptop with that expresscard port in ages. B

-Tom

It's a problem that the industry is making not a problem that naturally exist. There are still companies that make Expresscard laptops it's just thunderbolt was hyped as the 'latest-and-greatest' for many years now thus consumers avoided expresscard for years now and got excited about thunderbolt even tho it is STILL NOT AVAILABLE NATIVELY for Windows. SonicCore made the best move that could be made when they chose expresscard. SCOPE users have had top performance with expresscard for almost 7 years now and still have it. Thunderbolt for Uad Apollo never came for Windows thus they've been forced to settle for the weak performance of firewire and usb.

There are still companies out here such as Lenova that make laptops with expresscard slot. There are less and less expresscard compatible laptops on the market but that's only cause Apple and others rather force the market to something new even if it's not needed nor offer any real advantage over what's already here and been available for many years, and consumers are naïve to believe marketing-hype and thus think thunderbolt is somehow better and cooler when it's not. It might even initially prove to have worser performance than expresscard (it'll need to be benchmarked). I and others have posted here on Planetz lists of companies that still sell expresscard compatible laptops, if you need one just ask here on this forum. There is less of them out here now but that is not a natural problem but a self inflicted wound by consumers,manufacters, advertisers, etc.

EDITED

[tlaskows]

Yes,

Latest and the greatest is right. All the new motherboards have USB3.1. I haven't even seen a device that can keep up with USB3.0 speed. They barely max out USB2.0. Any everything now uses USB one way or another.

There is no way Scope will work with USB, because it has to be realtime. Thunderbolt is a serial protocol too (I think), so it probably has the same bottlenecks as USB.

Yes, some business grade laptops will still have the good old ExpressCard slot. But better do your research before you buy a laptop that won't work.

Nothing wrong with an older laptop if you won't be loading the CPU much. Scope actually seems to run better on older systems. Old ThinkPads are good and cheap.

-Tom

[garyb]

thunderbolt is PCIe.

[jksuperstar]

USB is a device communication protocol. USB has device drivers and software management for device tracking, selection, and management. USB devices can't issue commands to access system memory directly.

PCIe is an addressed bus. There is no software management overhead. All address mapping is handled via hardware. PCIe devices can access system memory. PCIe is serial, whether internal on a slot, or mixed on thunderbolt. Old PCI is not serial, but is much slower.

Expresscard or thunderbolt have big advantages over USB for real-time audio that also uses system resources.

[sunmachine]

My macbook is almost 4 years old and has thunderbolt, but it's no use for me. It's no use for your Xite-1 unless you put windows on a macbook and there's a driver for that port.

Getting a used MacBook with Thunderbolt and the Sonnet adapter is a good option.
The driver is included in Bootcamp. If you want to install Windows 32-bit you'll need a Mac that supports the older Bootcamp version 4.
See this page for compatible models: https://support.apple.com/de-de/HT205016

More info regarding Xite@Mac here: http://www.hitfoundry.com/issue_26/mac_mast.htm

[tlaskows]

My macbook is almost 4 years old and has thunderbolt, but it's no use for me. It's no use for your Xite-1 unless you put windows on a macbook and there's a driver for that port.

Getting a used MacBook with Thunderbolt and the Sonnet adapter is a good option.
The driver is included in Bootcamp. If you want to install Windows 32-bit you'll need a Mac that supports the older Bootcamp version 4.
See this page for compatible models: https://support.apple.com/de-de/HT205016

More info regarding Xite@Mac here: http://www.hitfoundry.com/issue_26/mac_mast.htm

Cool! I knew this was an option.

[tlaskows]

Oh, forgot to mention.

If you're gonna get a MacBook, make sure you get some sort of warranty. OWC gives you 90 days on all their used MacBooks. If you're gonna get a new one, do pay for the Apple Care. Let's just say I've owned a lot of these things. I know people that owned these things. I am pretty sure the batteries stopped exploding, but the video cards still fry themselves.

Just google it and you might be able to find some stuff that Apple has not censored. Look around for recalls that Apple doesn't even honour.

Cheers,

-Tom