Traveling with a Laptop ... do I need an interface?

Hi - I’ll be traveling with the laptop and Cubase 7.5.40, and I was hoping to do some editing only - timing and tuning mainly, but also maybe some other kinds of mixing too. But the key thing is - no recording.

I think I’ll be OK with my laptop and headphones out from the laptop, but I just wanted to ask you guys in case I’m missing something. I’m planning on being kind of nervous about traveling with the Dongle, would hate to do all that (including downloading Cubase 7.5.40 to the laptop) only to find that I shouldn’t have left the interface back home.

Thank you!

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If you don’t need to record any midi or audio, you can just crank up the latency to the highest level and you should be able to run most projects. (note that it may complain about missing inputs etc, which makes perfect sense. You may need to set up your track inputs again if you edit and save a project, once you return home.)

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It should work fine. It depends on the sound card in the laptop but it should work. If the Generic ASIO driver the comes with Cubase doesn’t work well, try ASIO4ALL.

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Kool, thank you strophoid and Jaslan. I also feel kind of embarrassed, I realized when I woke up I could have answered this on my own just by testing. Moral of the story - Turn Cubase off when too tired to think; corollary - don’t post late at night when too tired to think!

I notice today Cubase playback isn’t coming out of my laptop headphone port (which works otherwise), gotta troubleshoot that, will post back if can’t get past that.

Thx again, guys!

ASIO4All is excellent. Only way to go if you are running no hardware interface. :sunglasses:

Wow, powerful recommendation, thank you!

In one of the dongle threads I recently saw that some people use a USB extension cable and plug the dongle into the end of that for added physical protection.

Sounds like a great idea to me.

I get numerous spam messages about dongle extensions, very annoying :smiley:

For what the OP needs to do, he has no need to dangle the dongle. :sunglasses:

But you are correct, that prevents the metal and plastic components of the dongle from getting stressed. :mrgreen:

I’ve used PC and MAC laptops with Cubase with no issues. I also use the virtual keyboard. Most of my project are 50-100 tracks of audio, midi, FX and Group channels. If you have an SSD drive you will get amazing performance even without your audio interface :slight_smile: As for the dongle I’ve been very careful but even new they’re fragile. My dongle came apart a few months after I got Cubase 6.5. So instead of buying another one the manager of the music store suggested I carefully fix it with crazy glue which I did and now it’s super solid. I made sure not to get glue inside on the electronics. I’m not recommending it but it worked for me.

Yes, I’ve been using a USB extension cable for a long time. The actual bit of plastic the USB is plugged into also gets velcroed to the computer, so it is not hanging free. I believe I will put a little velcro strip on my laptop cover for the same purpose.