soundcard/starting up advice

[ChrisAylett]

hey all, am in need of a bit advice before i go and spend a lot of money on something...am getting into home recording with a view to upgrading eventually into a fully fledged studio. up til now i was using my bog standard desktop, mic-ing up my amps and recording my synth through the line in, in cool edit pro, and tidying it up afterwards. however now, i have a laptop (Toshiba satellite, Pentium 1.5GHz, 496 MB Ram,with 3 usb ports and a PC card slot) and have just ordered copies of cubase,FL studio and wavelab. i also have recently acquired an O2 midi keyboard. now i believe what i need is a soundcard/interface of some sort, and what i want is something with at least 8 inputs, to let me potentially record a drum kit. now (finally!) what i was looking at was this badboy http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/d2/page/shop/flypage/product_id/3803 the m-audio firewire 18/14. would this suit my needs, and more importantly, are there any compatibility issues im overlooking? would i need any kind of PCI card(not wholly sure what that is) in addition? the soundcard that came with my laptop is pretty useless, the latency is a bit intolerable.

any advice would be very welcome. basically, im wondering if there's anything im overlooking, as i'm eager to get started and to receive it and then discover ive missed out something crucial would be devastating!

many thanks
Chris

 

[crankz1]

The main thing I can think is ..... does your laptop offer a FireWire port?

 

[reshp1]

You won't need a PCI card if you have a firewire port already. It's like USB, different protocol, but it's plug and play still. One thing to look out for is that product spec says "Must have 6 pin firewire." Most laptops I know of have a smaller 4 pin firewire connection (if at all). Best thing to do is to give M-Audio an email and ask exactly what they mean by the 6 pin.
You may need to purchase a firewire card if your computers don't have them, unfortunately laptops and desktops use different cards so you may need to get both kinds to use the M-Audio on both.

 

[SPINSTERWUN]

Yes, yes, yes.... I agree you will need a Firewire port.

Having a FW port will open up your choice of interfaces (plus, you'll have more options, if you want to upgrade the type of interface in the near future).

Also, the M-Audio piece necessitates a FW port.

I would spend extra 80 pounds to purchase the MOTU 828 mkIII.

Or if you have the money, you could get the Tascam FW-1884 (then you would have a control surface that is expandable).

BTW...

What is your budget???

 

[ChrisAylett]

ok so ive inspected my laptop and unfortunately i am lacking a firewire port. however a quick ebay search reveals that firewire cards arent expensive, so thats not a problem. without wanting to sound too much like a novice, would that suffice? i wouldnt suffer from the 50 odd m/s of latency that i get with my current soundcard if i had a firewire port and the firewire 18/14?

my budget..id say around 400. for the time being that is, once ive got to grips with it i intend to upgrade. at the moment, i want something with which i can make near professional recordings, and with which i can learn recording techniques.