Portable recording with a laptop (was: Re: [vorbis] new stuff and question)

[Andrew Greenburg]

Colin D Bennett <colin at radsoft.com> wrote:
: al goldstein wrote:
: 
: >I want arelatively cheap laptop to do portable recording. Any good choices
: >available?
: >.......Al
: > 
: >
: 
: I've wondered how good a laptop really is for recording. Maybe for what 
: you're planning to do you aren't worried too much about quality, but I 
: have 2 Behringer mics and a little mixer, and I've done a little 
: recording using my laptop of my sister playing harp. I just haven't been 
: impressed with the sound quality.  I'm using the integrated sound card 
: on the laptop, and I think it is just really noisy. Has anyone else 
: noticed this? I can even sometimes hear noises in my headphones when the 
: hard drive is accessed.

Yes, internal laptop sound cards are pretty noisy. So are internal desktop
sound cards, though some (such as those made by Aardvark) are better
shielded than others.

: Has anyone used a USB sound card? Are there any good quality ones out 
: there that would provide better sound quality?

I've been very satisfied with the M-Audio Audiophile USB. It will set you
back about $200, though. It does 24/96 and is dead silent compared to the
PCI sound card in my desktop.

: Otherwise, I'll have to use my main system, which is a real pain, 
: because it's water cooled (http://colin.radnethosting.com/tsunami) so 
: it's quite nonportable. I have a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 card in my main 
: system, which I though was a quality card, but I understand that for 
: high quality recording, you should actually have a "professional" sound 
: card. Is this true? What kind of sound card should I get, then?

M-Audio, Aardvark, Echo/Event (which one are they called these days?),
MOTU, and others I'm sure I'm not thinking of make professional-quality
computer sound equipment. I've had experience with M-Audio and MOTU
equipment with good results.


-- 
 agreenbu @ nyx . net                             andrew michael greenburg
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