So I'm on my fifth session of Chemotherapy and 20th session of Radiotherapy for neck cancer and can't move off the sofa up the stairs to my studio so I've bought a cheap as chips
iOTA ONE, 10.1-Inch 2-in-1 Touchscreen Laptop - (Black) (Intel Quad Core Atom 1.33 GHz Processor, 2 GB RAM, 32GB eMMC Storage, Windows 10)

Thinking about Reaper on it, possibly sticking a Linux Distro on. Any ideas for a few super low intensive VSTi's etc???

 

You can build a synth and drums straight in reaper:

I would highly recommend the lbx stripper script for reaper too as you can build a modular interface for your creations too.

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=182233&page=1

 

I'm very impressed that you can manage to do anything after all that you've had done to you.
I'm hoping that its all going according to plan and you beat the cancer.

You could always try the bitwig demo, that runs on linux and has a lot of native devices and the modulators are awesome.

Best wishes and hopefully some great music can come out of this.

 

I cannot help you on your question, but I certainly wish you total health and kicking your malady's sorry fucking ass from here back to hell. Please get as much Vitamin C and probiotics into your body as you can to help fortify your comprimised immune system from the treatments. Your body WILL win this struggle.

 

Best wishes from Sudamerica, i pray for you.

 

I'm not sure as my computer is 4 times the one you mention, but Low on cpu vst(i) Synths: Spire, ToxicBiohazard from Image Line, and in general all synths from imageline are light on cpu. AS effects : Hornet plugins, Mix Comtrol from Team DNR,

And into reaper there are specific effects from EQ's to reverbs etc... that are made whit very power saving GUI called the JS plugins.
Aside of this, look for older plugins versions, as most of developer tend to increment power consumption based on average new cpu power.

Wish you get through this treatment and get well.

 

Wise advise

Some ideas (I've a 2GB laptop):
- Sylenth1 as synth (talk about older versions lol)
- FabFilter plugins if you need more than Reaper stock ones
- If the storage is SSD-like fast enough you could use Kontakt with very low pre load buffer (12Kb for instance). That makes Kontakt usable with low RAM
- At least for sketching consider the idea of using Kontakt construction kits or similar (loops)
- set Reaper mixing engine to 32 bit precision (not for mixdown, of course)

If you're into synths perhaps the bottleneck would be your CPU. If not (my case) RAM is the weak point.

Good luck and congrats for your strength ))

 

Last edited: Nov 5, 2017

Wishing you a speedy recovery there.

Here's my recommendation, in case you're into a band songwriting/composition,

For commercial VSTi, I'd recommend products below because to my ears, the sound libraries, presets, and combination among them blends well and mix-ready, also easy to program without the need of hardware keyboard:

Acoustic/Electric Piano:
Toontrack EZkeys line
Comments: Easy to program, mix ready sound libraries, featuring songwriting tools, chord charts & midi libraries.
System requirements: Windows 7 or newer, Pentium 4 or Athlon processor with 2 GB RAM. (about 9GB hard drive space required total for all libraries)
https://www.toontrack.com/ezkeys-line/

Acoustic/Electric Guitar & Amps:
MusicLab products (guitar) + Scuffham S-Gear (amps)
Comments: Musiclab products easy to program, also featuring songwriting tools & chord charts. I recommend Scuffham S-Gear to shape the tone for Musiclab electric guitar products. Great tones, presets and mix-ready.
System requirements:: (Musiclab) 2GB+ RAM, about 3GB+ free hard drive space total products, (Scuffham) Intel Pentium 4 class processor 2.0GHz, 2GB RAM, 500MB Free disk space.
https://www.musiclab.com/
https://www.scuffhamamps.com/product/s-gear

Acoustic Drum set:
Toontrack EZdrummer2 (core library)
Comments: Easy to program, also featuring songwriting tools/midi libraries, mix-ready presets.
System requirements: 4 GB of free hard disk space. Windows 7 or newer, Pentium 4 or Athlon processor with 2 GB RAM.
https://www.toontrack.com/product/ezdrummer-2/

Bass guitar:
Ample Bass P Lite - Free (450 mb of free hard disk space)
Ample Sound ABP/ABJ - Commercial (up to 10gb hard disk space)
Comments: Easy to program, also featuring songwriting tools
System requirements: Windows Vista or newer, Pentium 4 or Athlon processor with 2 GB RAM
http://www.amplesound.net/en/index.asp

Reaper as choosen DAW would do, stock plugins there are already great for further mixing purposes.

If you need to use touchscreen/pc/laptop keyboard as extra midi input tools, I recommend Wispow Free Piano 2 (http://freepiano.tiwb.com/en/), you can link to your chosen daw with virtual midi driver loopbe1 (free) (http://www.nerds.de/en/loopbe1.html)

As an extra tool to help with rhythmic parts in song arranging, Band-in-a-box PRO version might do. There's a lot of midi information there that might be handy for your choosen project. Consider it as an AI sessionist. (http://www.pgmusic.com/)

Also check out some free plugins on this thread: https://audiosex.pro/threads/best-free-software-for-making-music.14835/

Best wishes, get well soon

 

If you need super low ram usage I recommend using archano sound font : http://www.arachnosoft.com/main/download.php?id=soundfont-sf2

Other option is : Steinberg Hypersonic

 

You nail it in terms productivity/ease of use but for 2GB RAM some are not affordable.

How could I forget it. Perhaps the best all around vsti with low ram usage. And Reaper has x32 compatibility.

 

Last edited: Nov 5, 2017

I recommend to get those plugins from Sweetwater.com. There's installment plan if we are credit eligible. Plus, season sale are coming soon. There will be a huge price drop as always -- but, in case the search for making music is just for hobby and not for living, i too agree, soundfonts and hypersonic are best to go with.

 

Some more:

Luxonix Purity/Ravity
Novation V-Station
Oatmel
Oxe fm synth
Linplug Saxlab 2
Audjoo Helix
Gforce Odity and some others
Op-X Pro2
Synth1
Sylenth1
Phasewave
PPG Wave
Xpand!2
NI Reaktor(some user libraries)/Absynth/Pro-53/FM7(8)
Korg Legacy
New Roland clud d-50 VST

Sorry to hear about your horible situation,i hope this thread can keep your mind busy at least for awhile. Wish you all the best.

 

Wow! Thank you all for your knowledgeable replies, I wasn't expecting anywhere near as many

I should be receiving the device later today and depending on how well Reaper & Bitwig runs depends on whether I stay on Windows 10 or go the Linux touch screen route I think.

I'm basically at hospital 5 days a week, the WIFI is free & I'll certainly be trying a lot of the plugins mentioned, so again, many thanks

 

Pretty much everyone is reccomending things which are "low CPU" for them, but they haven't really measured CPU usage. Not to mention they're probably ram hogs.

Reccomended: REAPER on windows.

I have a i3-530 DC+HT 2.9ghz. I've conducted CPU measurements, and will offer scaled measurements to match your 1.3g atom + 2GB RAM,

Pretty much guaranteed to be RAM hogs.

Nononono.

Sylenth1 will use up 10-20% of a atom core.

By comparison, Synth1 (FREE), will use up 5-10% of a core.

Good man, Reasynth will use up 1-2% of a core.

Nononono. Let's take Fabfilter Gate. It'll use up 8% of a core.

By comparison, Reagate (builtin) will use up 1-2% of a core.

Still call Fabfilter low-cpu? Btw, ozone5 individual plugs will be a few % better in terms of CPU, but really, there's not much need to go outside of builtin reaplugs & JS plugs (reaplugs generally offer the lowest CPU & JSFX about double that)

Kontakt itself is a ram hog. best not to use it. 75MB to load nothing.

I've found that 32f vs 64f in REAPER offers no signifigant CPU reduction. 32f is still fine for mixdown.

 

Last edited: Nov 6, 2017

If you decide to go Linux route I can wholeheartedly recommend AVLinux or maybe Ubuntu Studio. AVL is better. You can actually install Reaper on Linux, either through WINE or *native* and use its plethora of native plugins for everything, but there is a lot of other plugins for Linux DAWs, too. For free, of course. Regarding synths, you could use u-he Tyrell and Podolski, which are available for Linux and low on CPU.

I wish you successful and quick recovery, mate! Rock on!

 

Last edited: Nov 6, 2017

hi my friend i'm not a windows/pc guy,so i won't be of any help here,but i wanted to let you know that i wish you total health !,stay strong and focus on the energy of your consciousness/mind/spirit,it can win any health problem,you are the master of your body & mind,peace harmony lots of laughter & love to you and your family

 

@Xupito @junh1024 @Amatoxin <3

Windows 10 has this feature called "Ready Boost" - it make use our usb stick / flash drive to give that extra speed (RAM) needed.
That might do to smooth run MusicLAB, EZkeys, etc. in iOTA-ONE a bit. Pretty easy to set-up.

In case if you want to check out about this feature
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb...ia-readyboost-with-a-sd-card-or-a-flash-drive

I'm not computer expert, in case you interested to find out more about this, i recommend some google search or computer forum =D

 

Readyboost really isn't the magic bullet that you make it out to be. USB is slower than RAM, and USB might even be slower than the builtin SSD (pagefile).

Really, as a practical example, instead of using a 450MB bass guitar + quesionable Readyboost performance, try 4F Bass http://www.yohng.com/software.html (only ~40MB) ram. It'll load faster too. Good luck on fitting a bunch of big libraries on a 30GB SSD.

INstead of a 1GB piano, try a 1MB piano from http://mda.smartelectronix.com/synths.htm

 

Speaking of pianos, one of my clients swears by 4Front True Pianos for pop music and he's got a lot of those 20-god knows how many GB Steinberg, Native Instruments and so on pianos.

There is an old 4Front freeware piano that sounds kinda alright here. Happy experimenting!

 

If you can work with 32bit stuff, check out Oatmeal which is a good sounding, very low on recources vsti. It's size is less than a meg and the gui is oh so cheap on resources. Although it hasn't been updated in a good many years it might be a good option. There are a bunch of skins and lots of banks of sounds here. http://black.winny.free.fr/MAO/Oatmeal/Fuzzpilz_Oatmeal_VSTi_All-In-One_Pack.rar Here is some video