PCMCIA or USB

[vinyl]

I need to make home music recordings with my laptop with a sound-blaster level quality. My Dell PC has an useless internal sound-card; should I buy a PCMCIA or an USB sound-card (I also need MIDI I/O)? Brand/model suggestions? Thanks. Matteo

[usul]

Ciao Matteo,
It depends on what is your budget, USB audio cards are cheaper but relatively new so it is hard to understand how is their performance.
I am looking for an audio card for a laptop too but I have not yet made a decision.
Look at mdidman stuff sounds interesting.

[macouno]

The thing to consider when thinking of usb interfaces is bandwidth. Basicly if you only record/playback stereo (any bit depth/rate) they're fine. But when you really want multiple in/outputs go for pcmcia or firewire.

I have my laptop setup with an M-audio usb midi thingy and an emagic 2|6 usb audio card, and it works just fine.

Oh and usb can have problems when it also has to power the usb interface (some noise), that is normally solved by using an external power source (adapter) for the audio card... but I haven't had that problem myself.

[wilbong]

what kind of dell laptop you own ?

is there a 1394 input near the soundcard ?

if so, it's a much faster way to do audio.
it's a firewire in out.

i didnt know it was the same thing so i bought a usb unit which works nice but is much slower than usb.

i wish i knew before !

[E]

Ive never used PCMCIA but I would assume that it would be as reliable and as fast as PCI.

I have used USB audio interfaces, and they work fine however they must have a proper driver written (ASIO, WDM) depending on the program, in order to get proper latency.