PCMCIA Express Soundcard

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 2:54 pm

^^ RME is also rock solid! My multiface has treated me well for 4 years without any issues. Fantastic sound and less than 1ms of latency.

OvertoneZero · Post by **OvertoneZero** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 3:34 pm

Yes, I'm waiting (impatiently) for the RME Expresscard... RME is tops for high-end value imo.

ze2be · Post by **ze2be** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 3:58 pm

stutter wrote:
Echo are due to update the indigo
well, good luck to them... I know that initially (in fact probably still) their faq said they had no plans to, which seemed foolish. I like Echo gear.

I have the ecco indigo DJ. Thinking about geting a new laptop, but then I need to switch to express, so right now I am stuck with my old laptop..

Im happy with the latency, but its noisy as fuck! Thats because of my laptop though, but id thought that pro cards would shield out static noise..
Its a little bit better then the internal soundcard, which is crap noisy!

Do you know if any changes will be done to the new series, exept moving over to express?

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 4:01 pm

For the noise, I've used EBTech's Hum-X. Works great.

Yhtomit · Post by **Yhtomit** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 5:24 pm

nebulae wrote:^^ RME is also rock solid! My multiface has treated me well for 4 years without any issues. Fantastic sound and less than 1ms of latency.

"fantastic" sound is a whole other league but it does sound good. Hammerfall drivers are top notch. Latency with the cardbus II is around .7 ms ! Which is great
Also, the price of the expresscard will be a little more expensive than the 300 dollars you mentioned earlier. I bought the Cardbus II card directly from RME last summer and I paid 300 euro, wichi is almost 400 dollar. Add a hundred and itll be more like the 500USD for the expresscard..

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 5:27 pm

Yhtomit wrote:
nebulae wrote:^^ RME is also rock solid! My multiface has treated me well for 4 years without any issues. Fantastic sound and less than 1ms of latency.
"fantastic" sound is a whole other league but it does sound good. Hammerfall drivers are top notch. Latency with the cardbus II is around .7 ms ! Which is great
Also, the price of the expresscard will be a little more expensive than the 300 dollars you mentioned earlier. I bought the Cardbus II card directly from RME last summer and I paid 300 euro, wichi is almost 400 dollar. Add a hundred and itll be more like the 500USD for the expresscard..

I suppose "fantastic" should be reserved for very high end systems...so I'll give you that

As for the cardbus, US street price has been $225-250 for about 3 years. The Express card will likely be around $350-400 initially, and then drop down as it saturates the market.

ze2be · Post by **ze2be** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 5:53 pm

nebulae wrote:For the noise, I've used EBTech's Hum-X. Works great.

Great tip, thanks!

Alex_M · Post by **Alex_M** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:02 am

Sales Dude McBoob wrote:
I really wish there was more card interfaces for laptops, but thank goodness we have RME! $750 for the Multiface II and $350 for the Expresscard isn't cheap, but it's a whole heck of a lot cheaper than an Apogee Symphony set-up.

I'm not familiar with the RME interface (pretty new to this topic in general). Do you need the box and the card? Or does it work similar to the indigo with just the card?

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:27 am

^^ Card plus box...the card is just the interface to the PC/Mac. The box does the ADDA conversion.

Alex_M · Post by **Alex_M** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:08 am

nebulae wrote:^^ Card plus box...the card is just the interface to the PC/Mac. The box does the ADDA conversion.

Cool, cheers for the clarification. DJ-wise one of the things I love about the indigo is the lack of a need for a box, but I guess the RME one is for a higher purpose.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 12:43 pm

Alex_M wrote:
nebulae wrote:^^ Card plus box...the card is just the interface to the PC/Mac. The box does the ADDA conversion.
Cool, cheers for the clarification. DJ-wise one of the things I love about the indigo is the lack of a need for a box, but I guess the RME one is for a higher purpose.

agreed, I love the concept of the Indigo DJ for just doing DJ gigs. I often hate lugging the RME around for DJing, where I only need two stereo outputs at most.

attackmode · Post by **attackmode** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:05 pm

nebulae wrote:
Yhtomit wrote:
nebulae wrote:^^ RME is also rock solid! My multiface has treated me well for 4 years without any issues. Fantastic sound and less than 1ms of latency.
"fantastic" sound is a whole other league but it does sound good. Hammerfall drivers are top notch. Latency with the cardbus II is around .7 ms ! Which is great
Also, the price of the expresscard will be a little more expensive than the 300 dollars you mentioned earlier. I bought the Cardbus II card directly from RME last summer and I paid 300 euro, wichi is almost 400 dollar. Add a hundred and itll be more like the 500USD for the expresscard..
I suppose "fantastic" should be reserved for very high end systems...so I'll give you that

As for the cardbus, US street price has been $225-250 for about 3 years. The Express card will likely be around $350-400 initially, and then drop down as it saturates the market.

I've seen a shop listing the Express card for 350 Euro while the CardBus card goes for 240 Euro in the same shop.
I'm waiting for the bundle with the Multiface to buy one.

Sales Dude McBoob · Post by **Sales Dude McBoob** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:38 pm

Just for the benefit of anyone who may be reading this thread who isn't yet familiar with the advantages of card technology for audio, I will list the reasons why I want to buy this crap:

1) Low Latency - no need for direct monitoring or anything when you're doing overdubs. Recording with a card feels as instant as recording with analog gear.

2) Frees up your firewire bus - The limited bandwidth of firewire has screwed me up before. I want to be able to record multiple tracks at higher sampling rates and leave my firewire ports free and available for an external drive to record onto.

3) It just makes sense to me. You have this fancy computer with this available high speed slot on it, may as well use it to its full potential.