Experience with a mid-range Chromebook

[OldMasterTime]

I thought I'd post my experiences here of AE on a mid-range Chromebook.  There's a few threads based around the PIxelbook, but that is a very expensive beast; If, like me, you want to get the full DAW experience that AE gives you on a cheaper device then fear not, it is possible.

I've been using a Samsung S2 tab and AE for several years now and the tablet was getting tired, full, slow and actually quite warped, so decided to take the plunge with Chrome OS.  I managed to pick up Acer Chromebook 315 CB315-2H in the Amazon Prime sale for £179, so a lot cheaper than a Pixelbook.  It's one of the new Chromebooks to run and AMD chip and actually you get quite a bang for your buck, so pleased there.  However, when I initially loaded AE up, every recording sounded like a scratched record. The latency was actually fine even without the extreme USB driver which cannot be used in ChromOS's implementation of Android, but the scratchy recording was a deal-breaker.  I played about with every setting I could and eventually found that Oboe / AAudio was the issue.  Once I changed the Audio system to "AudioTrack" the recordings were fine, but the latency was terrible, however, setting it to OpenSLES gave a really good experience, easily as good as I got on my Samsung Tab.  I set the Open SLES Buffer size to 'Native Buffer size', checked the Open SLES optimisation and left all the Latency correction options at zero.

I do have a very small latency issue on recorded tracks, but this is easily corrected and was something I always had on Android anyway (latency correction didn't seem to help).

So, end result is that I'm now really happy with my set-up; the bigger screen is amazing, I don't have to faff around with special powered OTG cables and it hasn't cost me a huge amount to switch.  I was still able to use my cheap old Behringer UCA222 audio interface without having to upgrade to a USB C interface and the only issue is that the Chromebook is not touchscreen, but I'm finding my way around that and it hasn't been an issue so far.

In a nutshell then, if you have been thinking about a Chromebook but were concerned that you may have to spend a fortune and compromise your AE experience, then that's not my experience.

I hope that's helped anyone with doubts about AE on ChromeOS.

OMT

[TJH132]

I thought I'd post my experiences here of AE on a mid-range Chromebook.  There's a few threads based around the PIxelbook, but that is a very expensive beast; If, like me, you want to get the full DAW experience that AE gives you on a cheaper device then fear not, it is possible.

I've been using a Samsung S2 tab and AE for several years now and the tablet was getting tired, full, slow and actually quite warped, so decided to take the plunge with Chrome OS.  I managed to pick up Acer Chromebook 315 CB315-2H in the Amazon Prime sale for £179, so a lot cheaper than a Pixelbook.  It's one of the new Chromebooks to run and AMD chip and actually you get quite a bang for your buck, so pleased there.  However, when I initially loaded AE up, every recording sounded like a scratched record. The latency was actually fine even without the extreme USB driver which cannot be used in ChromOS's implementation of Android, but the scratchy recording was a deal-breaker.  I played about with every setting I could and eventually found that Oboe / AAudio was the issue.  Once I changed the Audio system to "AudioTrack" the recordings were fine, but the latency was terrible, however, setting it to OpenSLES gave a really good experience, easily as good as I got on my Samsung Tab.  I set the Open SLES Buffer size to 'Native Buffer size', checked the Open SLES optimisation and left all the Latency correction options at zero.

I've commented in the Pixelbook threads. Like you, recording audio with a USB interface hasn't worked well for me. I'm interested in your fix, but don't quite understand what you mean by "Oboe/AAudio." Could you please elaborate?