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New External Sound "Card"

Posted by timothy on from the never-heard-of-downsizing dept.

(startx) writes: "Well, it looks like creative has done it again. This time they've created an external sound"card" that connects through usb to your computer or laptop. It's called the Extigy, and looking at the specs, it appears as though it's got every possible audio connector you can possibly think of, along with the standard ir port with remote control. With this, a usb HDD, and a usb cd-rw, it looks like I can have most of my box, outside the box, just for the geek factor :-)" I don't think it's quite as cool-looking as the Stereolink 1200 (which I've never actually heard), but for a few bucks more the Creative crams in a lot of features.

11 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Notebook sound by Lewisham · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good golly. It's a soundcard for a notebook! No more putting up with El Crappo sound chips for me! Yes, I am actually being sincere about this :)

    1. Re:Notebook sound by J4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Good, but not golden ear good. Analog tape is about 105 db

      I hadda chuckle though, the heading here says "any audio connector you can think of".... No balanced 1/4", no XLR, no bantam jacks, not to mention no external 5 pin DIN for midi. Still, not bad for consumer gear

  2. This is going to sell by RobPiano · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nice move by creative. I make a lot of machines for musicians (being a geek and a musician). Musicians want to get labtops so they can bring it on their tours. People always ask me about how to get a music labtop. With this little box you can have all the connectivity you need (including minidisc which is used to do a lot of cheap recording). With ProTools free CSound and a few others you can have a complete composition kit on the go for an affordable price. Its simply put, exactly what they are looking for.

    Expect working drivers in 2004.
    Rob

    1. Re:This is going to sell by RobPiano · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The problem most people have when using a laptop for composing are the crappy midi sounds. Well creative has very nice midi sounds (a la what's on the audigy these days). Yes you can plug it into a midi instrument, but that's hard to do when you crammed on the band bus.

      As far as doing recordings, just recently the USB Minidisc connects came out. They are very nice, unfortunatly most musicians bought early minidiscs. We have the optical cables, but not the USB cables. We don't want to buy a new minidisc becaues we're still paying off the first one (not to mention that nice stereo sony mic).

      Laptops generally have very low sound quality. It sounds like your working with a tin can. Its further killed by the fact there is no way to replace the sound card that is in your labtop already. I hear a lot "We can't afford a new labtop, fix up my old piece of crap" mentality.

      Finally, musicians always want to impress other musicians. We want to plug our labtops straight into our friends kick ass stereo system. This has the connectivty right in the front.

      Rob

    2. Re:This is going to sell by filtersweep · · Score: 1, Insightful

      first of all- WHY is this on slashdot? : "Well, it looks like creative has done it again." Done WHAT again?

      As a musician I wouldn't be caught dead with a Soundblaster. I still can't believe any musician uses Creative cards- On all the "trouble boards"- there are tons of topics from SB users.

      If you MAKE music, buy a real AUDIO card- listen back with whatever you want, I don't care...

      All the "connectivity" (I hate that word....) would included ADAT, but I'm just being picky. Creative products have historically not played well with other products. I wonder what SAMPLE RATE this card operates at? That was huge issue with previous offering- what kind of latency and with what buffers will that card work?

      In addition it was impossible to find decent drivers (like ASIO) for SB products. I doubt this has improved.

      The article is absurd: a usb HDD, usb cd-rw, and usb audio card? That is just asking for trouble!

      --


      Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
  3. USB or 1394 by leandrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Shouldn't this be a job for 1394, along with mass storage, image scanning and the like?

    It seems to me that USB is being overstretched, together with ATA and after RS-232C and IEEE 1284... all of the stuff done by ATA, RS-232C and 1284 should be done by SCSI and 1394, and so much of the stuff currently being done with USB.

    --
    Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
    DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
    GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
    1. Re:USB or 1394 by jbf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For two-channel I/O, USB provides plenty of bandwidth. There's a sledgehammer killing a fly argument to be made against making this device 1394. You could argue that everything should be replaced with firewire, including ATA and SCSI. I actually rather dislike the disappearance of RS-232, since it'll make hardware harder to hack. Putting together something that talks RS232 is so much easier for the average geek than something that talks USB/1394.

      Anyhow, if you want a 1394 interface, check out MOTU. They have some killer audio interfaces for 1394.

  4. Wonder how strong it is? by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder if it is strong enough to take a 19" monitor sitting on top? Under the monitor would be a perfect place for it on my desktop.

  5. With 24bit 96Khz where's that DVD Audio? by idealego · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Where's that DVD audio I've been waiting for. I'm tired of these lousy sounding CD's. People only think they sound good because 99% of them have never heard music reproduced at a higher quality. It's about time the world moved to a higher quality format and 24bit 96Khz would be a good start.

  6. Does nobody here know anything about this stuff? by paulbd · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Its quite amazing to read through the high-ranked posts here. Its hard to find any that display more than rudimentary knowledge of computer audio interfaces.
    • devices like this have existed for more than 2 years. products from Midiman, SEK'D, Event Systems and other companies offered this kind of configuration for some time. its becoming more common all the time.
    • creative's audio products are widely recognized by anyone with any experience as being basically "just good enough" crap. they have terrible noise problems, and often come with basic h/w engineering problems (such as a fixed rate sample clock that forces resampling at any rate other than the chosen one).
    • USB for audio is a bunch of crap. It can be made to work, but its being used only because most computers these days come with USB ports, and far fewer come with IEEE1394 ports. It has no redeeming qualities and many drawbacks. There are bandwidth problems, reliability problems, connector stability problems, protocol conformance problems - it goes on and on.
    • IEEE1394 ("firewire") is vastly superior, but suffers from a lack of standardization on the transport-level protocol used for audio and MIDI data. There are at least 3 or 4 competing versions of this, with no resolution in sight.
    • Several people have pointed out the lack of balanced connectors, as well as the lack of XLR connectors (these two items are strictly orthogonal from one another). Balanced analog I/O is a serious must-have for anything other than the typical low-quality audio stuff 95% of you do with your computers. Of course, that 5% might not be a big enough market to make it worth offering :)
    companies like creative are busy trying to make devices that appeal to many consumer's desire for stuff that appears to be "pro" or "semi-pro" gear. creative in particular has failed to make any equipment that even comes close to these descriptions. if audio on your computer matters to you enough that external converters are important, you should not be paying any attention to the extigy, but should instead be paying attention to products from Terratech, Event (even though they refuse to make linux support possible, they are nice devices), Midiman (Delta series) or RME. If you're really serious about audio on your computer, you'd already know that you should be basically buying an audio interface that supports ADAT optical connections and then a totally separate converter box (such as the Tango24 from Frontier Designs, or the ADI series from RME, or if money is tight, perhaps a Fostex unit). this configuration allows you to upgrade your A/D-D/A capabilities and the audio interface independently, which in turn implies the potential for improved channel counts and/or improved converters at a later date. --p
  7. Re:M-Audio Delta 44--great tip! by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Wow, I now see just how ignorant my earlier post was. Thanks everyone for all the tips about available products. The Delta 44 seems just perfect for what I'm looking for. I do wish it were a bit cheaper, but functionality-wise, it would be perfect for me.

    After looking at the available stuff and reading up on USB latency, I'm convinced that the PCI card+breakout box with D/A-A/D converters is the optimal setup. I wish this architecture would make its way into more "mass production" sound cards so the prices could start falling.

    I guess I was silly to think that I had satisfied all of toy cravings in December...