I have a Digigram VxPocket V2 (PCMCIA, not USB) in my laptop. It has spdif in, support for 24 bits recording, 2 XLR (balanced) analog in and 2 out (no phanton power though). I've had it for over one year working with WinXP. I am quite satisfied with it. Its mixer allows to control input level as well (as opposed to the Echo/Mia I have in my desk top). I certainly recommend this card, it used to be expensive, but it seems the price has dropped recently. Check the site:

http://www.digigram.com/products/getinfo.htm?prod_key=9000

Good luck,
JTelles

Hello,

Try with the Sound Devices USBPre 1.5

http://www.usbpre.com

Very good microphone preamps, usb powered, 24/48 in, 16/48 out (Analog), 20/48 out (Digital)

Cheers

Red,
I saw SF/Sony recommend the Layla via PCMCIA for laptops about a year ago.

MJ

"Try with the Sound Devices USBPre 1.5"

Actually, that was one that I was looking at. Someone I work with has one of these and recommended it also. The VXpocket sounds interesting too, I'll have to check that one out also. The Layla is a bit overkill for what I need. I want this thing to travel easily where I can throw it in my laptop case.

I contacted Echo, letting them know I was looking for something along the lines, of a MIA that I could use for a laptop. They responded pretty quickly, and said there seems to be a lot of similar requests, and said I should keep my eye open near the end of December or early January....hmmmm...maybe I can wait. :-)

Thanks for the suggestions!!!

I have the VXpocket and it works great, although the cable that connects to the PCMCIA card is a MONSTER. Imagine all the Balanced/Unbalanced/Headphone/etc. jacks that it has going in and out of it in one giant bundle! It's like a stage snake.
B.

I have an M-audio Transit card or order. It has S/PDIF, optical only, in and out as well as WMD and ASIO drivers. We'll see. The price is right though at $100.

Larry

Hello Rednroll,

For your records.

I was taken a measure of the USBPre with the Rightmark Audio Analyzer. This measure is a loop between the mic input and the digital output (digital to analog by a DAC1 of Benchmark, for use the 20 bits).

PC>USBPre(Digital out 20bit)>DAC1>USBPre(Mic in)>PC

http://www.lasalademaquinas.com/USBPre%20Miic%20in.htm

Thanks for the info Ramallo, it seems to be a pretty good card. I won't be doing much recording with this card, but it's great to know that it's pretty clean if I ever do. I'm mainly using it for an interface to do Spectral Analysis of other audio devices, and had to make sure it had balanced inputs to be sure I was getting a proper common mode rejection signal into the spectral analyzer for my balanced output sources. Got one on order. $550.

Brilliant soundcard with 96khz(24 bit) input spdif i/o. Software mixer allows for interesting routing options. Forget usb (1.0 anyways). This is what it was supposed to be like. Four inputs and 10 out.

I second the M-audio Firewire 410. I use it with my Apple Powerbook G4, it's flawless.

Two balanced (dual XLR / 1/4" connections) inputs + S/PDIF / Coax inputs, along with 8 analog unbalanced outputs, /PDIF and Coax outs, plus two headphone outputs. It can be either self-powered or fed through the Firewire jack.

Hello Rednroll,

I bought this card for use with my Smaartlive. I don't had any problem with this card when I used it for measuring devices by transfer function (Balanced line devices or power amps) .

The Siasoft forum is a good point for information about portable sound cards.

www.siasoft.com

Too the latop-tapers forum

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laptop-tapers

And the Oade forum

http://www.oade.com/cgi-bin/miva?Forum/technology/index.mv

For better isolation you can use a 1:1 transformer for the input (Jensen or Neutrik X-formers for example).

Cheers

I am using both an Echo Indigo and an M-Audio Audiophile USB with a Sony GRT 100 laptop. After some difficulty (needed to update my DirextX version) everything is running smoothly.

Kevin.

There's an M-audio audiophile USB? I didn't want to go the firewire route, because then that was an additional purchase I had to get for a firewire port on my laptop.

What type of I/O does the audiophile USB have?

The Audiophile USB has analog I/O, s/pdif I/O, MIDI I/O, and headphone output. A word of caution: USB audio interfaces are a known to be a pain to set up on some systems, unreliable on others. I took a chance on mine, and was rewarded with 1 month of trouble-shooting until I updated my DirectX version. In fairness, the problem was with Cubase SX; Vegas functioned flawlesslessly from day one.

My laptop: Sony GRT P4 2.66GHz, 40GB HD.

Good luck,
Kevin.

Red,
I had assumed you were aware of M-Audio's USB cards.

M-Audio USB

I've seen many rave about the Quattro and Omni. I had huge issues with M-Audio drivers and Vegas in the past but since V4 (AISO) the crackle problem for me has been solved. I have the Audiophile 2496 (PCI).

MJ

M-Audio Transit USB flawless at 96/24/s . Only full duplex up to 48/24/s if that's a factor.

geoff

I'll second the Transit. I've been testing it with Smaartlive and it works well. No problems so far.

Like most cards it uses unbalanced audio so special cables are necessary to get the best noise floor with balanced equipment. You can find some good reading about interconnects at: http://www.rane.com/note151.html Take a good look at figure 5 and the text below.

Larry

" it uses unbalanced audio"
So you are saying the inputs are unbalanced? If that's true that is exactly the same problem I currently have and am looking for a viable alternative.