I may have missed this in my search here ... if so sorry.

  • Thread starter Thread starter drpietrzak
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drpietrzak

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What are the advantages and disavantages of using USB compared to a 4 conductor firewire (1394) for a portable soundcard for recording. Should I be thinking of a PCI soundcard instead? I have a small recording mixer board I will use and will only bring in 1 stereo track at a time (or 2 mono). I use Cakewalk HS 2 XL if that matters. This is for a Dell Inspiron 8600 running a Centrino (1.4) with a 80 gig HD.

Dale
 
I think the firewire will be faster than the USB. forget about PCI cards...they wont fit in a laptop.
 
Yeah .... I'd go for a FireWire option over USB 1.0 any day.
I haven't seen many USB 2.0 options other than an Edirol UA-1000.
$200 USD can get you into a FireWire Audiophile.
However, if your laptop only offers a 4 pin FW port, you'll need a 4 pin to 6 pin adapter/cable.
Also 4 pin doesn't supply bus power, so you'll need to use the included wall-wart to power the Audiophile.
Another option would be the Echo Indigo IO for your PCMCIA slot.
 
Well, this all depends on what your needs are specifically.
However, if I was wanting to just dump two channels at a time of audio to a laptop, I would likely opt for the Firewire Audiophile.

For the $200 it offers a few more features than the others ....
MIDI I/O ... In case you ever what to dabble with MIDI, and a couple of extra outputs.

The Solo it gives you a single preamp and a Hi-Z input and no MIDI .... but your coming from your board anyway. Though, those features may be handy for you. I don't know?

The Indigo IO is basically that, I/O ..... two in and two out of analog.

I would imagine that the quality of the converters is about the same for the three of those interfaces.

It's really all about what ya need, what ya want and how much ya wanna spend.
 
Once again the response was very helpful. I was wondering about the sound quality and coverters. Sounds like it is not much different. All else equal the option with midi would be nice as I can use it with my PODxt or other Midi programing equipment as well. Sounds like I may even be able to do 2 more channels out as well. This could be cool.

I appreciate it!

Dale
 
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