Laptop Sound Card woes

[JonPorobil]

My only computer, currently, is a laptop. This is less than ideal, from a recording standpoint, especially because the sound card that came with my laptop is very crude and bare-bones—just not built for the kind of stuff I want to do with it. It plays music and movies just fine, but recording is more of a problem.

For example: the one thing that's driving me up the wall the most is my seeming inability to monitor sound as I record it. Some of my songs have audio that's 100% line input from my keyboard, which goes silent when it's plugged into something else. This means that I can't hear what I'm playing as I record.

I was trying to check out feature sets and things to figure out what to call this thread, and near as I can figure, the problem is because my sound card doesn't have what the sound card companies call "Full Duplex Recording Capability," which might be a slight misnomer, but whatever.

What I'd like to know is: Is there any shortcut around this problem? Is there a virtual sound card I can get somewhere or a sound card emulator for the computer? Or am I stuck mic-ing it until I can afford a better sound card? Any input would be appreciated, and would probably result in better music, too.

(Worth noting, by the way: on my old laptop, I got around these problems with this doohickey, but my new computer doesn't support PCMCIA input; Dell decided to prematurely switch to ExpressCard without informing me until the computer was on my desk. The appropriate converter for me, for some reason, costs about as much as a decent sound card anyway. Bah.)

[HeuristicsInc]

can you get one of the usb soundcards? not sure if they would fit in your budget. my laptop soundcard is a pcmcia also.
-bill

[JonPorobil]

The really furstrating thing is that no one seems to have filled the gap yet; near as I can tell, there is no affordable Expresscard sound card. Maybe I'll just plunk down the money for the converter. I really loved that Echo Indigo.

Still, if anyone can think of a way to improve my sound card performance by spending less than $100, please let me know.

[Tonamel]

Well, that's why he suggested a USB card, not an Expresscard.

After a brief search, the only one I could find for <$100 was the Fast Track USB, but if you were going to get something like that, I'd say save your pennies for something like the Edirol UA-25 (~$250), which has more inputs as well as built in preamps/phantom power.

[Lunkhead]

One option is to buy a mixer, and use that for no-latency monitoring. Mixers are cheap.

Or, you can get a USB "soundcard" very cheap. On zZounds for example, go to Computer Music, USB Audio Interfaces, put in your top price of $100, you'll get 13 results. I don't know if any of those have no-latency monitoring, though.

(No latency means that what you hear from the "soundcard" is a mix of the playback from the computer, with your live signal from your keyboard, -before- the keyboard sound has gone into the computer.)

You can always save some dough by finding something used on Craig's List, too, of course.

[ken]

First, if you are using your laptop sound crad, I suggest ASIOFREE4ALL as your driver. It really cleaned up my old Dell, but didn't do anything for my new Dell running Vista. Second, what software are you using to record? Are you sure you have it set correctly to monitor your inputs?

I have the M-Audio Mobile Preamp, which I bought for $60 used. It has worked well for a couple of channels in and out.

Ken

[Sober]

Ken's advice is sound. ASIO4ALL is a mandatory driver download if you insist on going direct in through your soundcard. Jesus, Jon. You've been doing this for at least 3-4 years, right? Get some fucking gear, bro.

A good first step is Ken's suggested M-Audio MobilePre USB. I still use one when traveling, or if I want to do on-site recording where I'll have no access to a power outlet. 2 inputs, clean 16-bit, zlm.

[fluffy]

If the card doesn't support full-duplex then ASIO4ALL probably won't help. (Full-duplex is different than hardware monitoring though. Using a mixer to get monitoring requires a mixer with a monitor bus - most cheaper mixers don't have that - AND a full-duplex soundcard.)

I've had pretty good luck with Tascam's USB audio interfaces, which are also pretty affordable and usually come with MIDI as well. Currently I use a Yamaha mixer with built-in USB interface which I'm pretty meh about but it gets the job done. If I were to buy something specifically for laptop use right now I'd probably get a Tascam US-144.

[ken]

Hi,

I just wanted to mention that ASIOFREE4ALL has an update that is working great with my Vista laptop. This program is the best. It got the latency down in Reason to almost nothing. Amazing.

Ken