rahh i hate laptops

[surfmaster]

ok so i have a laptop that i have been doing terrible recordings on for a while. and i just noticed that they were terrible. the reason being my laptop has no line in jack. just a headphone and a microphone jack, both 1/8". im recording using an m audio pre amp some cheap condensers and a fostex fd-8. i send the tracks through the stereo mix to a y cable (stereo rca to 1/8" stereo) into the microphone jack of my laptop because thats all i have. it was working alright when i was doing extremely low quality recordings but now that i have condenser mics and an effects processor, im beginning to notice its fallacys ie bass distoring all over the place, general overloading. i need suggestions on what the best idea to do would be. should i purchase a new soundcard that i can plug into my laptop? should i get one of those usb interfaces? help!

 

[minofifa]

waht do you have available? usb, firewire, pcimcia (however it is spelt).? if you are only recording one or two tracks at a time, a Usb device will work well (audiophile or tascam us-122). if you have firewire, then that is probably the way to go. echo has the indigo but it's kindof pricy, great quality though.

 

[altiris]

the mic in is the woest way to go. Its amplified. You can reduce the mic level in the audio properties.

 

[sile2001]

The short of it is that there is no way you're going to get quality recordings by using the mic in. This leaves only the options of external sound cards. Don't get an external sound card for consumers, such as the external Sound Blasters and what not. If you go external, make sure and get one geared toward recording.

M-Audio makes several good interfaces (sound cards) that are both USB and firewire. As has already been mentioned, if you have a firewire port on your notebook, then firewire is the way to go. It has less processor overhead, and has been geared toward multi-media use since its creation. If no firewire, some of the smaller USB2.0 interfaces are also decent, like the M-Audio MobilePre are also quite good, but only for about 2 tracks at a time (like one guitar and one voice). Don't even think about USB1.1...there is no way it has enough bandwidth to carry the audio data and people have had nothing but trouble with the older USB1.1 interfaces.

 

[surfmaster]

ok i have a usb open and the pcima whatever (where my network card is) im not sure what a firewire is or if i have it. how much would a good pcima soundcard that can handle quality recordings? that seems like the best choice right now. and when im recording im just doing a stereo mixdown, not multitrack recording, thats done with the fostex.

 

[sile2001]

ok i have a usb open and the pcima whatever (where my network card is) im not sure what a firewire is or if i have it. how much would a good pcima soundcard that can handle quality recordings? that seems like the best choice right now. and when im recording im just doing a stereo mixdown, not multitrack recording, thats done with the fostex.

That is the problem...PCMCIA soundcards are few and far between, and not very cost effective. The only ones I've ever seen only had two inputs anyway and would not be much of an improvement over the onboard sound. Look and see if you have a firewire port. It should look like the right-side port on the attached image.

 

[surfmaster]

ok there is no firewire hardware installed on my computer.
best to go usb?
or some sort of firewire hardware that plugs into usb? or would that totally defeat the purpose since the usb is not as good quality as the fire wire?

 

[EdWonbass]

There is a very good pcmcia card from Echo. It only gives you 2in and 2out but the sound quality is great. You can also get a pcmcia firewire port for you laptop and get a firewire based interface. There are a lot of firewire interfaces to chose from these days.

 

[Polaris20]

I am probably going to end up going FW, and just adding a PCMCIA card to my laptop, which only has USB 1.1.

I did bandwidth tests at work with Sandra and just good old fashioned file transfers, using a external drive with USB2 and FW both, and then compared it to SATA. USB2 may be fine for iPods and cameras, but for HD use, it sucks. And what are you going to record that data onto, the internal drive? Chances are the next post you'll be making is for an external drive solution.

Might as well jump on FW now. www.macsales.com as a PCMCIA FW card for $19.99, w/ 2 ports.

M-Audio has the Audiophile Firewire, as well as the Firewire Solo, both around the same price as a USB unit.

This FW solution also frees the USB to do mundane peripheral stuff, such as a mouse or USB Midi controller.

 

[surfmaster]

i took a look at those echo ones, and they dont seem too shabby, i could do the firewall interface pcmcia thing, but unless its a lot better, it seems like im going through too much trouble. but maybe thats the right thing. im planning on saving the files onto the hard drive of my laptop, then probably burning them as wave files onto a cd. i have both a usb cd burner and a scsi burner, if it makes a difference. ill look into both choices thanks to everyone for helping me out