External cards for laptops?

[Albert Frantz]

Greetings,

Can anyone recommend a good low-cost *external* sound card with digital I/O, preferably one with 20 bit accuracy and good sounding A/D and D/A converters? I have a Pentium II laptop, and I need to do digital editing work of solo classical piano music from a MiniDisc machine, storing the data on my computer and outputting to analog cassette, CD-R, or MiniDisc. My internal sound cards have only analog inputs and outputs, and will likely have electromagnetic interference to the point of being unusable.

Many thanks,

Al

 

[Dragon]

Last time we talked about laptop or notebooks and sound cards, I had come up with the recommendations found here:
https://homerecording.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000258.html

 

[Folksinger]

I am setting up a laptop based DAW in the next couple months so I'm very interested in this thread.

I found a post about the Opcode sonicport at
http://www.pixelite.com/windaw/index.html

that was pretty positive, though he hadn't had it long.
I need high quality recording. I'm thinking I'll be using a VS880ex system in conjunction with the PC-DAW for the multiple I/Os rather than using a exterior manual mixboard.
But I need the portable for internet access and all my other business work, mp3, etc; so I want to have the portable set up for multitracking and processing, etc, as well as the CD mastering, and even quick 2 track recording when I don't want to bother unpacking the VS880.

I'm used to using a desktop PC-DAW for this stuff in studio, tho we usually record to DAT or a stand alone HD recorder, but I have to be mobile as a touring artist, and I want to return to home-recording rather than studio recording.

In fact, I'm writing from an internet cafe in San Pedro, Belize right now.

So, any info, suggestion, experience, sources are welcome, I'll keep looking at the forums.

Brian / Folksinger

 

[Albert Frantz]

The Opcode SonicPort sounds like just what I need. However, I haven't as of yet purchased a MiniDisc recorder, since right now only home units have digital outputs. The question is, do MiniDisc machines (and other consumer digital equipment) have Toslink (fiberoptic) or RCA (coaxial) inputs and outputs? Opcode makes two versions of its SonicPort for both applications. Thanks in advance.