Re: Low Lantecy Soundcard for Laptop Gig

["Krispen Hartung" <khartung@cableone.net>]

----- Original Message ----- 

> It's true about the line level. I have a dual channel mic pre that is
> pretty quiet that I use. But I'm surprised that you find the internal
> sound of your ThinkPad to be on par with the Indigo-- my feeling is that
> the A/D and amps in the Indigo are far cleaner than anything you can find
> in a stock laptop. .. maybe your ThinkPad is an unusual creature?

All I can think of is that most all the PC notebooks out today with Intel 
duo core
processors have the sound integrated into their motherboard with the 
chipset,
rather than a separate "sound card". It's their integrated HD (high 
definition)
audio, and I can say at least that the output is superior to other prior, 
stock
sound cards in PC laptops. I'm not sure about the input, but in my case it
sounds pretty damn good with the "ASIO for All" driver.  The standard 
driver
sounds like crap, but this is no reflection on the hardware. I think this 
is 
where
there is a lot of confusion. A poor driver can make just about any piece of
hardware (external or internal) sound bad. That being said, theoretically, 
I
can't tell any difference between the small cardbus Indigo unit and the 
integrated
HD audio of the ThinkPad...it's all just hardware and software, and the 
advantage
of the integrated audio is that there is no intermediate device (the 
cardbus 
and its
transfer rate)...I have to believe that the speed of the transference of 
data on the
motherboard for the HD audio is much faster than the cardbus.

>> Really? Is this because of the speed of firewire? I thought the newer
>> firewire was a lot faster than cardbus.
>
> Faster in terms of bandwidth, yes. More data can fly down that new
> firewire pipe. But as I recall, firewire sends things in packets, and
> there are interrupts and delivery mechanisms within the hardware and
> software that add a translation layer so that the data has to jump 
>through
> more hoops before it reaches the audio application. So, more bandwidth 
>but
> lower latency. CardBus is a more direct connection with the processor.

Gotch ya.

Kris