I’ve been kinda down about the hefty price of USB and Firewire audio interfaces lately, till my smart cousin pointed out something: There are PCMCIA audio interfaces on the market, designed for laptops, that are significantly cheaper than USB interfaces. One such interface is the Noteboook edition Audigy 2 ZS: http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=205&product=10769
These things are currently running for $65 on Ebay, and are low noise, low latency, with hardware ASIO.
I might just get me one, but I figured I’d drop the hint here for all you broke laptop rockers that want zero latency at a fair price
i’m starting to think PCMCIA cards are the way to go; all these usb devices and you end up with a laptop which is actually just a desktop which is all over the place and needs a billion different leads
PCMCIA and ExpressCard are the best way to add an audio interface to a laptop. Not many manufacturers make such though. Luckily Echo Audio did make PCMCIA Indigo cards, now discontinued but often pop up second hand (http://echoaudio.com/Products/CardBus/) and now they have remodelled them in ExpressCard form factor (http://echoaudio.com/Products/ExpressCard/index.php).
I’m using the CardBus Indigo IO. Sounds great, and it’s rock solid.
I think EMU also make PCMCIA cards, and there’s also the UAD Solo/Laptop card.
Is that just opinion, or do you have something objective to back that up? I had an Audigy card in my desktop about 7 years ago, and as far as I could tell, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.
I used to have one as well (probably right around the same time - 2001 to 2003), and #1: it was noisy as hell, #2: they allege that they are 24-bit/96khz interfaces but in reality they have 16/48k ADCs and upconvert after the input, and #3: at least when I had one they only supported ASIO at 48k or 96k (not 44.1k).
USB audio cards have come a long way recently and I’d almost wager to say they’re better than most Firewire out there. I run a little EMU Tracker Pre on a few computers I have and it’s bloody awesome in every regard for it’s price tag. A very affordable investment. The pre-amps alone in it are the best solid-state ones I’ve ever heard.
Byte it’ll be interesting to see how that PCMCIA card goes. There’s never such thing as 0 latency in digital.
TBH I’m hesitant to purchase… I don’t want to be spending hard earned cash without knowing it’s gonna suit my needs. I’d rather save up and get a Motu to be honest
But yah… brokeness is teh suxorz. I’ll wait till income tax comes in and see what my gf says
My brother has always had good experiences with the Echo PCMCIA audio interfaces and rates them highly. I want to save up for Express Slot RME but not much point until I’m really ready to utilise it. Other things to spend money on now and can make do with what I have.
My Echo Indigo IO works well on my sigs yellow system.
There are drawbacks, not sure I would recommend it. 2 1/8" input/output ports, seems fragile, and price is still higher. It does work good though. Was thinking about getting a card bus type 2 to pci adapter to put in a desktop at some point, but kinda want to find an old titanium g4 powerbook to use it in instead.
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