Laptop Sounds Cards, or lack thereof...

[ekral]

Hi,

with USB audio card you could have a serious compatibility problems, just try it on your notebook before you buy it.

I think that external I/O box with digital optical conection in combination with PCMCIA card is the best solution for recording, but probably more expensive, but I am not expert.

ekral

[Lord Choc Ice]

Looking at those seemingly awesome Indigo reviews, i feel they are all beeing compared to similar-priced multimedia cards from normal consumer vendors when their verdict is written.

Have any of you seen a computer musician's review where they test the Indigo under real VST pressure?

I won't believe it until I see it...


Anyway: It was mentioned earlier that the Digigram VX Pocket is roumored to have high latency. Can this affirmation be confirmed? Are there any reviews for this out there?

[philipc68]

I've had no problems with an Indigo I/O since I bought it in Feb, using Project5 and Sonar 3.1.
I've tested it with some fairly big projects (not my own, some from the P5 site) with no problems - my laptop seems more limited by disk speed than the audio card. Drivers seem to be *very* stable (as are the Echo Mia drivers on my desktop machine), sound quality is good but I have a suspicion the Mia card sounds better, but that's using balanced mono 1/4" phone plugs rather than line-level stereo mini-plugs.
Anyway, I'm very happy with the card and glad I bought it. The only serious competition in that price range was the M-Audio firewire stuff, which I didn't get for two reasons:

1) didn't want outboard gear
2) I'd heard the drivers were still flaky

Buggy drivers seem to be a problem with some M-Audio stuff, although they fix things pretty quickly. Once the product has been out for a while I'd definitely give it a look.

Philip

[pgroves]

Get the Echo Indigo IO. $179, and you are future proofed for when you want to record on the latop. And with the ASIO4ALL driver against the Indigo, you'll get 1.5ms latency, which beats any firewire solution. Plus the Indigo has gotten rave reviews about its clean sound and quality.

What I'd like to see is a combination of the Echo Indigo IO and Echo Indigo DJ i.e. one input, two outputs. Then I could use it for both recording and for applications where I want headphone monitoring of a live mix (e.g when using a laptop for digital DJing).

regards

Paul

[VariKusBrainZ]

Just a caution against the Indigos, got this from the SOS forum

"For anybody wanting to use an echo indigo on a laptop, avoid the ENE BC-1410 Cardbus Controllers Oh and apparently Texas Instrument controllers are just as bad.

I'd like to take this opportunity on behalf of everyone with these controllers to thank Echo for making this information so freely available...NOT!"

My brother has a Millenium lappy with above mentioned ENE BC-1410 controller and had serious problems with it, needless to say hes taking the card back.

Maybe hell spot this thread after work and fill you all in on the details

[PugFace]

Well, USB is asynchrnous, that's the reason it has higher latencies...
But more and more sound card are USB, and few are and will be FW...

If you buy an USB card, try an USB2 card, it's as fast as FW - faster than 400, slower than 800 -. But more info I don't have, I'm looking for reviews myself

I really do not recommend USB2 at all. A Colleague of mine has just bought the Creative USB2 card and it will only work in USB1 mode. Forget it. Only Firewire or PCMCIA.
Firewire is perfectly suitable and will last many many years from now. It is future resistant.It works now. It is a stable standard. The cards are getting more and more common. The price war has already started with release of the AudioPhile. You gotta remember these manufacturers are desperate to sell their stuff now because once you have bought it they know that you are gonna be using it for many years and not seek a replacement. I predict FireWire cards will be half the price they are now in 2 years time.