Running Audacity on basic laptop eMMC storage

[colins]

Hi, our ancient (Win-XP!!) mini-laptop we use to record church sermons using Audacity has died.
We want to replace with something which is as portable (multiple sites and operators passing it on)
However all current mini-laptops (ie 11.6" screen or smaller) seem very low spec; nearly all just 2GB ram and 32 GB eMMC storage and Celeron or Atom processors (eg at most an Atom quad-core Processor x5-Z8350)
Has anyone used such a machine to run Win 10 and Audacity? We record / save at pretty low bitrates (so that a 30 min sermon is an 8MB MP3 file) and wouldn’t be running anything else on this machine.
We hardly use any editing features of Audacity.
The old laptop was running a dual core Atom processor and 1GB RAM and coped fine, but does Win 10 slow things to unusable? How does “eMMC” storage compare to a traditional HDD in terms of speed?
Should we look at another solution (ie an app on an Android tablet?)
Any thoughts gratefully received!

[kozikowski]

we use to record church sermons

If this isn’t bad enough yet, I can make it worse. Almost no new portable machines have sound connections on the side. Mic-In, Headset-In, or Headphone-Out cannot in general connect to a mixer or other sound system for recording.

What or how is it recording—in detail?

Koz

[colins]

Hi Thanks Koz, the laptops I’ve found have a mobile phone style 3.5mm headset jack socket (ie headphones and mic on a single 4 ring 3.5mm jack)
I’ve found an adaptor that should allow us to connect the previous 3.5mm jack that comes out of our mixing desk (that plugged into the old laptop’s “Mic in” socket) so hopefully that will be OK?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004SP0WAQ/?tag=hotoge-21

I think it comes out of the “Aux send Bal/Unbal” jack sockets of our mixing desk (can you tell I’m not really a sound tech?!)

[steve]

@colins

I’ve found an adaptor that should allow us to connect the previous 3.5mm jack that comes out of our mixing desk (that plugged into the old laptop’s “Mic in” socket) so hopefully that will be OK?

The output level from a mixer is typically around 1000 x higher than a microphone. There is a very good chance that a microphone input would be massively overloaded and sound horribly distorted. There is also a chance that a mic input could be destroyed by pushing such a high signal into it.

You need to feed the mixer output into a “line level” input. I use a Behringer UCA202 for this purpose.

[Gale_Andrews]

@colins

our ancient (Win-XP!!) mini-laptop we use to record church sermons using Audacity has died.
[…]

The old laptop was running a dual core Atom processor and 1GB RAM and coped fine, but does Win 10 slow things to unusable?

Windows 10 should be faster than XP SP3 (or Windows 7).

@colins

How does “eMMC” storage compare to a traditional HDD in terms of speed?

A little faster than Hard Disk Drive (HDD), slower than a built-in Solid State Drive (SDD).


Gale

[colins]

Thanks @Gale Andrews - interesting that Win 10 has reversed the trend of each release being more bloated than the previous!

@steve

The output level from a mixer is typically around 1000 x higher than a microphone. There is a very good chance that a microphone input would be massively overloaded and sound horribly distorted. There is also a chance that a mic input could be destroyed by pushing such a high signal into it.

You need to feed the mixer output into a “line level” input. I use a Behringer UCA202 for this purpose.

Thanks @Steve - the old laptop was going in to a “Mic-in” socket, rather than a “Line-in” and it seemed to cope OK- sadly I’ve no way of finding out the spec of the old sound adaptor. Do you think a combined head-set socket would be more delicate and therefore likely to get fried?

Thanks for everyone’s input

[Gale_Andrews]

@colins

@steve

The output level from a mixer is typically around 1000 x higher than a microphone. There is a very good chance that a microphone input would be massively overloaded and sound horribly distorted. There is also a chance that a mic input could be destroyed by pushing such a high signal into it.

You need to feed the mixer output into a “line level” input. I use a Behringer UCA202 for this purpose.

Thanks @Steve - the old laptop was going in to a “Mic-in” socket, rather than a “Line-in” and it seemed to cope OK- sadly I’ve no way of finding out the spec of the old sound adaptor. Do you think a combined head-set socket would be more delicate and therefore likely to get fried?

Sometimes laptops have “compatible” stereo inputs that can self-adjust for line-level input, but for a combo headset input and output, the input is mic level, applying amplification, whether you buy an adaptor for a TRS cable or not.

You don’t want amplification of an already amplified signal from the mixer.

So please, forget the combo port and buy yourself a USB interface for the signal from the mixer.


Gale

[colins]

Thanks for the advice - makes sense, will route in via a USB