Topic: HELLO FROM MINNESOTA

[SPIRAL ARCHITECT]

Hi Everyone,
I'm a NEWBIE to this site,although I've been looking around for a couple weeks. I just got my Dark Fire on january 20th. A little about myself.

I've been playing about 10 years or so,always a basement only player. My passion is classic rock and metal although I love all guitar music. Favorite players include Tony Iommi (obviously!),Gilmour,Blackmore,Mustaine,Angus,
Knopfler,Mick Box,Uli Jon Roth,Schenker,Rhoads,Downing,Tipton,Nugent,Page,
Lifeson,May,Buckingham,Campbell,Powell,Gibbons,Walsh,Perry,Richrath,Dime,
Robertson,Hammett...off the top of my head.
I don't have any kids,but I taught my 2 nephews to play,and they both quickly
surpassed me.Oh,to have 6 hours a day to practice!
Anyway, really impressed by this site and all of the members. I hope to learn alot here.
Being a newbie,I'm just learning the ropes of my DF,but I have a couple of
questions that maybe someone could respond directly to,or steer me to a different place on this site. My D string tuner seems confused,searching to get in tune and requiring several strums to find it.
Also wondering what to look for in a laptop for recording using the supplied Ableton 7/Guitar rig software.Does it need a special sound card or something with MIDI inputs?
Thanks for any help!

[Elantric]

Welcome!

Re the D tuner - it might respond to a contact cleaning

read how here:
http://www.futureguitarnow.com/forum/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=28


Re best Laptop?

I say get a used 2007 era Macbook Pro 15"  - the one with the Expresscard 34 Slot- ebay $700

The Dark Fire RIP is your Audio Card

Going with a Windows machine could be risky - you will need a Intel Core 2 Duo, at least 2.2GHz, and 4GB RAM - or better! ( Intel i3, Intel i5 CPU, etc)

But some latest HP's and Dell's short change the spec on the Firewire 400 port - a Texas instrument Firewire Chipset is best - but lately they use this combo chinese / Expresscard / Firewire / SD Card Reader chipset - which is just prone to introducing "snaps and crackles" in your audio when you try to run 6 track recording (hex-one track per string) into Ableton with the Dark Fire RIP box. For example my HP HDX 18t has trouble  - but i solved it by using a Firewire Exprescard34 adapter type that I know uses a T.I Firewire Chipset. - A bit of a hassle.


At NAMM 2009 Gibson used Macbook Pros to demonstrate Dark Fire

At NAMM 2010 Gibson used Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q860 (Win7) $1199 to demonstrate Dusk Tiger.

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?poid=460550

RIP connects to the I-Link 1394 connector (this is Firewire 400) with the included 4 pin to 6 pin Firewire 400 adapter cable you should already have with your Dark Fire RIP package.