PCMCIA soundcards?

Comfy · Post by **Comfy** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 12:41 pm

Hi all, I'm after a PCMCIA sound card!

Which one is the best choice? I've been looking at the Echo ones, and i think creative do one aswell. Any one had any experiance using these.

Also, does anyone know if the Echo Indigo I/O can handle a mic input, or is a seperate preamp needed?

Once again I thank you all in advance!

The Comfster

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 1:39 pm

Definitely go with the Echo, Digigram makes some too but hey are really expensive for what you get. The IO will take a mic input, though obvously with a pre-amp you can get a hotter signal.

Comfy · Post by **Comfy** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 2:45 pm

Sweet..... Cheers Mr. T! When I see you, I'll buy you a Beer

bling closby · Post by **bling closby** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 8:42 pm

i am using the rme hammerfall with laptop cardbus ..... has worked gr8 sounds gr8

amo · Post by **amo** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 8:46 pm

bling closby wrote:i am using the rme hammerfall with laptop cardbus ..... has worked gr8 sounds gr8

Same here, quite more expensive than the other suggestions though... But really nice, for 3 years now absolutely 0 problem.
Best,
amo

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 9:22 pm

another vote for RME here, multiface is great!!! The converters are better than most other interfaces, and sound great. The fireface 800 is probably way out of the price range, but is amazing. If it makes you feel any better, the multiface and cardbus are hundreds cheaper now than when I bought one three years ago. A friend of mine has a Layla and enjoys it...You can probably get better bang-for-buck with firewire--there are bunch of them with more coming out all the time--alesis just introduced some amazingly affordable mixers/firewire interfaces called multimix FW--my friend is getting the 8 channel one next week--$400!

Ryan

Michael-SW · Post by **Michael-SW** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 10:06 pm

The EMU 1616 has gotten rave rewievs in Future Music.

http://eustore.emu.com/product.asp?prod=1007

The Sound Blaster Audigy ZS 2 Notebok offers multiple outs and is really inexpensive:

http://www.creative.com/products/produc ... duct=10769

err_fatale · Post by **err_fatale** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 10:26 pm

RME for sure if you can afford it
EMU is my second choice personally and you get the EMULATORX so that's a great buy there

for the lower end of the budget spectrum
echo INDIGI DJ if you want to "DJ" or play out with Live
Echo Indigo I/O if you want to use Live to record other instruments (ie hardware) as the INDIGO DJ has no inputs.
I wouldn't recommend the Audigy unless tyey have improved the quality of their stuff lately. Their older soundcards aren't the greatest, although they do get the job done. They break down a lot and don't sound that amazing at all, and the latency sucked.

Michael-SW · Post by **Michael-SW** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:56 pm

The Audigy comes with native Asio drivers and also works with asio4all. Can't vouch for sound quality though. It was tested in Computer Music a couple of issues back, but I haven't seen the review. Anyone?

When I said it was inexpensive I meant really really inexpensiv. Like around $100 or so, for four stereo outs and one stereo in, in one PCMCIA card.