How To Choose A Sound Card

The electronic musician on the move will need to choose all hardware carefully – the first thing you need is a reliable computer, and the second is a reliable sound card. I’ve covered some of the aspects of choosing a music laptop in previous posts, but for beginners the task of choosing an audio interface can be even more daunting. Fear not, however, as help is at hand…

Mobile Sound Card Options

The first thing you need to consider is whether you need a sound card for live performance or for the studio. Some sound cards (such as the MOTU Traveller and Ultralite, for example) can be powered directly from the Firewire bus, which is very handy for mobile work. However, you will need a 6-pin Firewire connection, which very few laptops have. A workaround for this is to get a PCMCIA firewire card with 6-pin ports, which should do the trick. Some USB interfaces (such as the Edirol UA-101) can power themselves from the USB bus – the only caveat here is that you can’t connect via a USB hub, but you’re unlikely to do this if you’re at a gig.

Sound Card Selector

I am working on a more detailed guide to sound cards which I will eventually post here on the site, but in the meantime you can have a look at Recording Review’s audio interface selection tool. This allows you to set parameters such as number of inputs, number of mic preamps, connection type (Firewire, USB, PCI) and so on…

It will then provide you with a number of products that fit your specifications. The first page gives you an option of ‘beginner’ or ‘advanced users’ – the advantage of the beginner option is that it provides a concise explanation of each of the features and goes through them step-by-step. If you’re not familiar with sound card jargon, this is a good place to start



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