AW: Audio Interface for Notebook Users

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

Generally, there is a huge choice available today, but defining some
requirement spec will narrow down the choices to one or two.

Important choices (from the top of my head and not prioritized and not
complete) might be:

1. Interface: There's USB/USB2, Firewire and RME's proprietary interface. 
If
you don't have a RME Cardbus PCMCIA card, this might throw this out for 
cost
reasons. USB implementations on the Mac suck, so if you're a Mac user,
forget those.
2. Power: do you need to power your interface via the laptop? If you're a
x86 user (which I believe you are), this would reduce the choice to USB.
3. number of micpres necessary
4. symmetric outs necessary
5. kind of digital I/O (if any) - there are only a few devices which offer
both coaxial and optical S/PDIF
6. numer of MIDI ports. More than one pair also greatly reduces the number
of choices.
7. latency requirements: I don't know of anything faster than RME's stuff.
8. audio quality requirements
9. type of connectors
10. size/package: the smallest thing I've seen was the (smaller) Edirol
firewire interface
11. etcetc...

I had been dealing with this issues to some detail, so if you come back 
with
a clearer spec, I might give some suggestions. Currently I have as external
audio interfaces:

1. Terratec Phase26 USB. Consumer-style (connectors, levels). Has both coax
and optical digital ports. Huge latency, unstable ASIO drivers
2. Presonus Firebox. quite small a package, got two micpre/Hi-Z inputs with
phantom and two independent line ins, coax digital, symmetrical outs (6) 
and
latency is also ok. Very basic internal software mixer.
3. RME digiface via Cardbus PCMCIA. You'll need an AD-DA-converter for this
one, and I use it in combination with my Behringer ADA8000s. Super-low
latency. Powerful internal mixer. two MIDI pairs. total of 26 channels I/O.
Wordclock sync. If you can live without micpres, the Multiface might be a
choice for you.

        Rainer

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Kris Hartung [mailto:khartung@cableone.net] 
> Gesendet: Sonntag, 19. März 2006 18:26
> An: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
> Betreff: Audio Interface for Notebook Users
> 
> I'm interested in finding out what audio interfaces all you 
> notebook computer users are using in place of (bi-passing) 
> the internal soundcard? 
> USB? Firewire? Can you share what you are using? I'm 
> interesting in something that is compact but also high quality.
> 
> Kris
> 
> 
> 
>