...(i.e. sound blaster extigy)?

www.3dss.com

Ask that question in the sound card section of the forums... they know their stuff.

id stay away from the extigy if I were you.

a) it's only USB 1.1 compliant
b) USB 1.1 doesnt have enough bandwidth to support 4-channel audio without compressing the audio over the USB link (read: CPU HOG!!)
c) even in two channel mode, it's an incredible CPU hog.

in general, USB sound causes increased CPU utilization and can result in degraded performance.

stick with PCI *hardware* (not ac97!!) audio solutions... and no, soundblaster isn't any better than the others. I've seen many lab tests done against soundblaster that proove that alot of $20 cards perform just as well if not better in some areas... like my personal favorite, the CMedia 8738 soundchip...

I'm guessing you want audio on your laptop??

I don't really approve of any Creative Labs card for any Pro. music work. If you could get urself hold of a Firewire card, then maybe you should give that ago, there hot for a laptop. But yea some of the onboard chips are good, the Cmedia and the cheap Yamaha (cant remmember no.) are good chips.

firewire soundcards.. hmm.. that'd be cool

can ya point me to a few models of firewire soundboards?
peas,
-mer

never seen any firewire ones... i recommend you find a good PCI one. I recommend M-Audio delta series. I have one, and its great.

delta series are just glorified (and HIGHLY overprided) CMedia boards
aren't they?? I know at one point they sure were..

-mer

i only have a laptop though.

maybe consider a PCMCIA solution... I've been told by a few people ego-sys's PCMCIA solutions are fairly nice. No personal experience with them. They call it the wami box if I recall...

Anyone else know much about these? I'm curious if they are decent, i've been trying to decide on a laptop sound solution for a while myself... I've ruled out USB hehe...

-mer

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it's by digidesign (of pro tools fame)... it has to be good.

quote:

Originally posted by MERiDiAN5i2 delta series are just glorified (and HIGHLY overprided) CMedia boards aren't they?? I know at one point they sure were.. -mer

I dunno, I got mine because it was the cheapest card, with the best features, at my local audio shop. And it works great for me. Dunno what to do if you want to use a laptop though,, just do some research on the internet.

I wonder if the Audiophile series from MAudio is decent... it's four channel (TRUE four channel) but I wonder if it supports USB 2.0 ...

Looks like a nice box... 1/4 TRS outputs and all

-mer