Laptop soundcards??
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warzone round 1 voting begins in...
yup, check out www.tigerdirect.com. I'm sure you'll find a soundcard there.
vitaminman
IllMuzik Staff
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 1
Hey,
Here are a few things to think about when getting a card for your laptop...
On a normal desktop computer, most people plug PCI cards into the motherboard to get sound into them. Unfortunately, you don't have this option because of the small design of the laptop, there simply isn't anywhere to pluge one of these into.
So, you have one of three options: USB, Firewire, and PCMCIA. These are all special connections on your laptop which will allow you to connect special audio convertor boxes.
For the most amount of tracks at the highest bit and sample rates, you should go with a PCMCIA card. If you look on the side of your laptop, you should see one or two little slots about the size of the edge of a credit card. This is the PCMCIA slot: in here you have, as far as I know, complete access to the laptop's motherboard and will give you about the same amount of data transfer as a PCI card.
There aren't many PCMCIA cards out there, I think because they are probably expensive to manufacture. Try these on for size:
http://echoaudio.com/Products/Laptop/index.php
http://echoaudio.com/Products/Layla24/index.php
These two should in theory give you 8 tracks of 24 bit/96khz audio. It will probably run you almost $1000 for both the Layla interface and PCMCIA card.
Digigram is a French company who makes a nice range of cards. I've never used one, but I've heard from users that they are very good.
http://www.digigram.com/products/by...s#Laptop Sound Cards with On-board Processing
The next option would be USB cards. These appeared on the scene a few years ago and I think the initial ones weren't very good, either because manufacturers promised too many channels across USB 1.1, or because USB wasn't stable enough to handle audio.
Nowadays I think it's gotten better. There are a few people here at Illmuzik who have nothing but praise for their Digidesign M-Box card, which also has good mic pre-amps on it so you can plug a microphone directly into the card. The downside to this is that you must use Pro Tools LE software to take full advantage of the card's capabilities...if you like Pro Tools, then you're set. But if you want to use something else like Sonar or Cubase, then you won't be getting all your money's worth.
M-Audio makes a full range of USB cards. I used the Quattro a few years back and didn't care for it much, but hopefully they've worked out some of the teething problems.
http://midiman.com/products/m-audio/USBaudio.php
Aardvark makes one, when I played with it a year ago it was terrible, but they've updated the drivers since:
http://www.aardvarkaudio.com/aasd-v1/products/usb3-main.html
And of course, Sound Blaster makes one, but I wouldn't go near it if you're into only doing music on your computer...if you need an 'all in one' card, it's not a bad buy:
http://soundblaster.com/products/audigy2NX/
And now the final and most recent of technologies: Firewire.
Firewire has been showing up on computers for the past 4 years or so, first on the Mac, then on the PC. It is very similar to the newer USB cards in that you can run a lot of data through them. There may be a few other things about Firewire that make it inherently better than USB for streaming large quantities of data through them, but I don't know enough to comment. I say this because video people have been using Firewire for a good few years now for transferring high-resolution video from DV cameras onto hard disks and computers.
Firewire 2 allows 800mbits/s; USB 2.0 allows 440mbits/s; Firewire 1 allows 400 mbits/s; USB 1.1 allows 12mbits/s. If anyone finds error in my numbers, please correct me.
Midiman makes a firewire card:
http://midiman.com/products/m-audio/fw410.php
As does MOTU:
http://www.motu.com/english/motuaudio/828/body.html
http://www.motu.com/english/motuaudio/896/body.html
And Presonus:
http://www.presonus.com/html/products/firestation.html
My advice: STAY AWAY from MOTU stuff for the simple fact that it's an acronym for 'Macintosh Only, Thank U'.
Good luck!!
Nick
Here are a few things to think about when getting a card for your laptop...
On a normal desktop computer, most people plug PCI cards into the motherboard to get sound into them. Unfortunately, you don't have this option because of the small design of the laptop, there simply isn't anywhere to pluge one of these into.
So, you have one of three options: USB, Firewire, and PCMCIA. These are all special connections on your laptop which will allow you to connect special audio convertor boxes.
For the most amount of tracks at the highest bit and sample rates, you should go with a PCMCIA card. If you look on the side of your laptop, you should see one or two little slots about the size of the edge of a credit card. This is the PCMCIA slot: in here you have, as far as I know, complete access to the laptop's motherboard and will give you about the same amount of data transfer as a PCI card.
There aren't many PCMCIA cards out there, I think because they are probably expensive to manufacture. Try these on for size:
http://echoaudio.com/Products/Laptop/index.php
http://echoaudio.com/Products/Layla24/index.php
These two should in theory give you 8 tracks of 24 bit/96khz audio. It will probably run you almost $1000 for both the Layla interface and PCMCIA card.
Digigram is a French company who makes a nice range of cards. I've never used one, but I've heard from users that they are very good.
http://www.digigram.com/products/by...s#Laptop Sound Cards with On-board Processing
The next option would be USB cards. These appeared on the scene a few years ago and I think the initial ones weren't very good, either because manufacturers promised too many channels across USB 1.1, or because USB wasn't stable enough to handle audio.
Nowadays I think it's gotten better. There are a few people here at Illmuzik who have nothing but praise for their Digidesign M-Box card, which also has good mic pre-amps on it so you can plug a microphone directly into the card. The downside to this is that you must use Pro Tools LE software to take full advantage of the card's capabilities...if you like Pro Tools, then you're set. But if you want to use something else like Sonar or Cubase, then you won't be getting all your money's worth.
M-Audio makes a full range of USB cards. I used the Quattro a few years back and didn't care for it much, but hopefully they've worked out some of the teething problems.
http://midiman.com/products/m-audio/USBaudio.php
Aardvark makes one, when I played with it a year ago it was terrible, but they've updated the drivers since:
http://www.aardvarkaudio.com/aasd-v1/products/usb3-main.html
And of course, Sound Blaster makes one, but I wouldn't go near it if you're into only doing music on your computer...if you need an 'all in one' card, it's not a bad buy:
http://soundblaster.com/products/audigy2NX/
And now the final and most recent of technologies: Firewire.
Firewire has been showing up on computers for the past 4 years or so, first on the Mac, then on the PC. It is very similar to the newer USB cards in that you can run a lot of data through them. There may be a few other things about Firewire that make it inherently better than USB for streaming large quantities of data through them, but I don't know enough to comment. I say this because video people have been using Firewire for a good few years now for transferring high-resolution video from DV cameras onto hard disks and computers.
Firewire 2 allows 800mbits/s; USB 2.0 allows 440mbits/s; Firewire 1 allows 400 mbits/s; USB 1.1 allows 12mbits/s. If anyone finds error in my numbers, please correct me.
Midiman makes a firewire card:
http://midiman.com/products/m-audio/fw410.php
As does MOTU:
http://www.motu.com/english/motuaudio/828/body.html
http://www.motu.com/english/motuaudio/896/body.html
And Presonus:
http://www.presonus.com/html/products/firestation.html
My advice: STAY AWAY from MOTU stuff for the simple fact that it's an acronym for 'Macintosh Only, Thank U'.
Good luck!!
Nick
can u tell me more about this one???
http://midiman.com/products/m-audio/mobilepre.php
sorry for the inconvenience! im at work right now and i really cant use the net
http://midiman.com/products/m-audio/mobilepre.php
sorry for the inconvenience! im at work right now and i really cant use the net