MusicPlayerNetwork.com Forums Featured Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage Need Soundcard suggestions for laptop

What up gang,

A friend of mine needs to get a soundcard for his Sony Vaio. It has a firewire port and a couple of USB 2.0 ports. What would be a good bang for the buck soundcard for this notebook. Under $300 is ideal. He doesn't need a lot of audio ins or outs. He just needs a midi port to plug in a Radium 49. He's going to be using Reason 2.5. In fact, should he just get a USB midi port, and if so would he get a lot of latency using one of those?

Thanks in advance,

Lincoln Ross
Dead Black Jedis

If all he needs is MIDI in/out, check out the M-Audio USB MIDISport Uno. It's what I use with my Mac, it's dirt cheap and works fine.

Actually, the Radium 49 IS a MIDI interface. Just download the newest driver from M-Audio\'s drivers page , install it and plug it via USB to the computer.

The Radium only has MIDI OUT.

If you need a MIDI IN port you will need a Midisport UNO, a 1x1, 2x2, 2x4, 4x4, etc... depending on the number of required MIDI ports.

About the audio... does he need Mic preamps? maybe balanced inputs? How many of both things? Is it ok with a 16 bits/48kHz interface or 24/96 is mandatory? Maybe he only needs a mini stereo jack as input...