small USB sound card for gigs

[stormfield]

Hi all

I'm planning to get one of those little Asus EEE PCs this summer, specifically for doing gigs.

Can anybody recommend a decent, small usb soundcard for it?
Something that will run Asio drivers.
Physically, it just needs is a line-out to the club mixer, nothing fancy.

Been looking at these ones:

Behringer
http://www.zzounds.com/item--BEHUCA202

M Audio
http://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOTRANSIT

Nice and compact, but I've heard horror stories about both brands though...


I considered higher-end ones like the Native Instruments Kontrol soundcard, but then if I'm deliberately getting a cheap laptop for risky club gigs, it doesn't make sense to use a fancy, expensive soundcard.. if that makes sense

Sound quality should be decent - while it doesn't have to be perfect (for the price), it should not be appallingly shit either.

Maybe this one as a happy middle ground?
Tascam
http://www.zzounds.com/item--TASUS144

Your thoughts and advice?

thanks in advance

stormfield

[Pasha]

The UCA202 seems to be fine AFAIK. Horror stories were about a previous release that's now part of every UMX series controller. Although a different thing (FW) I'm successfully using FCA202 in the last years. I'm on a Mac so I do not use drivers.
When I was using FCA202 with XP I experienced some weirdness so if EEE PC will run XP, then I'd take care of the drivers if you can give it a try.
In general USB audio cards (USB 2.0) work fine while USB 1.1 can let you down.
However I have a friend with an Edirol UA-25 and an Edirol UA-1EX and it's happy with them. Beware that Edirol certifies its drivers with specific chipsets only (Intel). As always your mileage might vary. I do not have direct experiences with USB Audio cards

- Best
- Pasha

[orgul]

Hi all

I'm planning to get one of those little Asus EEE PCs this summer, specifically for doing gigs.

Can anybody recommend a decent, small usb soundcard for it?
Something that will run Asio drivers.
Physically, it just needs is a line-out to the club mixer, nothing fancy.

Been looking at these ones:

Behringer
http://www.zzounds.com/item--BEHUCA202

M Audio
http://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOTRANSIT

Nice and compact, but I've heard horror stories about both brands though...


I considered higher-end ones like the Native Instruments Kontrol soundcard, but then if I'm deliberately getting a cheap laptop for risky club gigs, it doesn't make sense to use a fancy, expensive soundcard.. if that makes sense

Sound quality should be decent - while it doesn't have to be perfect (for the price), it should not be appallingly shit either.

Maybe this one as a happy middle ground?
Tascam
http://www.zzounds.com/item--TASUS144

Your thoughts and advice?

thanks in advance

stormfield

hey stormfield

did you buy a eee? i'd love to hear how it performs with live!

thx

[Timur]

Try to get a used Kore 1 controller. That will leave you with a good functioning audio-interface plus touch-sensitive controls and Kore software.

[sweetjesus]

does the usb device shown here have ASIO drivers?

[Timur]

does the usb device shown here have ASIO drivers?

?? Which one are you refering to?

[mrvinyl]

If your going to be playing on a club sound system you want to get a soundcard with balanced outs

I'm using a maudio fast track pro

[drb]

If your going to be playing on a club sound system you want to get a soundcard with balanced outs

I'm using a maudio fast track pro

why do you think one needs balanced outs?

Most likly your plugging into a DI or the DJ mixer just a few feet away.

[sweetjesus]

does the usb device shown here have ASIO drivers?

?? Which one are you refering to?

woops, i didnt even consider the MAudio as a sound-card considering their general quality level..


does the Behringer have ASIO drivers?

(wow i feel bad for Maudio .. being considered worse than Behringer)

[David]

http://www.lindy.co.uk/usb-2-to-audio-a ... 42961.html

[Spacerboy]

i recently got this one http://www.terratec.net/en/products/Aur ... _9842.html since i was sick taking my firewire soundcard with me for just a small dj gig. and with asio4all drivers you can use e.g. the laptop built-in soundcard for prelistening and the terratec for the dj mixer.

did you get the Asus laptop already? how does it work? i am interested in a subnotebook as well. but not sure if they are ok for using with ableton and other soundstuff.

[stormfield]

Thanks guys... here's a rather late reply

Finally got round to purchasing the EEE PC, by now it's an EEE 901 with 2GB RAM and 1.6GHz Intel Atom Procesor

6 hours on the new machine and here's the current issues:

1. disk space insufficient.
my usual set is 10Gb in size, but available free space now is 8Gb
- will solve problem with adding an 8Gb SDHC memory card.

2. onboard soundcard is crap (what's new!) - trying to order a behringer or edirol USB audio interface from europe.. hope it arrives in time for a gig in singaproe!

3. the processor is not as strong as i thought.

With the EEE 901 you can overclock it to 1.8GHz, so in theory it *should* work faster than my beaten up old sony vaio laptop which runs at 1.73GHz. Especially with 2GB RAM on board.
But the ableton meter is showing CPU usage at 17% (3 audio tracks, no effects, one audio feed in)... it should really be around 5% instead.
Will have to fiddle with the overclocking again, maybe use fewer tracks, and skip using reaktor effects...

4. Asio 4 All had a bad glitching problem, btu this has been sorted by increasing the buffer size all the way up in "settings".

Have always used an older version of Live for DJing (much easier on the old processor!), so I don't know how this machine will run with newer versions.

[forge]

don't know how much you want to spend but the M-Box micro is about $270 and keeps pro-tools options open

[ytsek]

http://www.thomann.de/nl/esi_ugm96.htm

[spkey]

What about Alesis IO2? http://www.zzounds.com/item--ALEIO2

It's made of aluminium and it's weeeeeeeel preeeeety!