Laptop Sound Card help, please!

S

silver62

New member
Hi everybody,
I'd like to buy a very good sound card for my laptop, which is an Asus L3, P4 2,4 GHz, 512 MB Ram, 20 Gb HDD.

I need to record both analog and digital instruments for my personal demo projects.

What would you recommend?

I've heard that USB cards don't provide enough data transfer to manage a CD quality audio, what do you think?

Thank you very much for your help and CIAO from Milano, Italy -- Marco.
 
Firewire cards are pretty solid, infact USB 2.0 cards are good too. You didn't mention your budget, if you are looking for a high end card, go for protools or motu firewire interfaces.
 
At least I wouldn't suggest the Echo Indigo IO PCMCIA card which I had to return yesterday. The sound quality is excellent but it's not too practical with it's mini plug connections and it doesn't support direct monitoring.
 
First of all, thank you for your answers!

Are there good and solid middle-priced (200-300 $) sound cards?
Could you tell me the "best" ones? And, could you suggest some serious web sites dedicated to laptop hardware and peripherals?

Thank you very much for your help. Ciao -- Marco.
 
don't believe everything that you hear.

usb1.0 is pretty good, its just that you won't be able to record a bunch of tracks all at one time, but playing back a bunch of tracks all at one time is no problem.

if you are recording a live band or a drum kit then don't go with usb1.0. i have the tascam us-428 which is usb1.0 and it works great.

usb2.0 is very much better and firewire is better still.

if you use a laptop with a soundcard that soundcard is going to have a breakout box which contains the analog connection. you run the risk of breaking that cable and having to depend on the manufacturer for a replacement.

if you use usb or firewire, you can find those cables anywhere.

i have a dell inspiron 8500 which is 2.4ghz with 512mb sdram. works like a charm.

oh, i forgot to mention, I record in 24bit/48khz using usb1.0 with no dropouts, but I'm only recording 2 tracks (i.e. 1 stereo track) at a time.
 
Inspired by your advices, I've search the Internet for "Firewire sound cards" and I've found interesting the new Hercules 16/12 FW Firewire.
For specs, check it out at: http://us.hercules.com/mediaroom/pr/lookpr.php3?pr=196

It's a bit pricy, but, as far as I can understand, should be a very good toy for multitrack PC recording...

What do you think?

p.s.: I've got an integrated sound card. I'm confused about the hardware interactions between the internal sound card and the external interface.
To get the most out of the above mentioned sound card or similar product, is the built-in sound card of my laptop + the ext. firewire interface enough to manage a smooth quality PC recordings?

Thanks a lot for your replies. Ciao -- Marco.
 
i've never heard of hercules and i'd wait until they start actually putting the product out to market rather than giving them an advance, but that product if it works as advertised sounds promising. in addition to the firewire working correctly, the d/a/d converters are essential.

also look at MOTU's 828mkII and 896 (> $1k) and M-audio's 410 ($400).

I had an m-audio USB device. i liked the pre-amp but the usb was buggy as hell. maybe they've got it right with firewire because the mic-pre sounded good.
 
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