Got a new laptop for recording but what to do from here?!?

[Cyphizer]

Hey guys,

So I've got a new laptop for recording and DJing a few months ago, along with an Akai MPK49 for performance and producing, but have been really stuck with how best to use my I/O's on the laptop and which soundcard to get.

I have a Firewire 400 and express card slot free, which my soundcard and external HD will need to plug into, but I'm not sure which option to go for.

I cant decide whether to buy a firewire soundcard then buy an esata expresscard for the HD, or buy a cardbus adapter and an EMU 1616M as the soundcard and use the firewire for the HD!!

The most important thing to me is low latency with the soundcard, but the cardbus adapter is an extra piece of kit and money and really sticks out from the laptop, would it be worth it over just buying a firewire card??

 

[dgatwood]

Hmm... an EMU 1616M with a $1500 CardBus to PCI expansion chassis or a modern FireWire interface that costs half as much.... Tough call....

Oh, you mean the Mobile version of the 1616M.... Why the heck didn't they give that its own model number?

*sigh*

But seriously, I'd probably just use FireWire for everything, then if you find that you need faster HD performance, move to an eSATA card/enclosure. I doubt you'll notice enough difference for it to matter much.

The bigger question is whether the FireWire chipset used in the laptop is decent. If it isn't, you'll want that single slot to be free for a FireWire adapter, so I'd definitely go with the FireWire interface first, make sure it works reliably with your system using the internal HD, then add the external HD if you need to do so. As fast as laptop drives are these days, you may find that you don't need to use an external drive at all.

Just my $0.02.

 

[Cyphizer]

Awesome, nothing like hearing someone elses opinion to help make your own mind up!

Well then the two questions that lead from that are, how to find out if the firewire chipset in my laptop is any good and what firewire Audio Interfaces are recommended!

I've done alot of searching but I'm still comming up with nothing that really sticks out from the pack. I'll be looking for at least 6 inputs of simultanious recording with the option to expand for more (drum recording) but portable at the same time so it can be used for DJing (which is why I was gonna go for the 1616M) A firewire version of the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra would be grand...if it wasn't made by M-Audio!!

Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks for the help!

 

[Kerose]

if you just bought a new laptop, i don't think that you need to go the eSATA route, i bought a card for my laptop when i got an eSATA HD, it is as fast if not faster than my internal drive, but my internal HD was only 5400 spin speed, so that's prolly the only difference i saw, i'm guessing your newer laptop is equipped enough to where you won't notice a difference, nor will your software really, I would go with firewire 800, it's faster than USB 2 and firewire 400 obviously but you have the ability to connect multliple devices with buses without losing speed to individual devices, unlike usb 2.0 which is actually faster alone than firewire 400, but you don't have the luxury of piling on devices, so i guess those are your options, depending on what you need, but firewire 800 would be best, get an adapter pcmcia card if you must

i lie, firewire is always gonna be faster, my memory disserved me

 

[Cyphizer]

Well I've found out my laptop has a dreaded RICOH firewire chip in and from what I've been reading, it's about 50/50 on whether or not I'll be able to use an external Soundcard with it successfully.

One thing I'm stumped on though and that no one seems to agree on, if I buy a firewire express card that uses a Texas Instruments chip, plug the soundcard into that and disable the RICOH port, will that do the trick?!?

I've seen alot of tech support guys from the different companies (M-audio, TC electronics etc) say yes it will, but a few people from ADK who say that it wont, any thoughts??